Individual Essay – Digital Marketing

Individual Essay – Digital Marketing

1. Introduction

Digital marketing is marketing that makes use of a variety of digital channels such as email, social networks to engage with consumers and other business partners. It uses television, radio, internet, mobile and some other forms of digital media to reach customers in a timely, relevant, personal and cost-effective manner. (Ryan & Jones 2009)

In recent decade, the rapid growth of the internet, especially the World Wide Web, has led to a huge number of consumers and firms participating in a global on line marketplace. The development of the internet has attracted more and more firms to experiment with innovative ways of marketing to consumers on internet. Global internet distribution has allowed information to be located on a network of servers around the world which are interconnected, allowing consumers to travel through the information by clicking on hyperlinks. Any hyperlink can point to some specific information on the internet. By using the Global internet, information and resources are shared all around the world. The channels for advertising, marketing and even distribution of goods and services are much more efficient than that through traditional platform. (Hoffman, Novak & Chatterjee 2006)

There are two forms of digital marketing: pull digital marketing and push digital marketing. In pull digital marketing, consumers are active to seek the market information via social networks, such as emails, text message, web sites, blogs and streaming media. In push digital marketing, the marketers push their products to consumers through advertising on websites, blogs, email, web feeds and so on. (Wertime & Fenwick 2008)

Digital marketing has changed the way that businesses compete with each other. It has deeply affected modern way of doing business, from sales, customer service to brand-building. Facing the rapid development of digital marketing and its huge impacts on business, businesses have to take all kinds of challenges into account in order to compete effectively over the internet.

2. Key Findings and Analysis

2.1 Impacts on business

2.1.1 Impacts on sales

2.1.1.1 Online sales boosting 

It is suggested that web-based commercial efforts on sales are more efficient and more effective than efforts through traditional channels. Firms can reach all kinds of customers and communicate with their current and potential customers. The sales procedures include informing, to remind and to persuade. Through digital marketing, firms can effective participate in the market. Business in the internet can supply customers with more direct specific information, and more buying functions. Through online ordering and the use of fill-out forms, it is more efficient to bring transactions to conclusions.

And digital marketing offers firms the opportunity to gather market intelligence and monitor consumer choices through customers’ revealed preferences in navigational and purchasing behavior in the web, so that firms can adjust their products or change their strategies to do marketing in a timely way, according to the reaction from the market. (Hoffman, Novak & Chatterjee 2006)

2.1.1.2 Offline sales boosting

It is significant that digital marketing is affecting offline purchasing behavior also. Most of consumers who buy in key categories in-store have done some searching online, before they make the final decision to buy. And according to Japiter, digital marketing has influenced offline sales by up to 1 trillion dollars in 2012. (Gupta 2012)

Digital marketing has greatly influenced the way consumers do purchasing. Sales are impacted by digital marketing deeply. Businesses have gone beyond awareness and direct response campaigns in digital marketing. They have changed their way of competing through digital marketing.

2.1.2 Impacts on customer-service

As one of the most important process of doing business, customer service has changed significantly, due to the rapid development of digital marketing. People are increasingly turning to social media expecting customer service support and a place to freely express their bad experiences. Take Facebook and Twitter as examples, if someone goes through some bad purchasing experience or wants to complain for some issues, all the bad information will be known by all his friends. Social media as the most powerful customer service channel has accumulated the most information.

The ability to provide a good timely customer service mean that firms can potentially be responsible; and the positive impact can be widely known immediately. It is becoming increasingly apparent that customer service on social media needs to be considered seriously. However, failing to run effective customer services can result in poor business performance and negative feeling towards firms from customers, which are damaging in the long term. (Gupta 2012)

2.1.3 Impacts on brand-building

A brand is the emotional and psychological connection that a customer has with a business and its products and/or services. The procedure of building a brand is that firms create environments that encourage a brand relationship to occur between a customer and a business, and nurturing that relationship once a connection has been made.