WebiculesWe’re living in a digital world– just how many times have we, individually, heard of this saying? In fact, in the last one decade, the term ‘digital marketing’ has been thrown around so many times that it has gained a lot of (underlying) meanings. So, then what is digital marketing, really?
Wikipedia describes digital marketing as an umbrella term for 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.
Needless to say, the era in which we are living belongs to the customer. Everything is designed with the hope of attracting more and more customers for businesses. After all, customers make a business really grow. A lot of marketing techniques and formulae will be rendered useless, if there are no happy customers in the first place. If we picture the same setup, let’s assume, from twenty years ago, things could be mighty different. For starters, our world wasn’t called a digital one back then. In that day and date, most of the businesses thrived on outbound marketing, wherein the marketers would ask the companies to go all out and reach their customers, according to the companies’ whim and fancy. Though, with the advent of inbound marketing, the marketplace largely became customer-centric. The customer became the cynosure of all the marketing activities/techniques/strategies. Because the formula to success here was simple- if you have your customers on your side, you have most of what is required for a successful marketing strategy.
The entirety of digital marketing depends upon the internet for its survival. There are various ways in which one can digitally market themselves or their company or their products and services. To begin with, one can use social networking sites to digitally market their products or services (think of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, etc. for the same). Following this, one could also use all-in-one platforms, such as Shopify, Google Shopping, Ebay, Amazon, Flipkart, etc.
On the internet, a digital marketer needs to constantly remind people of their existence for the sheer reason of neck-deep competition that is prevalent in any marketplace nowadays. There are far too many digital marketers on the internet and each one of them is trying to cash in on the opportunity of digital marketing, just like you. Another way of catching your customer’s attention is to be visible on the platforms that they use for entertainment, owing to an intelligent and educated guess that if they are on an entertainment platform, then there’s a bright possibility that they have time at their disposal and may even want to check out your products.
One more interesting (and rather interesting) aspect of digital marketing is that it is not limited. It is not bounded by any physical boundary. You have to use your imagination, and it could just be the next best thing to digitally market yourself or your brand. On similar lines, it is quite easy to catch your target audience’s attention on sites like YouTube and other online video streaming platforms. Again, it is easy, but one must be efficient with their marketing in order to not annoy their customer by posting a product video right before your customer was about to watch a video of their own choice. The product video should be exceptionally gripping and powerful. Why am I using the adjective, ‘exceptionally’ here? Because we must understand that we are disturbing the privacy of a customer by barging in on their personal time to advertise something to them. If the video isn’t exceptionally good, then make it. Anything mediocre shouldn’t be tested with the customers, since that could be a potential failure. The customer might just not watch the video (or even skip it, if there’s an option for it). So, to avoid all this, make sure that the content of your product video is exceptionally strong.
Now coming to the customer, a digital marketer has to be extremely cautious of what they are offering to the people. Apart from being careful with respect to the offered products/services, a digital marketer also has to stay watchful of the changing social expectations- a few things will be accepted by the masses, while there’s a chance that a few others might not even be remotely acceptable by the masses. Another noteworthy point is the number of times a digital marketer reaches out to their (potential) customers; going too far with the entire digital marketing approach could be detrimental to a business’ growth, while not reaching the adequate number of times one should reach out to their (potential) customers might result in loss of customers.
