Digital Marketing and Social Media
Digital marketing is 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. Digital marketing’s development since the 1990s and 2000s has changed the way brands and businesses use technology for marketing. As digital platforms are increasingly incorporated into marketing plans and everyday life, and as people use digital devices instead of visiting physical shops, digital marketing campaigns are becoming more prevalent and efficient.
Digital marketing methods such as search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), content marketing, influencer marketing, content automation, campaign marketing, datadriven marketing, e-commerce marketing, social media marketing, social media optimization, e mail direct marketing, display advertising, e books, and optical disks and games are becoming more common in our advancing technology.
Digital Marketing
The marketing of products or services using digital channels to reach consumers is called digital marketing. The key objective is to promote brands through various forms of digital media. Digital marketing extends beyond internet marketing to include channels that do not require the use of the internet
Social Media
Social media are computer-mediated technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, career interests and other forms of expression via virtual communities and networks. The variety of stand-alone and built-in social media services currently available introduces challenges of definition; however, there are some common features Social media are interactive Web 2.0 Internet-based applications. User-generated content, such as text posts or comments, digital photos or videos, and data generated through all online interactions, is the lifeblood of social media.
Key Dimensions of the Digital Communication Environment
Since 1982 digitization has taken place and there has been a steady increase in the use of digital technologies. Products such as televisions, telephones, watches, cameras and music have changed to digital formats. As digitization spreads, the level of connectivity across devices, people and locations increases. For example, photographs can be shown on computer screens, shared on social networks and stored remotely in the computing cloud.
The Internet connects billions of people and organizations around the world, allowing fast transfer of information. Intranets connect people within a company, facilitating communications, and extranets connect a company with its trading partners, such as suppliers and distributors. In this chapter we are concerned with four dimensions of the digital age that have implications for marketing: 1) technology, 2) applications, 3) marketing, 4) audiences
Digital Promotions and Social Media Planning
The formulation of the digital marketing plan is likely to be informed by four significant and interdependent elements. Strategic alignment of digital promotional activities with corporate, marketing and marketing communication strategies is important as it should ensure development of a potentially successful digital marketing plan. This process should also help define the purpose of the digital marketing activities.
The value proposition should emphasize the unique advantages created by the use of digital technologies for example, choice (amazon.com offers the world’s widest and deepest range of books at very low prices), convenience (tesco.com offers round-the-clock shopping), community (Facebook brings people together around the world). The value proposition created through the relative advantage afforded by digital technologies should reinforce core brand values and be clearly articulated to target audiences. It will also determine the extent to which organizational change is required.
