Introduction to Digital Marketing

Digital Marketing is the process of identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer needs and wants using the internet or via mobile technology. It is also known as internet marketing, web marketing, online marketing or e-marketing. Digital marketing techniques include SEM (Search Engine Marketing), SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), email marketing, viral marketing, micro blogging, blogging, podcasting, vodcasting, virtual worlds, photo and video sharing, social networking, and mobile phone campaigns using SMS (Short Message Service).

There are different online tools used for Digital Marketing, such as:

Ø  WordPress and Blogger (blogging)

Ø  Twitter (microblogging)

Ø  Facebook and LinkedIn (social networking)

Ø  Second Life (virtual worlds)

Ø  Flickr and YouTube (photo and video sharing)

Ø  Google Analytics (monitoring results)

Before adopting digital marketing, you must decide a few things:

Ø  How does digital marketing fit within your overall marketing plan/budget?

Ø  What do you want to achieve through digital marketing?

Ø  Who do you want to talk to?

Ø  How much time can you allocate?

Ø  Who in your company can manage this activity?

Ø  What’s the likely payback – and when?

There are many advantages and disadvantages to Digital Marketing.

Advantages

Disadvantages

It is inexpensive for the target audience numbers involved.          You can create instant campaigns to address hot topics          You can try different forms of advertising and access the results.          You can display videos demonstrating a product or service.          It can be highly personalised (ads on specific websites, SMS)         You can show feedback from happy customers.           You can monitor responses to ad campaigns at the click of a mouse.          You can see how many people opened an e-newsletter and when, and what further action they took.

There are many legal issues to consider, as compliance varies according to your location and the technique used.            Delivery of emailshots can be blocked or registered as spam.         It can be wasted on customers with limited or no internet access.         You are dependent on your customers technology, their computer and internet connections are outside of your control.

Digital Marketing enables small businesses to compete with bigger businesses as a company of any size can gain access to a wide range of digital marketing tools online.