A STUDY ON DIGITAL MARKETING

Presented By:
Vinayagam.s,
Hindusthan College Of Engineering And Technology,
Coimbatore.

ABSTRACT:
Digital marketing is 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 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. This paper
mainly focuses on conceptual understanding of digital marketing, how digital
marketing helps today’s business and some cases in the form of examples.
KEYWORDS: media, key performance indicators, mail, search engines, consumers

INTRODUCTION
I. What is Digital Marketing?
Digital marketing encompasses all marketing efforts that use an electronic device or
internet. Businesses leverage digital channels such as search engines, social media,
email and their websites to connect with current and prospective customers. This
can also be referred as ‘online marketing’, ‘internet marketing’ or ‘web marketing’.
Digital marketing is defined by use of numerous digital tactics and channels to
connect with customers where they spend much of their time: online. From website
to business's online branding assets - digital advertising, email marketing, online
falling under the umbrella of "digital marketing."
“Digital marketing is 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 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 are becoming more common in
advancing technology. Digital marketing now extends to non-Internet channels that
provide digital media, such as mobile phones (SMS and MMS), callback, and on-hold
mobile ring tones.

A shift of Marketing from Traditional to Digital: The development of digital

marketing is inseparable from technology development. In 1971, Ray Tomlinson
sent first email and his technology set the platform to allow people to send and receive
files through different machines. In the1980s, storage capacity of computer was
already big enough to store huge volumes of customer information. Companies
started choosing online techniques, such as database marketing, rather than limited
list broker. This kind of databases allowed companies to track customers'
information more effectively, thus transforming relationship between buyer and seller.
However, the manual process was not so efficient.

In the 1990s, the term Digital Marketing was first coined, with debut of
server/client architecture and the popularity of personal computers, the Customer
Relationship Management (CRM) applications became 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 e CRM software after the Internet
was born. Companies could update the data of customer needs and obtain the
priorities of their experience. This led to first clickable banner ad being going live in
1994, which was the "You Will" campaign byAT&T and over first four months of
it going live, 44% of all people who saw it clicked on the ad.

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 salesperson, which created a new problem for the marketing
department of a company. In addition, survey in 2000 in the United Kingdom found
that most retailers had not registered their own domain address. These problems
made marketers find the digital ways for market development.

Digital marketing's development since 1990s and 2000s has changed 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.

In 2007, the concept of marketing automation was raised to solve the problem above.
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 development of social media in the 2000s, such as LinkedIn, Face
book, YouTube and Twitter, consumers became highly dependent on digital
electronics in daily lives. They expected seamless user experience across different
channels for searching product's information. The change of customer behavior
improved the diversification of marketing technology. Worldwide digital marketing
has become the most common term, especially after the year 2013. Digital media
growth was estimated at 4.5 trillion online ads served annually with digital media
spend at 48% growth in 2010. An increasing portion of advertising stems from
businesses employing Online Behavioral Advertising (OBA) to tailor advertising for
internet users, but OBA raises concern of consumer privacy and data protection.

II. Digital Marketing Tactics and Examples:

Digital marketers are in charge of driving brand awareness and lead generation
through all the digital channels -- both free and paid -- at company's disposal. These
channels include social media, the company's own website, search engine rankings,
email, display advertising, and the company's blog. The digital marketer focuses on
different key performance indicator (KPI) for each channel so they can properly
measure the company's performance across each one. Digital marketing is carried
out across many marketing roles today. In small companies, one generalist might
own many of the digital marketing tactics described above at the same time. In
larger companies, these tactics have multiple specialists that each focus on just one
or two of the brand's digital channels. Here are some examples of these specialists:
The best digital marketers have clear picture of how each digital marketing campaign
supports their overarching goals. And depending on goals of their marketing strategy,
marketers can support larger campaign through free and paid channels at their
disposal. A content marketer, for example, can create series of blog posts that
serve to generate leads from a new eBook the business recently created. The
company's social media marketer might then help promote these blog posts through
paid and organic posts on the business's social media accounts. Perhaps the email
marketer creates an email campaign to send those who download the eBook more
information on company. Following are some of most common digital marketing
tactics and the channels involved-
➢ Search Engine Optimization (SEO): This is process of optimizing website to
"rank" higher in search engine results pages, thereby increasing the amount of
organic (or free) traffic your website receives. The channels that benefit from SEO
include Websites, Blogs, and Info graphics.
➢ Social Media Marketing: This practice promotes your brand and your content
on social media channels to increase brand awareness, drive traffic, and generate
leads for your business. The channels you can use in social media marketing
include Face book, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Snap chat, Pinterest, and
Google+.

➢ Content Marketing: It denotes the creation and promotion of content assets for
the purpose of generating brand awareness, traffic growth, lead generation, and
customers. The channels that can play a part in your content marketing strategy
include Blog posts, E Books and whitepapers, Info graphics, Online brochures
and look books.

➢ Affiliate Marketing: This is a type of performance- based advertising where

you receive commission for promoting someone else's products, services on
your website. Affiliate marketing channels include Hosting video ads through
the YouTube Partner Program and Posting affiliate links from your social media
accounts.

➢ Native Advertising : Native advertising refers to advertisements that are

primarily content-led and featured on a platform alongside other, non-paid
content. Buzz Feed-sponsored posts are a good example, but many people also
consider social media advertising to be "native" – Face book advertising and
Instagram advertising.

➢ Marketing Automation: Marketing automation refers to the software that

serves to automate your basic marketing operations. Many marketing departments
can automate repetitive tasks they would otherwise do manually, such as Email
newsletters, Social media post scheduling, Contact list updating, Lead-nurturing
workflows, Campaign tracking and reporting.
➢ Pay-Per-Click (PPC): PPC is a method of driving traffic to your website by
paying a publisher every time your ad is clicked. One of the most common types
of PPC is Google Ad Words, which allows you to pay for top slots on Google's
search engine results pages at a price "per click" of the links you place. Other
channels where you can use PPC mainly include Paid ads on Face book,
Promoted Tweets on Twitter, Sponsored Messages on LinkedIn.

➢ Email Marketing: Companies use email marketing as a way of communicating

with their audiences. Email is often used to promote content, discounts and events,
as well as to direct people toward the business's website. The types of emails you
might send in an email marketing campaign include Blog subscription
newsletters, Follow-up emails to website visitors who downloaded something,
Customer welcome emails, Holiday promotions to loyalty program members,
Tips or similar series emails for customer nurturing.

➢ Inbound Marketing: Inbound marketing refers to the "full-funnel" approach to

attracting, engaging, and delighting customers using online content. You can use
every digital marketing tactic listed above throughout an inbound marketing
strategy.

➢ Online PR: Online PR is practice of securing earned online coverage with digital
publications, blogs, and other content-based websites. It's much like traditional PR,
but in the online space. The channels you can use to maximize your PR efforts
include: Reporter outreach via social media Engaging online reviews of your
company, Engaging comments on your personal website or blog.

III. Digital Marketing – a boost to today’s businesses: Regardless of what your

company sells, digital marketing still involves building out buyer’s personas to
identify your audience’s needs and creating valuable online content.
➢ B2B Digital Marketing:
If company is business-to-business (B2B), digital marketing efforts are likely to be
centered on online lead generation, with end goal being for someone to speak to
salesperson. The role of your marketing strategy is to attract and convert highest
quality leads for salespeople via your website and supporting digital channels.
Beyond website, you'll probably choose to focus efforts on business-focused
channels like LinkedIn where your demographic is spending their time online.

➢ B2C Digital Marketing:

If your company is business-to-consumer (B2C), depending on price point of
products, the goal of digital marketing efforts is to attract people to website and
have they become customers without ever needing to speak to salesperson. For
that reason, you're probably less likely to focus on ‘leads' in their traditional
sense, and more likely to focus on building an accelerated buyer's journey, from
the moment someone lands on your website, to moment that they make a
purchase. This will often mean your product features in your content higher up in
the marketing funnel than it might for a B2B business, and you might need to use
stronger calls-to-action (CTAs).For B2C companies, channels like Instagram and
Pinterest are more valuable than business-focused platforms LinkedIn.

➢ Website Traffic:
You can see the exact number of people who have viewed your website's
homepage in real time by using digital analytics software, available in marketing
platforms like Hub Spot. Also how many pages they visited, what device they
were using, and where they came from, amongst other digital analytics data.
This intelligence helps you to prioritize which marketing channels to spend
more or less time on, based on the number of people those channels are driving
to your website. For example, if only 10% of your traffic is coming from
organic search, you know that you probably need to spend some time on SEO to
increase that percentage.
➢ Content Performance and Lead Generation: Imagine you've created product
brochure and posted it through people's letterboxes -- that brochure is a form of
content, albeit offline. The problem is no idea how many people opened your
brochure or how many people threw it straight into trash.

➢ Attribution Modeling:
An effective digital marketing strategy combined with right tools and
technologies allows to trace all sales back to customer's first digital touch point with
your business is called attribution modeling. It allows identifying trends in the
way people research and buying your product, helping you to make more
informed decisions about what parts of your marketing strategy deserve more
attention, and what parts of your sales cycle need refining. Connecting the dots
between marketing and sales is hugely important -- according to Aberdeen Group,
companies with strong sales and marketing alignment achieve a 20% annual
growth rate, compared to a 4% decline in revenue for companies with poor
alignment. If you can improve your customer's' journey through the buying cycle
by using digital technologies, then it's likely to reflect positively on your
business's bottom line.

➢ Online behavioral advertising: is the practice of collecting information about a

user's online activity over time, "on a particular device and across different,
unrelated websites, in order to deliver advertisements tailored to that user's
interests and preferences.

➢ Collaborative Environment: A collaborative environment can be set up

between the organization, technology service provider, and digital agencies to
optimize effort, resource sharing, reusability and communications. Organizations
are inviting their customers to help them better understand how to service them.
Much of this is acquired via company websites where the organization invites
people to share ideas that are then evaluated by other users of the site. Using this
method of acquiring data and developing new products can foster the organizations
 relationship with their customer as well as spawn ideas that would otherwise be
overlooked.

➢ Data-driven advertising: Users generate lot of data in every step they take on
the path of customer journey and Brands can now use that data to activate their
known audience with data-driven programmatic media buying. Without exposing
customers' privacy, users' Data can be collected from digital channels (e.g.:
when customer visits a website, reads an e-mail, or launches and interact with
brand's mobile app), brands can also collect data from real world customer
interactions, such as brick and mortar stores visits and from CRM and Sales
engines datasets. Data-driven advertising is empowering brands to find their
loyal customers in their audience and deliver in real time much more personal
communication, highly relevant to each customer’s moment and actions.

➢ Remarketing: Remarketing plays a major role in digital marketing. This tactic

allows marketers to publish targeted ads in front of an interest category or
defined audiences, generally called searchers in web speak, they have either searched
for particular products or services or visited a website for some purpose.

➢ Game advertising: Game ads are advertisements that exist within computer or
video games. One of the most common examples of in-game advertising is
billboards appearing in sports games. In-game ads also might appear as brand-
name products like guns, cars, or clothing that exist as gaming status symbols.

➢ Ease of access: A key objective is engaging digital marketing customers and

allowing them to interact with brand through servicing and delivery of digital
media. Users with access to Internet can use many digital mediums, such as Face
book, YouTube, Forums, and Email etc. Through Digital communications it
creates a multi-communication channel where information can be quickly shared
around world by anyone without any regard to who they are.
IV. How the effectiveness of Digital Marketing Campaigns is measured?
The evaluation criteria and metrics for the digital marketing campaigns classified
according to its type and time span. Regarding the type, either evaluate campaigns
"Quantitatively" or "Qualitatively". Quantitative metrics may include "Sales Volume"
and "Revenue Increase/Decrease". While qualitative metrics may include enhanced
"Brand awareness, image and health" as well as "relationship with the customers".

Shifting the focus to time span, we may need to measure some "Interim Metrics",
which give us some insight during journey itself, as well as we need to measure
some "Final Metrics" at the end of journey to inform use if overall initiative was
successful or not. For example, most social media metrics and indicators such as
likes, shares and engagement comments may be classified as interim metrics while final
increase/decrease in sales volume is clearly from final category. The correlation
between these categories should exist. Otherwise, disappointing results may happen at
the end.

Below are some aspects that need to be considered to have an effective digital
media campaign:

1. Interesting mail titles differentiate one advertisement from the other. This
separates advertisements from the clutter.
2.Establishment of customer exclusivity: A list of customers and customer's details
should be kept on database for follow up and selected customers can be sent selected
offers and promotions of deals related to customer's previous buyer behavior.
3. Low Technical Requirements: In order to get full use out of digital marketing it is
useful to make you advertising campaigns have low technical requirements.
4. Rewards: The lucrative offers would always help in making your digital campaign
a success. Give some reward at end of campaign.
V. Pros and Cons of Digital Marketing:
Digital marketing allows marketers to see accurate results in real time. If an advert is
put in newspaper, it is difficult to estimate how many people actually flipped to that
page and paid attention to ad. There's no surefire way to know if that ad was
responsible for any sales at all. Yet digital marketing would help you to know reach
for your product/service, to get engaged with prospective customers, to have global
reach, to promote in personalized manner. However, with digital marketing have
some setbacks .Digital marketing is highly dependent on the internet. Because
internet may not be accessible in certain areas or consumers may have poor internet
connection. It has lot of clutter, so marketers find it hard to make their advertisements
stand out, and get consumers to start conversations about an organizations brand
image or products. But still large amount of competing goods and services that are
also using same digital marketing strategies can be the disadvantage. Some
companies can be portrayed by customers negatively as some consumers lack trust
online due to the amount of advertising that appears on websites and social media
that can be considered frauds. Even an individual or small group of people can harm
image of an established brand. Digital marketing disseminates only information to
prospects most of whom do not have purchasing authority/power

VI. A light on Real cases under Digital marketing:

1. Every Smile Matters: Britannia Good Day supports children born with cleft
lip
On World Smiles Day, October 5th, Britannia Good Day launched the Every
Smile Matters campaign. The campaign focuses on very important aspect that in
today’s day and age, smiles have been taken for granted and we don’t smile
enough. Good Day, has partnered with Smile Train India, the world’s leading
cleft charity that provides free cleft surgery and care to children. According to a
Smile Train study, 1 in 1,000 Indian children are born with a cleft lip –common
birth condition that can occur alone or as part of genetic condition or syndrome.
Not only does this condition prohibit smiling, it can also cause difficulty in
natural activities such as eating and speaking.
2. Parle Kismi spreads love this Valentine’s Day in collaboration with the
dabbawalas
The Har Kismi Mein Hai Kiss campaign by Parle Kismi is an attempt to
spread some love on Valentine’s Day by dropping in a reminder to
consumers with the help of their dabbawallas. Working professionals often
forget Valentine’s Day and Parle Kismi wanted to send out a sweet reminder to
consumers to wish their partners in time. ‘Food is way to one’s heart’ so Parle
collaborated with the most successful food delivery system – The Dabbawallas.
They made pouch of love that consisted of Kismi paan toffees - new variant of
Kismi and a reminder note asking them to express love to their loved ones this
Valentine’s. This pouch was attached to each dabba and was received by almost
one lakh people. This simple act by Parle Kismi brought joy to lives of many
couples in Mumbai. Parle Kismi has always stood as an enabler and bringing about
small moments of happiness in lives of its consumers. This campaign was an
extension of the thought for Valentine’s Day.

3. HDFC Ergo markets its new app with “Ab Take It Easy”:
Ab Take It Easy practices what it preaches, reassuring policyholders that in case of
health emergency, first and foremost priority should be you, not formalities with
health insurance. Depicting the panic induced jitters that one experiences during the
‘moment of truth’, wherein the focus of family and friends should be immediate
attention to the patient, HDFC Ergo Health Insurance debuted their new, smart
phone apps with Ab Take It Easy, which helps put policyholders first, formalities
second. Explained through a vigilant father’s regular preparation drill whenever
he hears ambulance sirens in distance, Ab Take It Easy shows us how his worry
is laid to rest knowing that all his health insurance details, and location of nearest
cashless hospital are available in moment.
Conclusion:
To summarize, digital marketing has a bright future for long term sustainability of the
product or services in the current technological market with all its pros and cons.

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