Executive Summary
The purpose of the following paper is to investigate the opportunities and challenges that digital marketing presents to organizations. The findings of this report are in the importance of the use of digital marketing technologies in selling products of any commercial organization. In this vein, it is evident that commercial organizations should employ digital marketing through social media campaigns and use search engines such as Twitter, Print, Linked, and Facebook. Use of social technologies is significant for monitoring the level of company growth, market share, consumer tastes and preferences, and financial muscles. Moreover, cultures and geographical barriers are penetrated through the use of digital marketing technologies. Due to such importance of digital marketing, it is recommended for commercial organizations to endeavour to occupy firm positions in virtual space and exploit social technologies to the greatest extent possible since they are cheap to create and provide instant feedback of consumers.
Introduction
Social technologies are commonly known for assisting in deriving revenue in numerous ways since they fit into the marketing mix. Understanding the trends in the digital marketing requires understanding of the five element formula that constitutes digital marketing. The element formula includes building productive websites, providing social technologies, mobile tools, driving online traffic, and measurement of systems. Building productive websites is fundamental in digital marketing as they are destinations for clients to access information and engage in transactions. Usually, clients visit sites for a key reason, and thus, websites should be designed for ongoing connections.
Digital Marketing Approach
Mobile tools allow organizations and businesses to stay connected with client 24/7 across the world. The ability to get in touch with people via a mobile device is critical as customers may opt to visit the site from random points and at random times. Provision of connections becomes inevitable in an environment dictated by external forces such as competitions. Providing social technologies involves developing tools that facilitate ongoing conversation with clients and guarantees trust with prospects in an effort to share valuable information. Measurement systems help site owners find ways to progress of their services, and point out the areas demanding improvement. Driving online traffic entails driving large volume of traffic through traditional advertising, pay-per-click initiatives, and use of search engine optimization. Process automation saves the organization time by providing an instant response to clients regarding their queries. Process automation is about delivery status notifications, services installation reminders, and real time consumer service improvement. Large business organizations boost their clientsâ relations by providing timely information regarding delivery status of the product.
Digital Marketing Advantages and Challenges
The latest digital marketing offers advertisers an opportunity to have interaction models and custom platforms that acknowledge the location of clients and the interests they have. Through digital marketing, an organization interacts with customers based on their activity, time, platform, and location. To achieve effective interaction, game consoles, in store kiosks, net books, and diverse marketing media are leveraged to tune people in their daily lives. Opportunities for digital marketing to organizations include improved customer engagement and use of process automation. In order to address consumer requirements, organizations have the opportunity to incorporate web browser cookie and email address. Improved customer engagements ease market work and boost key brand consumer relationship metrics such as sales and loyalty (Deagan 2009).
Challenges of an organization embracing digital marketing include customer access to better connections, and the challenge of bombardment. Provision of organization services and products confronts stiff competition online. The success of an origination in digital marketing depends on response to ever changing marketing dynamics that threaten the future activities of the organization. Better connection implies that consumers have innumerable options for ideas and information, and are able to switch channels and resources at will. Competitors that provide updated and trusted services pose a serious challenge in the arena of digital marketing. Bombardment as another challenge in digital marketing entails filtering of the information that customers deem irrelevant in advertisements (Prakin 2008). Filtering messages means that the organizationâs information and products are irrelevant to the client; thus, managers should be keen to address such challenges.
Digital Marketing Implementation Solutions
The first step in learning digital marketing is establishing the organizationâs selling environment and mastering the delivery of the organizational voice. Organizational voice can be created using channels such as video blogs, Facebook, Print, Linked, and Twitter. Large organizations are supposed to have a combination of numerous search engines and organizational voice. Organizational voice as a first step in learning digital marketing enables the organization to communicate with clients on a regular basis (Klososky 2012). Provision of valuable and quality services through organizational voice replaces interruption marketing systems, which were frequently applied in the past. The next step is the social media campaign organizing. Upon the commencement of conversation, there is a need for the company to augment with enormous inventory available online. Social media campaigns can be established through custom channels that include slide share, Net, scribed Flicker, and YouTube. Since the set up for custom channel is free, an organization should capitalize on all available opportunities by creating compelling and unique content that appeal to customers. Uniqueness implies creativeness and the use of the latest technologies that makes the website appealing and attracts viral uplift once the information is displayed on the site. The last step involves a close monitoring of the website progress and building the reputation. The language used must be professional, easy to understand, and polite since clients have diverged tastes, judgments, and beliefs. Learning how to offer high quality customer service, provide reliable information, and have 24/7 support services is a crucial breakthrough in digital marketing. Other useful steps in digital marketing include conducting touch point effectiveness, brand presence, setting up best digital platforms, offering reliable information to customers, and leading with trust. Leading with trust is about establishing brand objectives that target a section of customer demographic (Smiciklas 2012). Touch point effectiveness analysis aims at exploiting untapped opportunities and customer needs. Best digital platforms help an organization in determining the level of product competitiveness, and pointing out pros and cons of the activity (Fitch and Hollis 2009).
Recommendations
Interactions are becoming more intelligent, humane, and intuitive as technologies have been seeking out customers rather than clients seeing technologies. The world has become a global village where products and services across the globe can be accessed by simply navigating through organizationâs websites (Lieb 2011). Therefore, it is imperative for businesses to employ digital marketing through social media campaigns and use search engines such as Twitter and Facebook. Use of social technologies helps the organization monitor its level of growth, market share, consumer tastes and preferences, and financial muscles. It is recommended that the organization should exploit social technologies since they are cheap to create and provide instant feedback of consumers. It is through digital marketing that organizations penetrate through cultures and geographical barriers (Weber 2009). Website information can be translated to match the language pair of the desired market segment. Hence, it meets the needs of clients in the market. The availability of more features such as videos and live promotions boosts consumer trust and attracts untargeted clients (Todorov and Martin 2010). In the XXI century, these utilities have become necessities for targeting audience. Such utilities or tools are easy to modify to match consumer interests. An organization must go the digital way since technology and external forces affecting the market change day after day. Organizations that fail to integrate and embrace digital marketing are likely to lag behind in terms of wining customersâ loyalties, and trust.
References
Deagan, B, 2009, âDirect Digital Marketing Benefits Companies and Consumers Alikeâ, B&T Weekly, no. 57, pp. 114-125.
Fitch, D & Hollis, N 2009, âIs the global brand marketing as rewarding as it first Appears?â, MICA Communications Review, vol. 1, no. 3, pp. 24-33.
Klososky, S 2012, âSocial Technology: The Next Frontierâ, Financial Executive, vol. 28, no. 4, pp. 40-45.
Lieb, R, 2011, Content Marketing: Think Like a Publisher – How to Use Content to Market Online and in Social Media, Que Publishing, New Jersey.
Prakin, C, 2008, âThe Challenges and Value of Digital Marketing Integrationâ, Advertising Age, vol. 67, no. 37, pp. 121-139.
Smiciklas, M 2012, The Power of Info graphics: Using Pictures to Communicate and Connect With Your Audiences, Que Publishing, New Jersey.
Todorov, I & Martin, K 2010, âHow Will Digital Platforms Be Harnessed In 2010, And How Will They Change The Way People Interact With Brands?â, Communications Of The ACM, vol. 53, no. 12, pp. 67-79.
Weber, L 2009, Marketing to the Social Web: How Digital Customer Communities Build Your Business, John Wiley & Sons, New Jersey.