Digital marketing is the dissemination of information about a product or a service to consumers through the internet. It involves the use of video or audio materials to enforce marketing campaigns. It can, therefore, be defined as means of advertising and promoting customised goods and services to clients using web based channels in a faster and efficient way.
Digital marketing involves the use of technologies, such as “banner, e-mail and instant messages, pop up advertising, pay per click, search engine optimisation, RSS, and voice broadcast” (Ryan & Jones, 2012, p. 43). In marketing, digital media can be used to deliver advertising data to the potential clients in a personalised way. It can also be used to direct customers to an organisation.
With the rise of new technology, marketing has undergone revolution to incorporate social media and different applications. Organisations reach their current and prospective clients in an interactive way, hence enabling quick delivery of personal information in a cost-effective manner. Encroachment of digital tools into organisation has shifted the usual way of doing things, communication and selling (Ryan & Jones, 2012).
Organisations nowadays have a wide range of digital tools at their disposal that can be employed to drive marketing. The new media has also changed consumer habits and brought many opportunities in marketing across all fields.
One of the main challenges for many organisations is connecting the digital marketing with their organisational objectives and deriving benefits from investing in digital marketing.
Digital media has disrupted the traditional marketing models, forcing organisations to re-evaluate the uniqueness of the goods and services provided to the clients. With a more informed consumer who has an array of products and services to choose from through new media, intimate brands with less tangible attributes are needed.
The intention of this discussion is to identify the opportunities and challenges of organisations who wish to use digital marketing techniques. Organisations spend large sums of money in new media marketing as they seek to reap from their investments in an environment characterised by dynamic marketing communication.
Successive organisations respond to the demands of their consumers, hence aiming at satisfying the needs of clients by efficiently offering goods and promotions. In order to satisfy their current and potential clients, most organisations focus on new media.
This enables organisations to assess the consumer’s behaviour when they are doing shopping. This enables them to interact with the consumers so that they are able to create personal products and services (Sheehan, 2010).
Digital marketing challenges identified by Valos (2008) include internal resistance because of the shift from traditional marketing models, understanding synergies of integrating different platforms having similar functions, and managing the mobility of clients between digital and traditional models for various goods or phases in marketing.
Organisations are also challenged in implementing digital marketing because of the great variety of digital media available. Valos (2008), however, sees organisation opportunities in digital marketing, including increased revenue and cost effectiveness. Other opportunities include expanded market, enhanced decision making and increased innovativeness.
Digital marketing presents opportunities for organisations to shift the way they interact with their clients. The interaction surpasses physical barriers; hence marketers can enhance their social and personal involvement with the clients. Digital marketing can be quantified; hence organisations optimise their expenditure to be relevant and customised.
This is because increased use of online services by many consumers. Digital media can help marketers obtain real-time information from their consumers; thus marketers can respond with appropriate messages using a suitable media quickly.
According to Brady, Fellenz & Brookers (2008), digital media increases the profitability of an organisation. This is because of the potential opportunities, such as viral marketing, which are provided through employing new media and social networking. However, with a great variety of digital media, organisations find it difficult to identify the appropriate technology that can merge with their business objectives.
This technology also has the potential of closing down businesses, especially if consumer trust is abused. Digital media provides a lot of avenues for consumer interaction. A major challenge of digital marketing is the perceived intrusiveness of this model as compared to traditional marketing.
Digital media having web-bugs and cookies is considered to be intrusive to consumers when they are busy on-net with different activities. The consumers are likely to develop negative attitudes, lowering the perception of the brand. The privacy of consumers is thus invaded. Legislative measures are also a challenge to organisations using digital media in marketing.
Opportunities provided by digital marketing to organisations include increased interactions with the clients, enabling the company to develop marketing strategies based on consumer behaviours. Bird (2007) postulates that digital marketing enables individual selling of brands.
Through direct marketing and interactions with consumers, organisations can collect valuable feedback from the clients which can be modelled in the development of their brands. Digital marketing also provides opportunities for organisations to do direct marketing through incorporation of technologies, such as E vouchers and mobile marketing.
The rapid evolution of digital technology makes it difficult for organisations to make long term marketing plans. Planning for digital investments becomes a challenge when a technology which is popular today fades, and more sophisticated innovations emerge. Most organisations have concentrated more on the technological aspect and ignore the impacts of digital technology on marketing.
Some customers prefer to be able to touch and feel the products they need. This means that organisations have to maintain both models of marketing, translating to extra costs. Other challenges identified include higher competition, and reduced customer loyalty.
In planning and implementing digital marketing, organisations must bear in mind that a wide availability of digital media complicates design decisions; hence possibility of errors which might lower competitiveness of an organisation occurs.
Consumers are highly dynamic, and with the great diversity of digital media, they migrate from one platform to another at various phases of purchase. This complicates digital marketing. Digital media has empowered the consumers as they can tap unlimited information from digital marketers and interact with other clients, hence making informed decisions.
This challenges the marketers to develop strategic competencies. Organisations should redesign their marketing objectives to integrate them in the new media to enhance communication with the consumers.
The process of planning and implementation of digital marketing, therefore, requires to focus on the consumers’ interactivity and building trust (MacDonald & Wilson, 2011). Many organisations have utilised the capabilities of digital marketing to reap benefits in highly competitive markets. Examples of these organisations are Apple Inc. and Virgin Atlantic Airways.
Apple Inc. has come a long way to become one of the most successful companies that have introduced digital marketing. This has increased their revenues by attracting and retaining customers.
A number of strategies contributed to the success of this company, including creative advertisements, innovative brands, and the ability to respond to the environment, hence utilising convergence of media to market their products (Barrile, 2006).
Through intensive research and development, the company came up with significant differentiation strategies including creative marketing and design of website to handle marketing. Creative and innovative marketing concepts evolved with the aim of building brand awareness; hence digital marketing, which helped increase the acceptability of the Mac computers, was introduced.
Besides innovativeness, marketing is a significant determinant of success of an organisation. IPod, for example, has dominated the market because of proper application of digital marketing. Apple employed different methods to market iPod, such as “electronic, print, the internet, and alternative media”, among them (Barrile, 2006, p. 147). Digital marketing was instrumental in building brand awareness and success.
Virgin Atlantic has integrated the importance of digital media to enhance customer’s loyalty. This is achieved through feeding the consumers with clear objectives of the organisation and enhancing their trust by developing those objectives.
The organisations, in turn, use the media to obtain feedback from the customers. To deliver consumer’s promise, Virgin Atlantic Airways uses every contact avenue with their clients to expand their market. The company utilizes travel websites to get information from potential clients. It uses the social media to make a follow-up on how its brand is received and to check the relevance of its objectives.
The company’s presence in social media like Facebook and Twitter enhances its relationship with the clients, keeping the customers informed of all major developments in an interactive way. It has also created a number of web-based interaction sites to enhance customer’s experience. A good example of digital technology is a system that enables clients to take a taxi (Barwise & Meehen, 2010).
In conclusion, digital media is an effective marketing tool that organisations can utilise to reach their potential clients. This technology is, however, very dynamic. Organisations must uphold innovation to be able to take advantage of opportunities that are provided by digital marketing.
According to Rowley’s views, organisations need to learn to open up for the challenges and opportunities in digital marketing. Use of digital media by an organisation must allow inputs from the consumers, use of technology, research and design. Expertise input is also fundamental in this process (Rowley, 2004).
List of References
Barrile, S 2006, Ingredients for the success of the Apple iPod: Marketing, Warringal Publications, Melbourne
Barwise, P & Meehan, S 2010, ‘The one thing you must get right when building a brand’, Harvard Business Review, vol. 88, no.12, pp.80-84.
Bird, D 2007, Commonsense direct and digital marketing, 5th ed, Kogan Page Publishers, London.
Brady, M, Fellenz, MR & Brookes, R 2008, ‘Researching the role of information and communications technology (ICT) in contemporary marketing practices’, Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, vol. 23, no. 2, pp. 108–114.
Macdonald, M & Wilson, H 2011, Marketing plans: How to prepare them how to use them, 7th ed, John Wiley & Sons, West Sussex.
Rowley, J 2004, ‘Just another channel? Marketing communications in e-business’, Marketing Intelligence and Planning, vol. 22, no. 1, pp. 24–41
Ryan, D & Jones, C 2012, Understanding digital marketing: marketing strategies for engaging the digital generation, 2nd ed, Kogan Page Publishers, London.
Sheehan, B 2010, Basics marketing: online marketing, AVA Publishing, Case Postale.
Valos, M 2009, ‘Structure, people and process challenges of multichannel marketing: insights from marketers’, Journal of Database Marketing & Customer Strategy Management, vol. 16, no. 3, pp. 197-206