Digital Marketing

Digital marketing is an umbrella term for the marketing of products or services using
digital technologies, mainly on the Internet, but also including mobile phones, display
advertising, and any other digital medium.

Digital marketing's development since the 1990s and 2000s has changed the way brands
and businesses utilize technology for marketing. As digital platforms are increasingly
incorporated into marketing plans and everyday life, and as people use digital devices instead
of visiting physical shops, digital marketing campaigns are becoming more prevalent and
efficient.

Digital marketing techniques such as search engine optimization (SEO), search engine
marketing (SEM), content marketing, influencer marketing, content automation, campaign
marketing, data-driven marketing and e-commerce marketing, social media marketing, social
media optimization, e-mail direct marketing, display advertising, ebooks, and optical disks
and games are becoming more common in our advancing technology. In fact, digital marketing
now extends to non-Internet channels that provide digital media, such as mobile phones
(SMS and MMS), call back, and on-hold mobile ring tones.

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Why you need a Digital Marketing Strategy?
Why do you need a digital marketing strategy? The simple answer: because without
one youll miss opportunities and lose business. Formulating a digital marketing strategy will
help you to make informed decisions about your foray into the digital marketing arena and
ensure that your efforts are focused on the elements of digital marketing that are most relevant
to your business. Its a crucial rst step towards understanding how the constantly evolving
digital marketplace relates to you and how it affects the relationship between your business or
brand and your customers and prospects. It doesnt matter what business youre in; its a fairly
safe bet that an increasing number of your target market rely on digital technology every day
to research, evaluate and purchase the products and services they consume. Without a coherent
strategy of engagement and retention through digital channels your business is at best missing
a golden opportunity and at worst could be left behind, watching your competitors pull away
across an ever-widening digital divide. Unlike conventional forms of mass media marketing,
the internet is unique in its capacity to both broaden the scope of your marketing reach and
narrow its focus at the same time. Using digital channels, you can transcend traditional
constraints like geography and time zones to connect with a much wider audience. At the same
time, digital technology allows you to hone your marketing message with laser-like precision
to target very specic niche segments within that wider market. Implemented effectively, it can
be an incredibly powerful combination. Its often stated that the internet puts consumers in
control as never before. But its also important to remember that the internet also delivers an
unprecedented suite of tools, techniques and tactics that allow marketers to reach out and
engage with those same consumers.

The marketing landscape has never been more challenging, dynamic and diverse. And
therein lies the crux of our need for a cohesive digital marketing strategy. If youre going to
harness the power of digital marketing to drive your online business to dizzying new heights,
you need a thorough understanding of your market, how your customers are using digital
technology, and how your business can best utilize that same technology to build enduring and
mutually rewarding relationships with them. As digital channels continue to broaden the scope
available to us as marketers, so they add to the potential complexity of any digital marketing
campaign. Having a clearly dened strategy will help to keep you focused, ensure that your
marketing activities are always aligned with your business goals and, crucially, ensure that
youre targeting the right people.

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How to make Digital Marketing work for you?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

In laymans terms, Search Engine Optimization or SEO is essentially tweaking your
website so that it comes up naturally or organically for search results in Google, Yahoo Bing
or any other search engine.
Google updates its algorithms regularly so that only the relevant results come up. From that
perspective, many experts say that SEO is dead and the effort is futile. However, the truth is
that Google tries to prevent algorithm manipulation and filters sites that dont deserve to be on
the top of SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages).
So there is no doubt you should invest in SEO work. Your website should address the
technicalities related to content and query matching, spidering, indexing, and interpreting non-
text content.
Remember, it is the most cost-effective marketing strategy that will bring organic
traffic to your business.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

Search Engine Marketing or SEM is the comprehensive strategy to drive traffic to
your business, primarily through paid efforts. Hence it is also called Paid Search Marketing.
The universe of SEM is diverse and complicated.Based on your business structure,
you may choose PPC (pay-per-click) or CPC (cost-per-click) model, or CPM (cost-per-
thousand impressions) model.
There are different platforms for SEM. By far, Google AdWords (on Google
Network) and Bing Ads (on Yahoo Bing Network) are the most popular.
SEM also includes Display Advertising, Search Retargeting & Site Remarketing,
Mobile Marketing and Paid Social Advertising.
You may choose a single-point strategy like PPC, or go for a complete SEM
strategy, including Display and Retargeting.But whatever you do, make sure your work is
managed by experts as wrong planning may make your costs go haywire.
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Content Creation
Research shows that content creation is a definitive method of marketing in 2014.All
recent changes to Googles algorithm - be it Panda, Penguin or Hummingbird - point to the fact
that content is the most important metric while filtering search results.
Content can be presented in different formats, including blogs, white papers, e-books,
case studies, how-to guides, question and answer articles, forums, news and updates, images,
banners, infographics, podcasts, webinars, videos, or content for microblogging and social
media sites.
You can be creative and create content on any topic and then skillfully link it indirectly
to your business. You may like to read our article on how to include content and market your
startup or business free of cost.
Also, you need to customise your content for different platforms. For example, the
content for mobile phones should be crisp and short.
Remember, an effective strategy will engage your readers and leave them interested in
more information from you. Good content is shared and is the best way for branding your
business.

Social Media Marketing (SMM)

Social Media Marketing or SMM is an offshoot of your SEM efforts. It involves driving
traffic to your sites or business through social sites like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest,
Google+, Linkedin, etc.
As we mentioned above, good content is shared and liked.So create and customize
content for different social media platforms. Remember to be prolific and original; you need to
engage with users on a daily basis, at least four to five times a day. Your SMM efforts can be
especially helpful for branding and driving sales.

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Digital Display Advertising
This again is a subset of your SEM efforts. You may use a variety of display advertising
formats to target potential audience - be it text, image, banner, rich-media, interactive or video
ads.

You can customise your message based on interests, content topics, or the position of
the customer in the buying cycle.

However, note that Digital Display Advertising is relatively costly. You need experts
to drive good ROI for your business.

Mobile Marketing
According to a report, Mobile Marketing will be worth $400 billion by 2015 in the US
alone.

We strongly recommend you try out Mobile Marketing. Remember, the website, apps
and content should be customized for mobile devices.

By 2016, mobile devices are expected to reach 2.6 billion units worldwide. So as more
people use smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices, the potential of mobile market
continues to grow.

Interactive Marketing
Make sure your advertising strategy engages the potential customer in a conversation.
According to a survey by ExpoTV.com, 55 percent respondents preferred to have
ongoing communications with the companies they buy from; and 89 percent felt more loyal to
the companies if they were invited to provide feedback.
Use tools like widgets and opt-in features to make your website interactive, solicit
feedback and track user behaviour.
Engage with the customers actively and customize offers based on their preferences
and browsing activities.

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Viral Marketing
Viral Marketing is a strategy where a unique content spreads exponentially online,
because the content is appreciated, shared and liked immensely.
This is a great way to brand and drive traffic to your website.The content can take any
format; all you need is to be creative.

Email Marketing
When you send a commercial message through email to a list of potential customers,
the strategy is called Email Marketing.
With an effective email marketing software, you can maintain email lists that are
segregated based on several factors, including customers likes and dislikes, and spending
habits. Remember to send personalized emails; this helps to develop trust.
However, note that Email Marketing may also be considered as spamming and there
are laws against it in some countries.

Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate Marketing is a performance-based marketing program, where you pay
publishers who bring you customers. The performance may be based on conversions -
promotions, leads or simply sales.

You may like to be part of the affiliate programs of different publishers. Essentially,
the publishers will give you space in their pages to advertise your business and help you drive
conversions; and you will pay them based on the compensation model.

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 You may avail the help from an Affiliate Network, which will give you a large base of
publishers, and other benefits like tracking and reporting technology.

Affiliate Marketing is especially useful for startups, as it will bring in more traffic to
their business through high-traffic sites.

In essence, Affiliate Marketing is a win-win situation for both the merchants and
publishers.

Sites like Amazon, eBay, LinkShare and Flipkart run Affiliate Programs. In fact, most
online businesses with appreciable traffic have their own affiliate programs.

Digital Media Planning and Buying

When a media agency researches and makes a comprehensive strategy framework, we
call it Digital Media Planning.

Be it in driving sales or conversions, launching a new brand or promoting an established

brand, or changing customer behaviour, the media agency plans different platforms and formats
to reach the desired audience. It studies reach and frequency of different web-based and mobile
applications.

The agency works with different partners and buys relevant space and ideas. This is
called Media Buying.

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 Advantages of Online Marketing

Advertisement on the internet is cheaper than (Low cost) the print advertisement. It is
a two way communication between sales person and the potential customer which takes
people to the company website. It has a much wider reach.

It helps in spreading the business worldwide, with no geographical barriers, making it

accessible from one country to another via Internet.

It is a 24X7 (365 days) open store where people are welcome to shop anytime from
anywhere. This further directs the potential customer towards the company website.

Internet makes the product reach much more easy; while researching or getting accurate
information on a product. It also adds value by adding a point of reference and a touch
of individualized customer service.

It also helps in creating credibility and gain trust and confidence of the customers. Many
people use internet for the pre-purchase research so that they can find themselves a
particular product which meets up to their requirements.

It also helps in updating the subscribers through a fast mode of e-mails. Visitors get up-
to-date information on each visit.

In case of information sensitive business such as a law firm, newspaper or online

magazine, or a newsletter, you can deliver the products directly to the customers online.
Increased ability to measure and collect data.

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Disadvantages of Online Marketing

Easier to have outdated information on internet, update timing is a critical issue here.

Many web visitors expect something for free. Do you have something to offer free?

There is a lot of competition in the market and by the time visitor reaches the product
they have already gone through many links and got the required product. Unless they
find what they are looking for quickly.

There are many pros and cons of internet marketing. Its important to consider each
when creating internet marketing strategy.

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Your business and digital marketing
Whether or not your business is suited to digital marketing depends very much on the
nature of that business, where it is now, and where you want it to go in the future. If, for
example, youre a dairy farmer in rural Ireland, have a xed contract to supply milk to the local
cooperative, and have little, if any, scope or ambition to diversify and grow your business year
on year, then digital marketing probably isnt for you. Likewise, if youre a local butcher with
an established client base in a thriving market town in the English Peak District, and simply
want to maintain the status quo, then again youll probably do just ne without digital
marketing. If however youre a Peak District butcher looking to diversify your product offering,
broaden the scope of your business and start selling your quality organic produce to restaurants
and hotels around the country, well, then, welcome to the world of digital marketing.

In truth there are very few businesses today that cant benet from at least some degree
of digital marketing even if its just providing a basic online brochure telling people what
you do, and sending out the occasional update to existing customers via an e-mail newsletter
or RSS (Really Simple Syndication a way to retrieve updated posts or articles from a website
automatically) feed. Whether you are running a home-based lifestyle business selling hand
embroidered cushion covers, are a small-scale artisan food producer or up and-coming
restaurateur, or managing a large multinational corporation, a growing proportion of your
customer base is already online, with more joining them every day. Obviously, the more your
target market comes to rely on these online channels for its information, research and
purchasing needs, the more critical digital marketing will become to the ongoing success of
your business.

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 Dening your digital marketing strategy
Once youve decided that you do, in fact, need to pursue some form of digital
marketing, the next step is actually to sit down and dene your strategy. Unfortunately there is
no one size ts all strategic panacea here. We dont have a magic recipe to ensure your digital
marketing success, and neither does anybody else (despite some of the online hyperbole you
may read on the subject). Basically every business needs to bake its own unique strategy
based on its own particular set of circumstances. While the available ingredients are the same
(and well cover the major ones later in the book), the resulting strategies can be radically
different. Its common sense really. If you sell apples to local grocers by the truckload, your
strategy will bear little resemblance to that of a company selling downloadable e-books and
reports on nancial trading, which will in turn be very different to the strategy adopted by a
sports clothing manufacturer who wants to cut out the retailer and sell directly to consumers
over the web.

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 digital consumer
There is a notion that pervades marketing circles today, a notion of mysterious ethereal
creatures who exist in a hyper-connected, multifaceted cyber-world of their own. They are an
enigma: they speak a different language, communicate in ways we dont understand, and
theyre turning the world of marketing on its head. These are the ephemeral, wraithlike digital
consumers, who slip effortlessly through the marketers grasp. Digital consumers are different;
were told but are they really?

vital component of digital marketing

The beauty of e-mail marketing is that it lets you deliver your message directly to an
individual who actually wants to hear from you. Compare this to your website, which is
necessarily more generic (to appeal to a broader audience) and needs to work harder to attract
and retain a visitors attention. While e-mail marketing is just one of the many ways of
connecting and maintaining a relationship with your customers, and is perhaps getting a bit
long in the tooth compared to the young and dynamic social media channels that are emerging,
it nevertheless remains a stalwart of internet marketing and when executed properly can be
incredibly effective.

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 Going digital the evolution of marketing
We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future.

The press, the machine, the railway, the telegraph are premises whose thousand-year
conclusion no one has yet dared to draw.

Whoever, or whatever, wins the battle for peoples minds will rule, because mighty,
rigid apparatuses will not be a match, in any reasonable timespan, for the minds mobilized
around the power of exible, alternative networks.

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 The technology behind digital marketing
As weve already mentioned, developments in technology and the evolution of
marketing are inextricably intertwined. Technology has underpinned major milestones in the
history of marketing since its inception. The process tends to go something like this:

New technology emerges and is initially the preserve of technologists and early
adopters. The technology gains a rmer foothold in the market and starts to become more
popular, putting it on the marketing radar. Innovative marketers jump in to explore ways
they can harness the power of this emerging technology to connect with their target audience.
The technology migrates to the mainstream and is adopted into standard marketing practice.

The printing press, radio, television and now the internet are all examples of major
breakthroughs in technology that ultimately altered the relationships between marketers and
consumers for ever, and did so on a global scale. But, of course, marketing isnt about
technology; its about people: technology is only interesting, from a marketing perspective,
when it connects people with other people more effectively. There are plenty of examples of
technology through the ages having a signicant impact on various markets technology that
may seem obscure, even irrelevant today. Remember Mazak, the company that brought
elevator music to the masses back in the 1930s? The technology for piping audio over power
lines was patented in 1922 by retired Major General George O Squire, and exclusive rights to
the patent were bought by North American Company. In 1934, under the corporate umbrella
of Muzak, they started piping music into Cleveland homes. Muzak seemed to have hit on a
winning formula, but the advent of free commercial radio sounded the death knell for the
companys chosen route to market. With free music available on their shiny new wirelesses,
households were no longer prepared to pay for the Muzak service. Undeterred the company
focused its efforts on New York City businesses. As buildings in New York soared skywards,
the lift or elevator became practically ubiquitous. Muzak had found its niche, and elevator
music was born. So what, you might think. Its true that, compared to behemoths of
contemporary media like radio, television and now the internet, elevator music is small
potatoes. But back in its heyday this was cutting-edge stuff, and it reached a lot of people.
Muzak had the power to sway opinions and inuence markets, so much so that, for music artists
of that era, having your track played on the Muzak network practically guaranteed a hit. The

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point is that technology has the ability to open up completely new markets and to radically
shake up existing ones. The mainstream adoption of digital technology the internet, the
software applications that run on it, and the devices that allow people to connect both to the
network and to each other whenever, wherever and however they want to promises to dwarf
all that has come before it. It heralds the single most disruptive development in the history of
marketing. Whether that disruption represents an opportunity or a threat to you as a marketer
depends largely on your perspective. We hope the fact that youre reading this book means that
you see it as an opportunity.

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Myntra
Myntra is an Indian fashion e-commerce marketplace company headquartered
in Bengaluru, Karnataka, India. The company was founded in 2007 by Indian Institute of
Technology graduates with a focus on personalisation of gift items. By 2010, Myntra shifted
its focus to the online retailing of branded apparel.

In May 2014, Myntra.com merged with Flipkart to compete against Amazon which entered the
Indian market in June 2013 and other established offline retailers like Future Group, Aditya
Birla Group and Reliance Retail.

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History

Established by Mukesh Bansal along with Ashutosh Lawania and Vineet Saxena, Myntra was
in the business of on-demand personalisation of gift items. It mainly operated on the B2B
(business-to-business) model during its initial years. Between 2007 and 2010, the online portal
allowed customers to personalize products such as T-shirts, mugs, mouse pads, calendars,
watches, teddy bears, pendants, wine glasses and jigsaw puzzles.

In 2011, Myntra expanded its catalogue to include fashion and lifestyle products and moved
away from personalisation. Myntra tied up with various popular brands to retail a wide range
of latest merchandise from these brands. Myntra offered products from 350 Indian and
International brands by 2012. Myntra also had casual wear for men and women from brands.
The website saw the launch of Fastrack watches and of Being Human, the brand.

2014 saw the merging of Myntra with another Indian e-commerce giant Flipkart.com in an
estimated deal of 2,000 crore (US$300 million), though nothing in terms of value was
officially disclosed by any of the company. Merger was majorly influenced by two large
common shareholders, Tiger Global and Accel Partners. Myntra still continues to function and
operate independently to increase its market share from 50 to 70 per cent of the market share. In
2014, Myntra's portfolio included about 1,50,000 products of over 1000 brands ranging from
international brands to designer brands and distribution area of around 9000 pincodes in India.

In May 2015, Myntra moved on to app-only business model wherein customers can only buy
and transact in their site through smartphones. The move came after the site claimed that 95
percent of Internet traffic on their site came mobile and 70 percent sales were generated through
smartphones. The move to app-only generated mixed reviews and saw 10% dip in sales initially

However, in February 2016, the company retracted its app-only model in an attempt to win
back lost customers. The company cited that the app-only strategy had backfired and Myntra
would relaunch its website.

Myntra was voted as the "Indias Most Admired & Valuable Power Brand Award 2016" at 7th
Annual India Leadership Conclave & Indian Affairs Business Leadership Awards 2016 under
the chairmanship of the founder Satya Brahma on Friday 1 July 2016 in Mumbai.

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Acquisitions and investments

In October 2007, Myntra received its initial funding from Erasmic Venture Fund now known
as Accel Partners, Sasha Mirchandani from Mumbai Angels and a few other investors. In
November 2008, Myntra raised almost $5 million from NEA-IndoUS Ventures, IDG Ventures
and Accel Partners. Myntra raised $14 million in a Series B round of funding. This round of
investment was led by Tiger Global, a private equity firm; the existing investors IDG Ventures
and Indo-US Venture Partners also put in substantial amount towards funding Myntra. Towards
the end of 2011, Myntra.com raised $20 million in its third round of funding, again led by Tiger
Global. In February 2014, Myntra raised additional $50 Million (Rs.310 crore) funding from
Premji Invest and few other Private Investors.

In April 2015, Myntra acquired Bengaluru-based mobile app development platform company
Native5, with a view to strengthen and expand Myntras mobile technology team.

In July 2016, Myntra acquired mobile-based content aggregation platform Cubeit, to strengthen
and expand its technology team.

In July, 2016 Myntra acquired their rival Jabong to become Indias largest fashion platform.

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