01.

Fundamentals of Digital Marketing

Digital marketing is the marketing of products or services using digital technologies on the Internet, including
through mobile phones Apps, using display advertising, and any other digital mediums including digital TV.
Digital marketing channels are systems based on the internet that can create, accelerate, and transmit product value
from producer to the terminal consumer by digital networks. Digital marketing is also referred to as 'online
marketing', 'internet marketing' or 'web marketing'. Worldwide digital marketing has become the most common
term, especially after the year 2013.Customers today are able to search for products, place and activities by image,
voice, and gesture; automatically participate in others’ transactions; and find new opportunities via devices that
augment their reality.

Kotler & Armstrong (2009) define digital marketing as “a form of direct marketing which links consumers with
sellers electronically using interactive technologies like emails, websites, online forums and newsgroups,
interactive television, mobile communications, etc.”

The Institute of Direct and Digital Marketing (IDM) defines digital marketing as “Applying digital technologies
which form online channels to market (web, email, databases plus mobile/ wireless and digital TV) to contribute to
marketing activities aimed at achieving profitable acquisition and retention of customers (with a multi-channel
buying process and customer lifestyles) through developing a planned approach to improve customer knowledge
(of their profiles, behavior, value and loyalty drivers), then delivering integrated targeted communication and
online services that match their individual needs”. Thus, digital marketing should be understood as data-driven
online marketing, the key operating words being online and data-driven.

Digital marketing is a form of direct marketing which links consumers with sellers electronically using interactive
technologies like e-mails, websites, online forums and newsgroups, interactive television, mobile communication.
It is an inbound marketing strategy that focuses on attracting customers by company-created internet content.
Inbound marketing is promotion through blogs, podcasts, videos, eBooks, newsletters, white papers, SEO, social
media marketing, and other forms of content marketing which serve to attract customers. In contrast any kind of
marketing where a company initiates the conversation and sends its message out to an audience through hard
promotional materials, telemarketing and traditional advertising is considered as outbound marketing.

Given that online shopping is pervasive, the term Customer 2.0 came into being sometime in 2009 to signify the
digital consumer. These are the Tech Savvy consumer base who consume a lot of digital content and are more
likely to make brand choices based on that. Customer 1.0 are the ones who are inclined to make brand choices
based on traditional advertising.

The marketing mix, proposed by McCarthy in 1960, refers to four broad levels of marketing decisions, namely:
Product, Price, Physical Distribution (Place) & Promotion. In the 1990s, a model of 4Cs was proposed by
Lauterborn as a more customer-driven equivalent of the 4Ps. The 4 Cs were Consumer, Cost, Convenience and
Communication. As digital platforms are increasingly incorporated into marketing plans and everyday life, and as
people use digital devises more and more, to accompany the 4Cs of classical marketing Aditya Soni of Flipkart
proposed the four C-s of digital marketing as Content, Cost, Channel and Creativity.Since the digital consumer is
wired, want it all and want it now in digital marketing, it makes sense to add a fifth ‘P’ –Participationtranslating
to a fifth ‘C’ – Collaboration.These can be considered as the key drivers of digital marketing.

Fundamentals of Digital marketing are very different from traditional marketing. What works in media like tv,
radio, and print won’t always work online and vice versa. To be effective at digital marketing, you need to
leverage the technologies that fuel online media like websites, clickable ads, and social media profiles.

These include:
 Search engines
 Content management systems like WordPress, Joomla!, and Magento
 Online ad platforms like Google AdWords and Facebook Ads
 Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn
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SEO
The first thing you need to consider when doing digital marketing is search engine optimization or SEO. Search
engine optimization is done to increase the visibility of your website on the search engine result pages. You will have to
follow all the search engine guidelines to do this. Essentially, all the content you publish online should be optimized so that
search engines will index your content and serve it to the most people possible. The key to SEO is researching effective
keywords for the type of people you’re trying to attract and then developing content focused on those keywords.

Content Marketing
Once you develop great SEO-friendly content, it’s time to market it online. Content marketing refers to a strategic
approach to targeting specific audiences of people online with consistent, relevant, and engaging content. There are lots of
different kinds of media available online you can use to market your organization, from blogs to e-mail newsletters to
website landing pages. The goal is to be strategic and to target a specific group of people you’re trying to attract.

Content Strategy
Content strategy refers to your overall plan for developing, curating, and publishing content. It’s different from
content marketing in that it involves planning for all the content in your organization, not just the marketing content. You
may have content from your organization such as customer testimonials, product descriptions, and even strategic plans about
business growth that are sitting somewhere, collecting dust. Developing an effective content strategy means managing all of
your content so that when you do your marketing, you have the most assets available. For any website to perform better, you
need to have the relevant content on the website.E.g: If you have the technology site, you should not write blogs related
to the lifestyle.It should be restricted to technology topics only.
Paid Online Advertising
There’s a paid side to digital marketing that you should be aware of. Platforms like Google AdWords & Facebook
Ads allow you to reach large groups of people very quickly for very competitive rates, especially when compared
to traditional advertising. It’s important to assess whether a paid strategy might benefit your overall marketing
goals.
Analytics
One should learn how to use analytics results for future use. Analytics helps to find out the performance of the website.

Social Media
Social media is fast becoming the best venue for fueling online “word-of-mouth” awareness about your brand. As
the name says, marketing that is done through various social media platforms is called social media marketing. Millions of
people use social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn every day to discuss their favorite products, services,
causes, and preferred local vendors. If you want to build brand awareness, social media can be a great venue for
cultivating, monitoring, and participating in conversations among the types of people you’re trying to reach.
History of Digital Marketing
Digital marketing's development has changed the way brands and businesses use 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.
The beginnings of digital marketing technology can be traced back to the 1980s, when computers became sophisticated
enough to store huge volumes of customer information. This shift in technology corresponded with a shift in mindset from
pushing product to “relationship marketing,” which prioritized customer connections.

The term digital marketing was first used in the 1990s, but digital marketing has roots in the mid-1980s, when the SoftAd
Group, now ChannelNet, developed advertising campaigns for automobile companies: People sent in reader reply cards
found in magazines and received in return floppy disks that contained multimedia content promoting various cars and free
test drives
The development of digital marketing is inseparable from technology development. More recognizable period as being the
start of Digital Marketing is 1990 as this was where the Archie search engine was created as an index for FTP sites. In the
1980s, the storage capacity of computer was already big enough to store huge volumes of customer information. Marketers
abandoned their limited offline techniques like list brokering in favor of database marketing. Pioneered by Robert and Kate
Kestnbaum, database marketers kept an electronic database of customers, prospects, and all commercial contacts. This kind
of databases allowed companies to track customers' information more effectively, thus transforming the relationship between
buyer & seller.
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By 1986, ACT, a contact and customer management company, introduced the first database marketing software to the
business world. It was essentially a digital rolodex, only it could store large volumes of customer contact information.
Together with Robert Shaw, the father of marketing automation, Kate Kestenbaum went on to develop several landmark
database marketing solutions for BT and Barclays. Shaw incorporated new features into these database marketing models,
including telephone and field sales channel automation, contact strategy optimization, campaign management, marketing
resource management, and marketing analytics.
The digital databases of the 1980s transformed buyer-seller relationships, allowing brands to track their consumers like never
before. But the process was still a manual one. With the debut of server/client architecture and the popularity of personal
computers and the advent of server/client architecture at the turn of the decade paved the way for an explosive growth in
revolutionary marketing technology in the 1990s: Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software. Customer
Relationship Management (CRM) applications became a significant part of marketing technology. Fierce competition forced
vendors to include more service into their software, for example, marketing, sales and service applications. Marketers were
also able to own huge online customer data by eCRM software after the Internet was born. Companies could update the data
of customer needs and obtain the priorities of their experience. This led to the first clickable banner ad being going live in
1994, which was the "You Will" campaign by AT&T and over the first four months of it going live, 44% of all people who
saw it clicked on the ad. "You Will" was an AT&T marketing campaign that launched in 1993, consisting of commercials
that presented a futuristic scenario beginning with "Have you ever…" and ending with "…you will. And the company that
will bring it to you: AT&T."
In the 2000s, with more and more Internet users and the birth of iPhone, customers started searching products and making
decisions about their needs online first, instead of consulting a salesperson, which created a new problem for the marketing
department of a company. These problems made marketers find the digital ways for market development.
In 2007, the concept of marketing automation helped companies segment customers, launch multichannel marketing
campaigns and provide personalized information for customers. However, the speed of its adaptability to consumer devices
was not fast enough.
Digital marketing became more sophisticated in the 2000s and the 2010s, when the proliferation of devices' capable of
accessing digital media led to sudden growth. Statistics produced in 2012 and 2013 showed that digital marketing was still
growing. With the development of social media in the 2000s, such as LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, consumers
became highly dependent on digital electronics in daily lives. Therefore, they expected aseamless user experience across
different channels for searching product's information. The change of customer behavior improved the diversification of
marketing technology.

Types of Digital Marketing

There are two types of digital marketing and one of these is pull digital marketing. It aims to encourage
consumers to come to you by visiting your business or making a call to action. Some of the common examples of
pull digital marketing are websites and other internet-based mediums. Pull marketing is often called inbound
marketing. Another type of digital marketing is push digital marketing. It pushes the marketing information
directly to your customers. Common examples include SMS, email and RSS that target the customer with a
customized message. Push marketing can also be called outbound marketing.

Digital Marketing is making use of various types of digital technologies to promote a business. There are many
types of digital marketing. It is important to understand what will and will not work in regards to your digital
marketing efforts. These days you can waste a lot of time and money focusing your resources on failing marketing
campaigns.

Digital marketing is basically applying all marketing techniques to digital channels. Different sources can be used
to promote services and products like SMS, search engines, email, websites, social media and mobile devices. The
digital nature of this marketing method makes it a cost-effective means of promoting one’s business. Digital
marketing methods such as search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), content marketing,
influencer marketing, content automation, campaign marketing, data-driven marketing, e-commerce marketing,
social media marketing, social media optimization, e-mail direct marketing, Display advertising, e–books, and
optical disks and games have become commonplace. Digital marketing extends to non-Internet channels that
provide digital media, such as television, mobile phones (SMS and MMS), callback, and on-hold mobile ring
tones. The extension to non-Internet channels differentiates digital marketing from online marketing, another
catch-all term for the marketing methods mentioned above which occur online.
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Top-rated digital marketing techniques in 2017

 Content Marketing 20.3%

 Big Data 20.2%
 Marketing Automation 10.3%
 Mobile Marketing 9.2%
 Social Media Marketing 8.8%
 Conversation Optimization (CRO) 5.9%
 Internet of Things (IoT) 5.4%
 Search Engine Optimization (SEO) 4.1%
 Wearables 3.4%
 Paid search marketing 3.3%
 Online PR 2.7%
 Communities 2.6%
 Display 1.6%
 Partnerships 1.5%
 Others 0.9%

Traditional Marketing vs Digital Marketing

According to Ad Age, digital advertising is set to overtake TV advertising in the next couple years, and will
represent 36% of all ad spending by 2019. This is probably why 60% of marketers currently report that they are
restructuring the way they do advertising to take advantage of new technologies.
But is digital really the best way to reach consumers? Consider the following facts:
 81% of shoppers conduct research online before making a purchase
 58% of adults are on Facebook
 23% use LinkedIn
 19% use Twitter
 52% use more than one social media platform

As statisticss like these demonstrate, there are literally hundreds of millions of people online every day.
day These
consumers are making use of channels that can be easily leveraged for marketing, and at a much more affordable
rate than traditional marketing.

Area Traditional Marketing Digital Marketing

Segmentation & Targeting Macro & mass Micro & specific
Communication Structured & clear Unstructured: continuous updates
Direction One way Multi directional – Many to many
Personalization Low High – can be customized
Imagery Constrained by platform Rich media tools
Privacy Confidentiality can be maintained Open & public
Period Long term Short term & dynamic
Agility Longer fulfilment time Short, instant
Conversion Lag Short
Cost Entry barrier Small – Lends to scaling up
Cost of Failure High Low

It is often assumed that merely engaging on social media is digital marketing. This is erroneous as there are many
more components that make up a digital marketing campaign, Digital advertising fundamentally offers the
promise of one-to-one one to-many advertising. This means,
one advertising as opposed to the analogue model of one-to
theoretically, in digital media one can customize an ad to each individual viewer at an economic cost using digital
technologies. The main advantage of social media, however, is in capturing the network capability of social media
to spread advertising content principally using the sharing capability of social media and addressing the micro-
micro
communities that form the social media. Thus, at bes t, social media marketing is a means of digital marketing
best,
and not its essence.
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Three factors to consider when weighing traditional marketing vs digital marketing

Factor #1: Audience
The first question to be asked when we start any digital campaign is: who are you trying to reach? The next thing
we ask ourselves is: where are those people? The third thing is: how can we best interact with them?
With traditional marketing, you do have a simple, demographic understanding of your audience. You can ask a
venue like a newspaper for profiles on their subscribers. That’s where the data ends, however. Outside of asking
new customers how they heard about you, you have no way of tracking:
 Whether people actually see your ad
 If they do see your ad, how they engage with it
 What actions they take, if any, based on their encounter with your ad
With digital marketing, you can answer all these questions, and for every single campaign. Assuming that the
types of people you are trying to reach are on a specific online venue, current technologies allow you to target,
reach, and interact with your audience. As statistics demonstrate: almost everyone is online somewhere these days.

Factor #2: Targeting

Besides finding and interacting with your audience, digital marketing allows you to target specific audience
members in precise ways. Consider some of the following popular digital marketing venues:
 Google Ads
 Facebook Ads
 Small business and non-profit websites
 Blogs
 Regular posts on popular social media platforms
 Email newsletters

The main difference between these digital venues and more traditional ones such as radio, television, and print, is
that you can target specific people. Rather than putting up an ad and hoping that the section of your audience
you’re trying to reach sees it, with digital marketing you can put your message right in front of the people you’re
trying to reach.

Google Ads, for example, appear when users enter specific keywords into a search engine. If you know how to
properly set up these ads, you can be assured that the people who click on your ad are interested in the product,
service, or promotion you’re advertising. You can also measure where they go on your website after they click on
an ad or a listing in search engine results. Finally, all of these platforms allow you to segment your audience to
some degree by age, gender, buying habits, and even physical location.

Factor #3: Cost

Another factor to consider when weighing traditional vs digital marketing is the cost. Digital marketing is much
more cost-effective than traditional marketing.

Consider the following average costs for some common digital venues:
 Google Ads: $1-2 per click
 Facebook Ads: $1 per click
 Small business and non-profit websites: Once built, hosting costs as little as $10 per month
 Blogs: Free outside of time and effort
 Regular posts on popular social media platforms: Free outside of time and effort
 Email newsletters: Free outside of time and effort

It’s hard to beat this kind of pricing when it comes to any kind of advertising!
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Don’t Be Afraid to Try Digital, But Traditional Can Be Useful, Too

We certainly don’t mean to argue that traditional marketing has no place in our society anymore. Many clients are
still marketing in at least one traditional venue. Digital marketing is simply too powerful and cost-effective to
ignore, however. Rather than spending the majority of their marketing budget on traditional ads and using what’s
left over on a digital campaign, we typically advise our clients to do the opposite: to put their money in digital,
first, and then to use any remainder on one traditional venue.

The balance you strike between traditional and digital marketing is ultimately up to you, but please consider
factors like who you’re trying to reach, how you will target specific audience members, and the cost involved.
When doing so, you will probably find that there are several digital marketing options that could be of real benefit
to your organization.

Advantages of Digital Marketing

The main advantage of digital marketing is that a targeted audience can be reached in a cost-effective and
measurable way. Other digital marketing advantages include increasing brand loyalty and driving online sales.
The benefits of digital marketing include:
 Global reach - a website allows you to find new markets and trade globally for only a small investment.
 Lower cost - a properly planned and well-targeted digital marketing campaign can reach the right
customers at a much lower cost than traditional marketing methods.
 Trackable, measurable results - measuring your online marketing with web analytics and other online
metric tools makes it easier to establish how effective your campaign has been. You can obtain detailed
information about how customers use your website or respond to your advertising.
 Personalisation - if your customer database is linked to your website, then whenever someone visits the
site, you can greet them with targeted offers. The more they buy from you, the more you can refine your
customer profile and market effectively to them.
 Openness - by getting involved with social media and managing it carefully, you can build customer
loyalty and create a reputation for being easy to engage with.
 Social currency - digital marketing lets you create engaging campaigns using content marketing tactics.
This content (images, videos, articles) can gain social currency - being passed from user to user and
becoming viral.
 Improved conversion rates - if you have a website, then your customers are only a few clicks away from
making a purchase. Unlike other media which require people to get up and make a phone call, or go to a
shop, digital marketing can be seamless and immediate.

Together, all of these aspects of digital marketing have the potential to add up to more sales.

Disadvantages of Digital Marketing

Some of the downsides and challenges of digital marketing you should be aware of include:
 Skills and training – You will need to ensure that your staff have the right knowledge and expertise to
carry out digital marketing with success. Tools, platforms and trends change rapidly and it’s vital that you
keep up-to-date.
 Time consuming – tasks such as optimizing online advertising campaigns and creating marketing content
can take up a lot of time. It’s important to measure your results to ensure a return-on-investment.
 High competition – while you can reach a global audience with digital marketing, you are also up against
global competition. It can be a challenge to stand out against competitors and to grab attention among the
many messages aimed at consumers online.
 Complaints and feedback – any negative feedback or criticism of your brand can be visible to your
audience through social media and review websites. Carrying out effective customer service online can be
challenging. Negative comments or failure to respond effectively can damage your brand reputation.
 Security and privacy issues – there are a number of legal considerations around collecting and using
customer data for digital marketing purposes. Take care to comply with the rules regarding privacy and
data protection.