Introduction to Digital Marketing - Essay Example

? Digital Marketing AFFILIATION: Introduction to Digital Marketing Internet has revolutionised the way in which organisations are conducting their business operations especially marketing activities. Through the emergence of internet, businesses have found a platform that is cheap and easy for them to use and it allows the businesses to target their consumers all around the globe. In the last few years, there has been a drastic shift in the approaches that are used to grab the customer’s attention as the traditional mediums of marketing are considered to be ineffective methods and the latest trend is of digital marketing (Borgan & Smith, 2009). In recent years, the rate of internet users has increased in leaps and bounds. The use of internet is compulsory in some areas of education especially in the area of research. As the customers are using Internet on a frequent basis, it has become vital for the companies to strengthen their presence on various online platforms. In order to survive in today’s tough and competitive environment, the corporations will have to make proper use of the social media tools and develop an online marketing strategy that will help them in gaining or maintaining a competitive edge in the market. According to Neti (2011), digital marketing is commonly known as e-marketing and online marketing which is the communication and promotion process used by the companies to sell their products or services on the Internet. Digital marketing technique has brought with it convenience and ease for the business as well as the customers. The digital marketing processes have to be incorporated in the company’s overall marketing plan as it is an integral part of its Integrated Marketing Communication plan. Internet can push users towards someone like writing an email, conducting video chats, using IM and other such things and it can also allow users to pull message towards them like searching items, clicking on advertisements, so on and so forth. Therefore, the process of digital marketing can be categorised as the use of technologies on the internet that allow users to either push or pull messages towards them and others as well (Brady and Fellenz, 2008). Digital marketing has grown in popularity and has become an important part of the corporation’s marketing strategy. All corporations in one way or the other ensure the use of digital marketing techniques in their firm for creating awareness amongst the target market. The primary reasons that it is the best option for creating awareness amongst the customers are that it is cost-effective, provides the opportunity of reaching the customers globally and marketing activities can be easily personalised to meet the demands of the customers (Jae et al., 2008). It has even allowed the organisations to build effective relationships with the customers by developing a marketing mix compatible for online consumers. Social Media Now-a-days, Internet has become a vital part of everyone’s life and people are using it to run errands, contact friends, read the e-mails, gather information about various things and conduct various other activities online. From Internet, everyone is expecting to have instant access to valuable and accurate information quickly. According to Zarella (2010), if a consumer is unable to find information about a firm online, then it will be harmful for the firm as it will lose a potential customer for its business. With the rapid development in communication and information technologies, various new communication channels have emerged that are presenting a variety of alternatives to the firms for building long-lasting relationships with the customers. According to Harline, Mirrokni, and Sundararajan (2008), majority of the organisations are becoming multiple channel operators which implies that they are extending their availability from single channel i.e. their websites to social networking sites i.e. social media. There is no concrete definition of social media but many researchers have tried to provide a concise and comprehensive description of the term. The finest definition of social media is given by Flink (2011) who states that it is a platform where the people gather online for communication and it comprises an array of virtually related activities, behaviours and practices. People join together for having communication via a virtual mode; the shift from socialising with people face to face to a virtual mode has caused changes in the lifestyles of individuals as well as allowed businesses to promote their business in a different way. However, some authors such as Kaplan and Hanlein (2010) argue that people have shifted to digital communication in order to preserve the environment; it helps in eliminating the waste producing elements, which in turn ignited the need of social media as a source of enhanced communication amongst various individuals. In fact, the social media provides an avenue where web-based applications and communities are used for allowing the users to have an easy interaction mechanism and communication can take place by exchanging audios, pictures, videos and words (Evans & McKee, 2010). It has been observed that individuals enjoy interacting on the social media platforms to a very large extent; some users market all their everyday activities on such websites as they want their contacts to be aware of all the latest happenings in their life. Importance of social media for organisations For different corporations, the social media has been used to create new businesses and there is a high probability that the new entrants are able to develop a niche in the ecosystem of social media. However, it is stated by Culnan, McHugh, and Zubillaga (2010) that social media can be considered as a fad and the businesses will have to wait for some time before the results become evident; it usually takes six months before a company starts making a consistent stream of revenue from the source of social media. Once revenue starts flowing in, then it becomes more challenging for the organisation to maintain its reputation in the digital world. It needs to ensure that the online customers remain interested in the products and services of the organisation. In any case, social media or digital marketing is an integral part of the communication mix of every organisation and it is among the most effective tools for developing cordial relations with the customers so that efficient Customer Relationship Management (CRM) processes can be developed and implemented (Safko & Brake, 2009). It is a low cost strategy and allows organisations to develop long lasting relationships with their valuable customers. Weber (2007) states that social media is usually the starting point for online marketing but its meaning for the firms goes far beyond the marketing scope as it tends to develop strong bonds with the customers and influence potential clients by providing them relevant and up-to-date information about their offerings. For satisfied online customers, it is extremely easy for promoting their satisfaction to other online users. This can take place by just clicks and the entire contact list can know that a particular contact is satisfied with the product or service of the organisation. This is one of the major advantages for organisation that have online business pages for customers. As a company’s social media presence increases in the terms of years, it will become vital for it to develop a cross-functional team that will have representatives of all major departments present in the social media business activities such as legal, retail and customer support (Larson, 2009). With the advent of social media, every organisation is given a unique dimension for conducting word-of-mouth advertising. Any company that has a product or service that is liked by everyone will find it to be an ideal way of marketing its offering by the use of social media which is the feasible alternative to word-of-mouth. When a customer shares his/her opinion about the product or service or starts a conversation about the particular item, it will create a discussion forum and it will greatly influence the buying decision of prospective consumers (Bernoff & Li, 2008). Through this decision, the chances of awareness for the product or service increase as various other individuals may view the forum. The primary foundation or pre-requisite of all noteworthy relationships of a firm with its employees, suppliers, customers, vendors and distributors is the ‘influence’ element and with the help of social media a company can easily influence the conversation taking place between the customers (Richardson, Gosnay & Caroll, 2010). According to Tikkanen et al. (2009), an organisation that wants to effectively utilise the social media will have to focus on three key areas i.e. tools and technologies used in social media, content displayed on online platforms and communities involved in the marketing strategy. The organisations also need to keep in track which of the social websites are most popular and then they should accordingly advertise on popular websites. Social websites have business websites separately and socialising websites separately so users on both types of websites are of different nature. Culnan, McHugh and Zubillaga (2010) identified three rules for ensuring that the social media is properly used by the businesses; first rule implies that social media should enable conversation; second rule is that the conversation should never be controlled by an organisation and lastly, influence should be the basic factor for developing the relationship with the customers. When all of these rules are properly implemented, only then there are likely chances that the social media will prove to be a supportive tool for the firm’s marketing strategy. Types of Social Media With the passage of time, the types of social media keep on evolving and they present an assortment of options to the organisations so that they can select the platforms that will help them in influencing their customers in an appropriate manner. There are different platforms of social media but the key players are websites or social networking sites, blogs, podcasts and RSS, photo and video sharing websites and message boards (Nair, 2011). The social networking sites are the primarily used form of social media as it provides a platform to the users for having a conversation with other individuals who have similar interest and it can take place without any constraints of space and time. These social networks are defined as an online avenue where human interaction takes place; in these networks, people develop connections with their friends, transfer and gather information to provide assistance to each other. The well-known examples of social networks are Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and Twitter (Weber, 2007). The number of user on these social networking websites is amounting in millions. The blogging network is the most commonly found type of social media; it is described as the posting of content on a blog such as an online journal or posting the comments on someone’s blog. Tumblr and Blogger.com are considered to be the top-ranked blogging websites (Brady & Fellenz, 2008). Other most popular social media tool is video and photo sharing; a user uploads the videos or photos online so that they can be shared with others for the purpose of viewing and people can even comment on them. These comments are then viewed by other friends on the contact list and in no time the entire chain of friends can view the comments or posts. The leading photo sharing websites are YouTube, Flickr, Vimeo, Photobucket and Google Video (Palmer & Koeing-Lewis, 2009). Organisation can make their YouTube ads and then accordingly promote on the social networking websites for the target market to view. Podcasts and RSS are the subscription-based services in which the users have to sign up for the feed such as the content. The podcasts are described as the pre-recorded video or audio broadcasts shared by organisations or individuals who want to share their content with a wide range of audience. The users can easily download the podcasts by means of the services such as iTunes of Apple on their own personal devices (Powell, 2009). Likewise, the message boards known as the discussion forums are a forum of online communities that allow the users to post, read and review the comments about the topics of tier interest. The discussion can be on any topic that are of interest to the community on the network and hence many replies are received for the discussion started. Similarly, chat rooms are also real-time conversations that are providing the users an opportunity of having communication on an interactive basis (Evans & McKee, 2010). Developing a social media marketing strategy According to Tikkanen et al. (2009), there are various theories to explain the concept of social media marketing which will address all vital components of this latest marketing strategy. The two well-known theories are Ghaurav Mishra’s “The 4Cs of Social Media Framework” and Sean Nelson’s “The 4Cs of Social Media”; however, the best one among all the theories introduced by researchers is the four pillars theory of social media strategy that was developed by Safko and Brake in 2009 (Taufique & Shahriar, 2011). The four pillars according to Safko and Brake (2009) theory are communication, education, collaboration and entertainment. In order to develop an effective online marketing strategy, every organisation needs to first decide about the target audience that it wants to serve and the mediums that will be the most compatible ones for reaching the target market in an effective way. The first pillar of the theory ‘communication’ relies on the social media to engage the audience and assessing the impact of engagement on the audience. The audience need to view the message or discussion that is being started by the organisation representatives. The company has to evaluate its performance level so that it can identify the missing links in its strategy and make necessary changes to communicate with the target audience productively. With the communication enabled by the social media, an organisation will be able to understand its customers in a better way which will be advantageous for it in the long-run (Evans & McKee, 2010). ‘Collaboration’ which is the second pillar is divided into internal and external collaboration. The internal collaboration means that tools are used for enhancing the collaboration of the employees by seeking their viewpoints about reaching and engaging the customers in a more effective manner. External collaboration means reaching the target audience by offering it options such as feedback about products or services, areas for improvement or providing them online assistance; it will help in strengthening the relationship with the customers (Safko & Brake, 2009). In order to effectively create awareness about the company’s product or services, an organisation will have to select appropriate social media platforms. The third pillar ‘Education’ emphasises the importance of selection of social media tools that will educate the customers about the company’s offerings and get them engaged in the form of message boards, discussion forums or photo or video sharing. Likewise, ‘Entertainment’ element should be incorporated in accordance with the requirement of the target audience so that the customers remain attracted and loyal to the company and customer loyalty can be developed (Evans & McKee, 2010). The social media marketing strategy should be developed after careful evaluation of all critical factors so that it can be incorporated properly in the marketing strategy and it will assist the company in gaining appropriate share on online mediums. Similarly, an organisation should ensure that it has appropriate mechanisms in place for monitoring its online performance. Monitoring the online performance will allow all online activities of the organisation to remain in control. Some of the easily accessible analytical tools are Google Alerts, Google Analytics, Twitter Search and many more that will provide in-depth information about the important performance attributes of the social media marketing strategy (Zarrella, 2010). Challenges in Social Media As social media tends to provide immense benefits to the organisations, there are some challenges that the companies can face during the implementation of their social media strategy (Neti, 2011). Dealing with the challenges on a digital mode is critical for the organisations as in the online communities, the message spreads at a rapid rate and the number of target customers viewing the message is diverse and widespread. The common areas of concerns in the social media are negative publicity created by the customers, the negative publicity may allow the organisation to face heavy consequences as the impact of negative publicity would be immediate on the firm’s sales, action plan for dealing with negative feedbacks, cultural differences across borders (advertising content and messages have different meanings in different cultures), paying enough attention to the online communities i.e. target audience and internal problems (such as lack of top management support, security concerns, reluctance on using new technology and fear of having negative impact on the productivity). Conclusion In order to maintain the competitive edge in the market, it is vital for every organisation to understand the changing dynamics of its target audience. In the last few years, the digital marketing has become an integral part of the marketing strategy and the marketing plan that does not incorporate it has difficulty in achieving its targeted goals. The organisations that do not cater the area of digital marketing tend to lose a huge chunk of potential target customers for their business. Since the customers are looking for information about the company’s products and services online, it is vital for the organisation to enhance its presence on various platforms on Internet and develop a well-thought and strategically designed social media marketing strategy that will help it in influencing both existing and potential customers. As social media will keep on evolving in the future, it is mandatory for the organisation to monitor the developments happening in this area and ensure that it is present on all online platforms so that it is instant access by the customers. It can be observed that at a gradual pace new social networking sites are emerging and organisations need to ensure that they have their online presence on all the social websites. With the help of an effective social media strategy, many organisations have been able to successfully expand into other areas and even develop long-lasting relationships with customers so that they remain loyal to the brand and the company. References Bernoff, J. and Li, C., 2008. Harnessing the Power of Oh-So-Social Web. MIT Sloan Management Review, 49(3), pp. 35-42. Brady, M. and Fellenz, M.R., 2008. Researching the role of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) in contemporary marketing practices. Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, 23(2), pp. 108-114. Brogan, C., and Smith, J., 2009. Trust agents: Using the Web to build influence, improve reputation, and earn trust. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons. Culnan, M.J., McHugh, P.J. and Zubillaga, J.I., 2010. 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