UNIT 1 – DIGITAL MARKETING

SYLLABUS
I. Meaning and importance of Digital Marketing
II. Digital Marketing platforms
III. Changing trends in Digital Marketing era
A TIMELINE OF THE EVOLUTION OF DIGITAL MARKETING
➢ 1981- IBM introduces the world with its first personal computer.
➢ 1989- Computer memory reaches 100 MB.
➢ 1995- Internet user-base reaches 16 million.
➢ 1996- Americans use the internet for 30 mins on average.
➢ 2002- Internet users worldwide increase to 558 million.
➢ 2004- Google becomes public, Facebook, Yelp, Gmail launches. People start comparing prices
online for the first time.
➢ 2005- YouTube Launches
➢ 2006- Twitter Launches
➢ 2007- The first iPhone is released. Smartphones give customers the power and tool to make
any decision anywhere. This is the game-changing moment when the digital marketing boom
began.
➢ 2010- Within this time companies and people have made software for mobile, analytics,
search, and social.
➢ After 2010- People have moved on from technology being a novelty to technology being a
necessity.

DEFINITIONS
According to Philip Kotler "Digital marketing is 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".

According to Chartered Institute of Marketing, "Digital Marketing is the management process

responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably".

According to Chaffey, "Digital Marketing is the application of the Internet and related digital
technologies in conjunction with traditional communications to achieve marketing objectives"

IMPORTANCE / OBJECTIVES OF DIGITAL MARKETING

Various Objectives of Digital Marketing are as follows:

1: INCREASE REVENUE: The primary goal of any marketing strategy is ultimately to increase revenue,
and Internet marketing is no exception. Internet provides plenty of opportunities for every business
to improve their bottom line. By combining search engine optimization, or SEO, with pay-per-click
ads, or PPC, your company can improve the chances that potential customers find you online. And
with strategies like content marketing and social media marketing, you can position yourself as an
expert in your field who also cares about your clients.

2: BUILD A BRAND: Internet marketing objectives often include building a brand. This means not only
establishing your logo and company name in the minds of consumers, but also what your company
stands for. Well-known brands are typically trusted more by customers, especially when paired with
positive associations. The Internet is a great tool for building that trust, because it has a wide reach
and allows you to directly connect with individuals. Social media is particularly useful when building
a brand, because it allows companies to create and post with a more personal feel. Organizations have
discovered that this kind of brand-building can be fostered by the use of social media channels such
as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest. In addition to organic posts on these sites, companies
can build brand recognition by paying for advertisements and placements. organizational leaders,
because trust and loyalty are developed over many months, and sometimes years. The key is to stay
focused on the results.

3: INCREASES LOCAL CUSTOMERS: Many small businesses, as well as companies focused on increasing
sales patience on the part of the in specific geographic region, focus much of their marketing efforts
on improving their local market. This means optimizing various elements on their sites in order to
attract local customers who are looking for the services they provide.If a user is already looking for
businesses where you are, chances are high that they'll be willing to come to your physical location.

4. INCREASE QUALIFIED TRAFFIC: Every business owner wants to see numbers rise in terms of visitors
to their site and landing pages. However, those numbers are meaningless if they aren't the right kinds
of traffic. Not every visitor to your site is going to make a purchase. That's just the way of the Internet,
and should be accepted. However, if none of your site visitors make purchases (or contact you), you
are likely attracting "unqualified" traffic, or visitors who have no intent of becoming a customer. By
targeting your marketing to specific personas and aiming to attract specific, qualified people, you
can increase the ROI of your marketing efforts as well as your bottom line.

5: MANAGE ONLINE REPUTATION: In an age when anyone with a computer or smartphone can post
their opinions about companies, products, and services for the whole world to see, it's important for
businesses to maintain a solid online reputation. This means monitoring your company's name,
maintaining social profiles, and responding to bad reviews accordingly. One bad review doesn't
mean that your company's reputation is shot, but one bad reaction to a bad review might. The way
you publicly respond to customer complaints will show them (and all other current and potential
customers) how much you care about their opinions. But as intimidating as that may sound, all it takes
is a bit of respect and concern for your customer base. For some companies who've already made
errors in this department, their objective is simply to remove any negative associations with their
company and show customers that they've seen the errors of their ways.

6: BECOME AN INFLUENCER IN YOUR FIELD: Every industry has a few well-known individuals or
companies that others look to as thought leaders. They stay at the forefront of new technologies and
ideas and are often the first to share new information. The people who become experts and
influencers are those who strategically position themselves to give out great advice and information,
often without much obvious monetary gain.

For instance, an influential company might write and share blog posts and articles on a regular basis.
Their CEO and other top employees might keep their LinkedIn and other social profiles up to date and
share them as well.

DIGITAL MARKETING: PLATFORMS

A digital marketing platform is a solution that supports a variety of functions within the realm of
marketing over the internet. 8 common platforms for digital marketing include social media,
influencer marketing, content marketing, email, search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC),
affiliate, and mobile.
1. SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING
Social media is also a great way to promote products or resources organically to your followers and
engage with consumers. Interacting with them on social media or answering customer service-
oriented questions is a great way to ensure continued engagement with the brand and cultivate
positive experiences and customer loyalty. Todays' consumers are highly reliant on social media
platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Snapchat. This is why it is essential that
brands are active across accounts.

Social media platforms allow marketers to reach their prospects in a easier way. First, marketing teams
can use these channels to distribute paid ads and sponsored content. Each platform has a way for
marketing teams to create paid ad campaigns and segment users so these: ads appear on the feeds of
target audience members. While each platform is different, most have capabilities that allow
marketing teams to place ads based on location, job title, interests, age, etc.

2. INFLUENCER MARKETING
Another effective way to harness digital channels to reach target audiences is with influencer
marketing. Brands can partner with celebrities, sites or others that are considered experts in their
field, that share similar values. Brand can then reach these influencers' followers with branded
content and offers.

Here is an example of influencer marketing: GoPro partnered up with this Colorado-based influencer,
Loki, whose followers include many outdoor enthusiasts. This put their product in front of their target
audience, with a recommendation from a like-minded, trustworthy source.

3. EMAIL MARKETING
Email marketing campaigns allow organizations to stay connected with prospects and customers,
sending them customized newsletters or offers based on past shopping history or brand
engagements. Email is important for all marketers and play a vital role in certain industries like
healthcare and pharma. Tools like MailChimp and Constant Contact allow you to manage your email
campaign and its connection to your marketing platform. They allow you to automate mundane email
marketing tasks and also view email analytics for your email marketing campaigns.

4. CONTENT MARKETING
Content marketing allows marketing teams to be proactive in answering their users' questions.
Marketing teams create content, videos, and other assets to answer questions or provide context to
consumers throughout the three stages of the buyer's journey:

a) The awareness stage: Buyer realizes they have a need

b) The consideration stage: Buyer determines a course of action to meet this need

c) The decision stage: Buyer decides on a product/service to purchase to meet the need/Want. An
active and consistent content strategy that incorporates elements of interactive content creation,
social posting, and guest blogging can improve brand awareness and loyalty by 88%.

5. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION (SEO) MARKETING

Digital marketing agencies need a strong foundation in Search Engine Optimization to help their
clients' websites rank highly on search engine results pages. Search engine optimization offer goes
hand in hand with content marketing SEO crawling tools help you research competitors' SEO
presence, discover SEO issues with your clients' websites, build a reputable backlink profile, and so
much more. Google, Bing, yahoo have platforms that allow websites to communicate with each search
engine's web crawlers. For example, Bing is particularly important for b2b marketer because its users
tend to be older and wealthier than users of the other tools. These tools allow to submit sitemaps,
test site speed, see organic search term traffic, and more.

6. SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING (SEM) / PAY PER CLICK (PPC)

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) involves the purchase of ad space in prominent, visible positions atop
search results pages and websites. SEM is also known as Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. The Pay-per-
click is a form of paid advertising that allows marketing teams essentially purchase traffic to their
website. Search ads have been shown to have a positive impact on brand recognition, awareness and
conversions. Marketers place ads on websites or search engines such as Google and Microsoft Bing
and pay a fee each time the ad is clicked on. These often appear at the top of the search results page,
and are typically determined by bids on specific keywords, while banner ads on websites usually have
set prices. 33% of searchers who click on paid ads do so because they directly respond to their
particular search query.

7. AFFILIATE MARKETING
Affiliate marketing is similar to referral programs, it involves working with outside individuals or
companies under the agreement that they promote your product in exchange for a commission from
each sale that can be attributed to their efforts. This is a way to cut down on costs and outsource
some of the heavy lifting of promotion. An example of affiliate marketing would be when an ad
running on a podcast or radio show offers a discount code for listeners to use when purchasing the
product. For example, the customer may receive 30% off their purchase and in return, the show gets
a small percentage of each purchase that is made using the code.

8. MOBILE MARKETING
Mobile marketing initiatives can include many of the digital marketing strategies mentioned above,
and typically influences a combination of text messages, social media, email, push notifications and
mobile applications. The importance of mobile marketing is rising, as it is expected that by 2024, the
number of mobile shoppers will rise to approximately 187.5 million users. With the clear move to
mobile, marketers need to think about how they can optimize their current marketing efforts for
mobile to be able to deliver a seamless and user-friendly experience.

CHANGING TRENDS IN DIGITAL MARKETING ERA

1.WORLD CLASS CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
Every year is the year of the customer. We're seeing a massive shift in beliefs about what marketing
actually is. It's no longer about trying to convince people to buy from or work with your company.
Instead, the priority has moved towards providing fantastic customer experiences that by will keep
people coming back for more. In a sense, when you focus on building a positive business is culture
and providing great service, the marketing almost takes care of itself.

Customers expect a seamless experience from the first spark of interest to customer service after
the sale. From personalized messaging that helps them solve problems to make a buying decision to
a customer-focused culture throughout their customer journey, a experience that delivers quality
across all channels is more likely to earn their business.
In addition to personalized marketing messages, find ways to listen and respond to their questions
Coordinate your digital marketing team with your sales and customer service teams to deliver quality
throughout their experience.

Building the kinds of relationships with customers that drive loyalty is worth every penny you spend.
5 % boost in customer retention increases profit by 25 %.

2.EMPLOYEE ACTIVATION: A GIANT LEAP BEYOND ENGAGEMENT

46 % of consumers will abandon a brand if its employees are not knowledgeable, and bad employee
attitude is the number one factor that stops individuals from doing business with a company.

Your employees are the human face of your brand, so concentrating on interactions between your
employees and your customers should be a key part of your marketing strategy. When you're turning
the responsibility of creating a great customer service over to your employees, you need to make sure
that they want your business to succeed as much as you do.

When you activate your employees, though, it's marketing magic, Activation includes a wealth of tools
to empower your employees to become walking billboards for your company, including:

a) Training that not only makes them more informed about your products, but also allows them to
climb up the corporate ladder imagine - you got to love a company that trains you to qualify for a
better job

b) Permission to post content on social media and elsewhere about your company's culture,
products, and services Involvement in creating blog posts, videos, white papers, and other "official"
marketing. content, creating a platform on which they can showcase their expertise The key to this
is building a solid foundation of employee engagement and taking steps to ensure every employee
understands and is aligned with your brand mission and values.

3. VISUALIZATION
Research has shown that people prefer visual content to plain text. You just have to look at the growth
of image-focused platforms Pinterest and Instagram to see the proof of this. Google, Pinterest, and
several other companies are also investing in visual search technology

Images are already returned for 19% of searches on Google, and 62% of millennials say they are
more interest in visual search than any other new technology. Visuals are also easier to remember
than written content. Adding data visualizations, infographics, images, and videos to your text not
only makes it more interesting and attractive, but it can help your message to be absorbed better too.

4.PERSONALIZATION
For years. psychologists have taught us that people love to hear their name and see it in print. But
today's technology allows digital marketing teams to dig deep into the data to identify the things
that keep customers up at night- and identify what messages will solve those problems and give them
a good night's sleep.

5.STRATEGIC MARKETING TRANSFORMATION

2021, they'll have to think beyond what they're doing and link everything back to the why of the
business as a whole. Your marketing goals and objectives must align with the overall goals of your
business.
Strategic marketing transformation is the term used to describe the process when a business
operating without a strategic marketing plan evolves by changing its fundamental business processes
and procedures. Undergoing a marketing transformation can help companies to improve customer
service and experience, boost brand awareness and reputation, and ultimately increase revenue
and profits.

Businesses achieve these benefits through a combination of data collection, using modern
technology, building customer relationships, and engaging with customers online, publishing quality
content, and improving their online presence. All these things are part of the underlying strategy that
influences every department and employee in the company, not just the marketers.

6.VOICE SEARCH
Voice search shows no sign of slowing down and will continue to be a major influence on how brands
create content and market themselves online.

The commonly cited prediction that 50% of searches will be driven by voice in 2021 (we're currently
sitting at about 20% according to Google).The smart speaker business is booming, with around a
quarter US household now owning a Google Home, Amazon Echo, or another smart speaker.

Consumers are also expecting to use voice search more in the near future - 61% of those aged 25-64
who already use a voice device intend to use it more in the future according to research by PwC.

7.AL-BASED AUTOMATION
Al is one of the major technologies behind voice search and smart assistants. It's also made catboats
possible, which are now popping up on more websites than ever before.

Al technology and automation are helping to take some of the grunt work out of marketing so
brands can concentrate on strategy and crafting a fantastic customer experience.

Remember, the human aspect of marketing is still important (perhaps more important than ever
before), so the idea is to use this technology to enhance your marketing efforts, not replace the real
people behind them.

Big data, supported by Al and predictive analytics, is also helping brands to learn more about their
audience and customers. It's enabling hyper-personalization of customer experiences and marketing
messages at scale.

8.LIVE VIDEO
The live video industry is expected to be worth over $70 billion by 2021. Live video is incredibly popular
with consumers, and people spend three times longer watching live video than they do watching pre-
recorded video.

Video is also the most popular way for consumers to learn about new products.

When the live element is added, this makes video more engaging as the audience feels they're a part
of it and can influence the content, rather than just passively watching. Live video is great for grabbing
the attention of your social audience on Facebook or Instagram. These types of videos are so
attractive to viewers because they tap into "FOMO" or fear of missing out. When you're not sure if
a live video is going to contain a tidbit of information that you can't get anywhere else, or it will mean
you're the first to find out about some new and exciting news, you're going to want to watch it.
9.GEN Z WILL INFLUENCE MARKETING MORE THAN MILLENNIALS
The marketing industry has been obsessed with Millennials for the past two decades. In fact, a Google
search currently yields around 129 million results for the search term "millennials" compared to only
around 7.2 million for the previous "generation x". The first millennials are now approaching their
40th birthday. While this age group still makes up a significant proportion of the audience of many
marketers, some predictions made about their importance have fallen short of the mark.

For example, the oft-quoted statistic that Millennials will make up 75% of the workforce by 2025 is
now not only unlikely but rather impossible. It's 2020 and Millennials have already peaked as a
percentage of the adult population, making up just over 40% of the global population. By 2030 this
percentage is expected to drop to just under 37% as Generation Z starts to come of age.

Generation Z consists of people who were born from 1995 to 2010. These young people have grown
up in a digital world and have very different viewpoints than generations that came before them.
They're also more diverse than any other generation in history.

A more diverse audience can make content marketing challenging, but it also opens up more
opportunities to reach different segments of that audience through personalization.