Essence of Digital Marketing by Zaynah Buhariwala

How many times have you clicked on a website, you had never even heard of before, all because you saw that really cute outfit on your for you page?!

This is the power of digital marketing. The main advantage is that the smallest of companies are investing in digital marketing and making a huge turnover on that investment. Digital marketing has made life easier for the consumer, by having everything at a click of a button; and for the business owners. Like The Stone Age marked the use of stone tools for hunting, gathering, and all other daily necessities. This simplified his life and he had more time to focus on art, culture, and other important things like agriculture and construction. The same is true for the Bronze Age and Iron Age.

Likewise, today's age is called the Information Age or Digital Age because of our dependency on Digital Technology. The world is cruising towards complete digitalization and the current COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated it. Digital Technologies has changed the way we look at the world. It has eased our day–to–day tasks. It has opened the floodgates of knowledge and information to the masses. Digital Technology has brought the world just a 'click away'. A focus on content and information. One of the changes that came with new-age marketing techniques was the shift away from traditional advertising and placing more focus on content and information provided to your customers.

This paper gives one an insight into the inner workings and technicalities of new-age marketing techniques. 

NEW – AGE MARKETING TECHNIQUES

Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing (also known as digital marketing or e-marketing) is the use of social media platforms; like apps like Instagram, tik tok, etc. It encompasses various tactics, including, email campaigns, content creation, search engine optimization (SEO), and influencer marketing. Data–driven approaches and new-age tools are crucial in crafting and implementing effective digital marketing strategies.

Social media has become the method of statement in the 21st century, enabling us to express our beliefs, ideas, and manner in a new way. This way of message also has a huge impact on corporations, where they have realized that without a correct plan and social media strategy, they have no chance to stand out in the rapidly changing digital freedom. To guarantee successful attendance on social media companies need to consider different marketing theories so that they can boost their brand in different aspects. If this can be collected with original ways of consumer interaction the companies have a good chance to take the lead in social media marketing. The meteoric growth of community websites, such as Twitter, Facebook, and Linked, has ushered the world into a new era of social media. The global reach is nothing short of marvelous, so much so that if Facebook were a country, it would be the third largest, next to China and India. Some even say that this is the biggest shift since the industrial revolution, which means that the world has a brand-new playing meadow. At its center, social media is any kind of online media that stimulates participation, open conversation, Connecters, and a sense of community. The social media phenomenon has a profound impact. Social media has transformed research methods. This allows brands to communicate better with their consumers, and intensify their association with them. The advertising world has not been spared from social media influence.

TYPES OF SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING STRATEGIES

Email Campaigns

A series of marketing efforts, including email campaigns. It is a schedule, which is used to nurture leads and current customers to encourage engagement with the brand and increase sales. The goal of an email campaign is to entice the recipients to purchase a product or service or to learn more about the business. Each individual leads to a specific call-to-action; that is, getting users to sign up, book a call, sign up, or add a product to their cart. In an email campaign, the delivery time is relative – it refers to the time the contact is a part of the campaign. An accurate example would be Netflix: 

• Marketing Campaign: Engagement

• More than half of US households subscribe to multiple streaming channels. With several platforms vying for our attention, brands like Netflix have gotten more targeted with their emails.

• This email from Netflix provides a curated list of new shows the customer may be interested in based on their watch history.

• It's skimmable with plenty of visuals supporting the new releases and provides a CTA that prompts you to watch the trailer.

• It also uses Netflix’s familiar black-and-red design, so that the recipient feels like they’re scrolling through Netflix, demonstrating the importance of keeping branding consistent across all your messaging channels.

• Why It Works?! The CTAs in this email entice the user to stop what they're doing and head over to Netflix to check out the new content. It also includes a “Top Picks for You” section that shows personalized recommendations for the user.

Content Creation

Just like we have the 4Ps of marketing, we have the 3C'S of content creation. Content, channel, and context:

• Content is the information that is being gathered and provided. It is the facts, and features or benefits of the message – the “what”. For example, it’s the details of your product or service that will help the target solve their problem.

• Channel is “where” and “when” the message is most likely to reach and be accepted by the target. Here we have to consider the buyer’s mindset. For example, if they are on their way to work, then the business is most likely on their mind; on the way home, personal activities may become front and center.

• Context is “how” the message is packaged in the communication channel; it is everything except the “what” and the “where”. The context is the creative application of the message – the visual packaging, the emotion, the psychology, the tone, and the manner.

For example, for sure you have heard of MR. BEAST, the famous Youtube legend. Mr. is one of the most popular Youtube content creators, with 154 million subscribers on the platform. His videos involve him doing stunts, some of which are elaborate, and many go viral. He sells a wide array of merchandise, including apparel and accessories and even chocolates and gummies. He's parlayed his success into philanthropy after giving away the first $10,000 he made from a YouTube sponsorship deal in 2017. In the picture below, Mr. Beast is promoting his cookies as well as Walmart, creating a buzz for them!  He is creating the content, by posting about it, context by stating it's going to be available at Walmart and context is the fact that he is promoting it. 

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the quality and quantity of website traffic to a website or a web page from search engines. SEO targets unpaid traffic (known as “natural” or “organic” results) rather than direct traffic or paid traffic.

In simple terms, SEO means the process of improving your website to increase its visibility in Google, Microsoft Bing, and other search engines whenever people search for:

• Products you sell.

• Services you provide.

• Information on topics in which you have deep expertise and/or experience.

The better visibility your pages have in search results, the more likely you are to be found and clicked on. Ultimately, the goal of search engine optimization is to help attract website visitors who will become customers, clients, or an audience that keeps coming back.

Whenever people want to go somewhere, do something, find information, research, or buy a product/service – their journey typically begins with a search. But today, the search is incredibly fragmented. Users may search on traditional web search engines (e.g., Google, Microsoft Bing), social platforms (e.g., YouTube, TikTok), or retailer websites (e.g., Amazon).

THREE TYPES OF SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION (SEO): 

• Technical SEO: Optimizing the technical aspects of a website.

• On-site SEO: Optimizing the content on a website for users and search engines.

• Off-site SEO: Creating brand assets (e.g., people, marks, values, vision, slogans, catchphrases, colors) and doing things that will ultimately enhance brand awareness and recognition (i.e., demonstrating and growing its expertise, authority, and trustworthiness) and demand generation.

Influencer Marketing

Influencers are a new way of making money for a company. By paying a generous amount, they get their brand or product showcased to half a million people with a click of a button. However, this type of marketing is beneficial for everyone, most of the consumers do not have to pay for subscriptions to the brands, the influencers get recognition and an added fan base from the brand, and vice-versa. The brand also gets recognition and publicity which results in an increase in turnover and consequently an increase in profits!

Social media platforms like Instagram, and TikTok; provide a great audience for influencer marketing! Many brands use influencer marketing to reach their target audience. Big brands like Motorola, Adidas, Pepsi, and Dunkin' Donuts all use influencer marketing. Adidas has been using influencer marketing to promote its products for years now. They use influencer marketing to target a younger audience through Instagram, etc. For example, 67 Shades of Dior Campaign - The Gold Winner for the Best Beauty Campaign at the 2020 Influencer Marketing Awards was Dior, who teamed with the influencer marketing agency, Buttermilk. The campaign was to celebrate the launch of Dior's Forever Foundation, which is a range with 67 unique foundation shades.

The fastest and new age of marketing involves influencer marketing, which has created a different and most influential sector of marketing.

Email Marketing

With more recognition of big data, and with the ease that it has not only provided to companies but also to consumers. It's so easy for a company to connect with an interested consumer if they just fill out their details and subscribe to the company, then they could get updates about the company and the company would benefit by creating loyal customer and brand awareness.

Ever once signed up for a spam mail by mistake? Then got irritated by the number of emails they kept sending every hour! Well, that is the point of email marketing. Even bad broadcasting is good for the company. It at least lets the company build up brand awareness. Email marketing is the act of sending a commercial message, or nowadays a “spam” message, via email to a group of people. In its broadest sense, every email sent to a potential or current customer could be considered email marketing. It involves using email to send advertisements, request business, or solicit sales or donations. Email marketing strategies commonly seek to achieve one or more of three primary objectives, to build loyalty, trust, or brand awareness.

The whole purpose of sending emails out and performing email marketing is to create a good customer-merchant relationship. Especially, for small businesses, in the early stages, this gives them a chance to create a loyal customer base and then expand their business from there! There are 4 types of email marketing; mainly email newsletters, transactional mail, promotional mail, and retention emails. Marketers have been using email as a channel for almost as long as they've been using the internet. The first marketing email was sent in 1978, resulting in $13 million in sales. Email has been one of the most highly used marketing channels ever since. This is because email is a flexible yet cost-effective way to reach many people relatively quickly. You can also personalize your message to target specific audiences and generate leads.

• EMAIL NEWSLETTERS: 

  • Email newsletters are adding value to your subscriber's inboxes. To do so, create engaging content, including thought leadership, how-to’s, and upcoming new products/sales. 

  • Your email newsletter should be a short-sweet message to the consumers, maybe based on the latest trends! Short concise newsletters, that can be read in 5 minutes or less. 

  • Nobody wants to be stuck reading a 10-minute newsletter therefore, engaging your customer base and finding out what content and how much they are engaging, can help you build up on your newsletter. 

  • Your email newsletter is only as successful as your content is compelling. 

• TRANSACTIONAL EMAILS: 

  
  

  • Probably one of the most boring and least liked by consumers. Getting the big fat bill! That is exactly what transactional email marketing is. Probably one of the least glamorous but most effective forms of email marketing; transactional emails are sent to facilitate an expected transaction between a sender and a recipient.

  • The context of the transaction varies; it could be a welcome email, a confirmation email, or even a cart abandonment email

  • A transactional email is meant to inform the customer about the action they have just taken.

  • For example, every time I use my credit card, I get an email on my registered mobile number, saying that a transaction of $x amount has been transacted from my account. And nobody wants money out of their bank accoun

• PROMOTIONAL EMAILS: 

  • The main goal is to convince or entice customers to make a purchase. 

  • To get the formula right you need to use promotional emails to reward engaged subscribers with exclusive offers, drive new products or services to subscribers, and cross-sell products to your customer base.

  • The purpose of these emails is to build your customer base and customer loyalty. It converts subscribers to customers and customers to brand advocates. 

  • For example, while scrolling through your for you page on Instagram, you come across a really cute top and then immediately purchase it. You are now a subscriber to the brand and sign up with it. Next, you get a promotional email and purchase more, you are now a loyal customer or even a brand – advocate. That is the magic of promotional emails. It's got you hooked! 

• RETENTION EMAIL: 

  • A retention email is a targeted and triggered message sent to an existing customer to increase engagement, loyalty, and satisfaction. 

  • By sending a message requesting feedback or an offer to subscribers who haven't interacted with your business or email campaigns lately, your small business can keep the lines of communication open. 

  • Retention Emails are a very useful email campaign strategy that can help you keep your hard-won customers. 

  • For example, the end questionnaire you fill out, at the end of a purchase, is a retention email, and once the brand has got your feedback and sent you the improvements; you will come back for more. Creating convenience for you! 

Role of Big Data in Marketing

“Without big data analytics, companies are blind and deaf, wandering out onto the Web like deer on a freeway.”

Whether you are trying to improve customer loyalty and engagement, optimize your performance, or make pricing decisions, big data in marketing has proven to be an indispensable tool. Big data refers to the ever-increasing volume, velocity, variety, variability, and complexity of information. For marketing organizations, big data is the fundamental consequence of the new marketing landscape, born from the digital world we now live in.

That being said, big data is transforming and modeling into new-age marketing techniques. But what is big data? In terms of marketing, big data comprises gathering, analyzing, and using massive amounts of digital information to improve business operation. Big data is universally accepted in almost every vertical, not least of all in marketing and sales. While Moore’s tweet referred specifically to big data analytics, the same is true for all aspects of big data, including data ingestion, integration, storage, and more.

Many marketers may feel like data has always been big – and in some ways, it has. But think about the customer data businesses collected 20 years ago – point-of-sale transaction data, responses to direct mail campaigns, coupon redemption, etc. Then think about the customer data collected today – online purchase data, click-through rates, browsing behavior, social media interactions, mobile device usage, geolocation data, etc. Comparatively speaking, there’s no comparison. And to borrow an old phrase, "You ain’t seen nothin' yet."

How Big Data is Transforming Marketing

• GETTING A 360-DEGREE VIEW OF THE COMPANIES AUDIENCES – The concept of "know your customer" (KYC) was initially conceived many years ago to prevent bank fraud. KYC provides insight into customer behavior that was once limited to large financial institutions. Now, because of the accessibility of big data, the benefits of KYC are available to even small businesses, thanks to big data and cloud computing. Big data analytics provides the business intelligence you need to bring about positive change, like improving existing products or increasing revenue per customer. With email marketing, gaining popularity, big data plays a huge role in getting information from consumers, and without big data, email marketing probably wouldn't exist today. 

• BRAND AWARENESS – The 360-degree view from big data allows marketers to present customer-specific content when and where it is most effective to improve online and in-store brand recognition and recall. Big data allows you to be the band-aid of your product category even if you don't have the marketing budget! For example, email campaigns, as mentioned previously, bring great brand awareness and thanks to big data; are very specific to the consumer's likes and dislikes. Social media and email marketing help brands build awareness and big data is the backbone for these marketing techniques to work! 

• Big data can help marketers, with real-time data in cloud computing environments. The ability of big data to acquire, process, and analyze real-time data quickly and accurately enough to take immediate and effective action cannot be matched by any other technology. This is critical when analyzing data from GPS, and clicks on websites- like we spoke about how in search engine optimization, the searches are very specific to the consumer, that is with the help of big data, the brand can access that information and make changes to the searches according to the consumer. Big data provides business intelligence that results in time and cost savings by optimizing marketing performance.

Here's a case study:

Big data Gives Beachbody near Real-time user behavior to reduce customer churn

Beachbody provides world-class fitness, nutrition, motivation, and support to 23 million customers. Their business is all about the customer experience; keeping people motivated and matching them with the content that keeps them coming back for more.

You may be familiar with Beachbody's on-demand videos, but they also offer live sessions at gyms. Big data has enabled the company to acquire near real-time consumer behavior in fitness centers. Combined with analysis from online data sources, Beachbody's big data allows the brand to create more personalized offers for customers and decreased customer churn. We can also connect this to the previous marketing techniques we spoke about, like CONTENT CREATION AND SEO – They created viral videos which users engaged with and that created brand recognition. The SEOs were specified by the company for their subscribed users, which made it easier for the users to also connect with the company's particular event. 

Types of Big Data

1. CONSUMER DATA – helps marketers understand their target audience. The obvious data of this type are facts like names, emails (which is a part of the marketing plan for email campaigns; as discussed previously), purchase history, and web searches (SEOs). Just as important, if not more so, are indications of your audience’s attitudes that may be gathered from social media activity, surveys, and online communities.

2. FINANCIAL DATA - helps you measure performance and operate more efficiently. Your organization’s sales and marketing statistics, costs, and margins fall into this category.

3. OPERATIONAL DATA - relates to business processes. It may relate to shipping and logistics, customer relationship management systems, or feedback from hardware sensors and other sources. Analysis of this data can lead to improved performance and reduced costs.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

1.    Indiraiimp.edu.in

2.    Hubspot.com

3.    Mailchimp.com

4.    Campaignmonitor.com

5.    Linkedin.com

6.    Searchengineland.com

7.    Talend.com

8.    Social media marketing article by Sarvakumar