Digital Marketing is the one of the way of marketing, in which marketer uses digital media with the integration of internet technology, and develop valuable relations with customer, prospects and individual.
What is digital marketing?
Marketers can precisely target their audience in multifaceted categorical ways, ages, location, gender, seniority, income, interest, behavior, lookalike, CRM data, remarketing, and device. The communication can be personalized and highly interactive. On digital platform, targeting is a rather sophisticated task, carried out using such algorithms as to precisely reach the target audience. It is targeting of one and not many.
Origin and Development of digital marketing
Digital marketing is also called ‘Internet marketing’, ‘Web marketing’, or ‘Online marketing’. Digital marketing may be defined as the promotion of brand or products through different forms of electronic media. These forms could be website, blogs, social media, mobile, applications, search, banner ads, etc.
Philip Kotler defines digital marketing as
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.
Origin of digital marketing
The origin of digital marketing can be traced to 1994 when the first banner ad appeared on the first commercial web magazine, Hotwired (now Wired.com).
Since then the digital advertising market has evolve and in 1996 the US digital advertising market was worth US$ 301 million during the following year the market experience the phenomenal growth touching 1 billion dollar around 1997 the company’s begin thinking about placing advertisement on related websites and linking their webpage to the banner in 1998 the Hotwired started selling banner advertising space to companies and achieved a sensational 30% click through rate (CTR).
Traditional versus digital marketing
Digital marketing is considerably different from traditional marketing in multiple ways. Traditional marketing is spray and pray where in a marketer disseminates the message to a General audience and merely hope that ultimately some viewers will buy the product. This lack of specificity leads to wastage. But digital marketing is able to target specific audience that have interest in the product and hence are already in the market to buy the product. There is a saying in mass media ‘half of advertising is waste .but I don’t know which half. Digital marketing remove the limitations of mass media by eliminating wastage. Digital marketing is about maximizing the efficiency since it is possible to measure that the performance of digital marketing in real time, there is an ample scope to tweak the companies and improve ROI. Marketer can do the simple a/b testing to identify the most effective message, image, ads targeting and layout. In digital there is always scope for improvement.
While mass media is price on rate card basis for a 10 second slot on TV or column for news channel digital is priced based on an auction. Instead of fixed rate card, marketer bid in auction and the price is determined based on bid as well as the qualities score. Hence a fair price discovery happens in digital.
Marketing creates a level playing field for all marketer as it does not distinguish between small and large business. The entry barrier is low as digital marketing requires a little budget. The media rates are same for small and big business.
The cost of failure in digital marketing is low. If the campaign is not working you will know it immediately and can take corrective actions. You will use only a small amount of money if your plan fails hence taking great care is smart strategy. trying new ideas and various mediums of digital marketing to find out what works for you and what does not implementing digital marketing is like walking in and for visibility is there only for the first 10 meter if you want more visibility you must walk the first ten meters to be able to see the next 10 meters. Has instead of what wanting for the perfect plan or blueprint. You should start digital marketing and learn on to go. Instead of perfecting your strategy from day one it is better to make 1% improvement every day and at the end of the year you will have 365% improvement.
In digital you need to do anything in the haste. Rather you should move step by step. You can commit small resources to an idea. Campaigning or content. If it works then put more resources into developing it further. Hence instead of firing cannonball you should fire gun shot in digital marketing and test the water.
Internet users in India
Internet user base in India has been increased steadily with more and more people acquiring smartphone it has become easier for individual to access the internet.
over 497 million internet user indicates penetration of internet among 38% of the Indian population there are more than 1 billion mobile connection in India which means a healthy mobile penetration among the population but many users have Dual Sims and the number of the unique mobile user is about 813 million among the mobile phone user 46% have smartphone how wear what percentage of internet user access social media about 68% of internet user are on social media which is quite good.
Facebook is the most popular social media site with 48% of the the internet user using it. Interestingly there is a huge gap between the number of Facebook user and number of Twitter user in India.
what percentage of internet users shop online by either transactions or searching for information about product or service figure 1.4 15% of internet user at digital buyers due to aggressive discount by E commerce there is a healthy penetration of online shopping among internet user in India.