UNIT VII

Digital Marketing

Social, mobile, and local marketing have transformed the online marketing landscape. Before
2007, Facebook was a fledgling company limited to college students. Apple had not yet
announced the iPhone. Online marketing consisted largely of creating a corporate Web site,
buying display ads on Yahoo, purchasing Ad Words on Google, and sending e-mail. The
workhorse of online marketing was the display ad that flashed brand messages to millions of
users who were not expected to respond immediately, ask questions, or make observations. The
primary measure of success was how many “eyeballs” (unique visitors) a Web site produced, and
how many “impressions” a marketing campaign generated. An impression was one ad shown to
one person. Both of these measures were carryovers from the world of television, which
measures marketing in terms of audience size and ad views.

Traditional desktop marketing, including most of local marketing to local audiences, remains the
largest part of all online marketing. Mobile marketing is aimed often at local audiences and is the
fastest growing form of online marketing, followed closely by social marketing on social
networks. Location-based marketing is in its infancy but it is also growing far faster than
traditional desktop marketing. SOURCE: Based on data from eMarketer, Inc., 2013a.

The Social, Mobile, Local Nexus

Social, mobile, and local digital marketing are self-reinforcing and connected. For instance, as
mobile devices become more powerful, they are more useful for accessing Facebook and other
social sites. As mobile devices become more widely adopted, they can be used by customers to
find local merchants, and for merchants to alert customers in their neighborhood to special
offers. Over time, these will become more overlapped as the three platforms become more tightly
coupled.
Around 25% of all Facebook visits are from mobile devices, and 30% of its ad revenue is
generated by its mobile audience. Likewise, local marketing and mobile are highly related: local
advertisers most often target mobile devices. And a considerable amount of mobile ad spending
comes from local advertisers. The strong ties among social, mobile, and local marketing has
significant implications for managing your own marketing campaign in this new environment.
The message is that when you design a social marketing campaign, you must also consider that
your customers will be accessing the campaign using mobile devices, and often they will also be
looking for local content. Social-mobile-local must be seen in an integrated management
framework (comScore, 2013a).

Social Marketing
Social marketing differs markedly from traditional online marketing. The objectives of
traditional online marketing are to put your business’s message in front of as many visitors as
possible and hopefully encourage them to come to your Web site to buy products and services, or
to find out more information. The more “impressions” (ad views) you get, and the more unique
visitors to your site, the better. Traditional online marketing never expected to listen to
customers, much less have a conversation with them, any more than TV advertisers expected to
hear from viewers.
In social marketing, the objective is to encourage your potential customers to become fans of
your company’s products and services, and engage with your business by entering into a
conversation with it. Your further objective is to encourage your business’s fans to share their
enthusiasm with their friends, and in so doing create a community of fans online. Ultimately, the
point is to strengthen the brand and drive sales, and to do this by increasing your “share of online
conversation.” There is some reason to believe that social marketing is more cost effective than
traditional marketing although this is still being explored.
Social Marketing Players

Fig: Socail Market players

Social, Mobile, and Local Marketing and Advertising

Social Marketing and Advertising Social marketing/advertising involves the use of online
social networks and communities to build brands and drive sales revenues. There are several
kinds of social networks, from Facebook and Twitter, to social apps, social games, blogs, and
forums (Web sites that attract people who share a community of interests or skills). In 2013,
companies spent about $4.2 billion on social marketing and advertising, and this is expected to
grow to about $6.45 billion by 2015. Next to mobile marketing, it is the fastest growing type of
online marketing. Nevertheless, in 2013, it represented only 10% of all online marketing and is
still dwarfed by the amount spent on search engine advertising and display advertising
(eMarketer, Inc., 2013j).
Marketers cannot ignore the huge audiences that social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and
LinkedIn are gathering, which rival television and radio in size.
In 2013, there were an estimated 1.1 billion Facebook members, 200 million active Twitter users,
50 million Pinterest members, and more than 225 million who have joined LinkedIn worldwide.
In the United States, in July 2013, Facebook had around 140 million unique visitors. Around
two-thirds of the U.S. Internet population visits social sites. It’s little wonder that marketers and
advertisers are joyous at the prospect of connecting with this large audience. Over 90% of U.S.
companies are using social networks for marketing purposes in 2013, and research has found that
social network users are more likely to talk about and recommend a company or product they
follow on Facebook or Twitter (eMarketer, Inc., 2012a, 2012b).
There are four features of social marketing and advertising that are driving its growth:
• Social sign-on: Signing in to various Web sites through social network pages like Facebook.
This allows Web sites to receive valuable social profile information from Facebook and use it in
their own marketing efforts.
• Collaborative shopping: Creating an environment where consumers can share their shopping
experiences with one another by viewing products, chatting, or texting. Instead of talking about
the weather, friends can chat online about brands, products, and services.
• Network notification: Creating an environment where consumers can share their approval (or
disapproval) of products, services, or content, or share their geolocation, perhaps a restaurant or
club, with friends. Facebook’s ubiquitous “Like” button is an example. Twitter tweets and
followers are another example.
• Social search (recommendation): Enabling an environment where consumers can ask their
friends for advice on purchases of products, services, and content. While Google can help you
find things, social search can help you evaluate the quality of things by listening to the
evaluations of your friends or their friends. For instance, Amazon’s social recommender system
can use your Facebook social profile to recommend products. Social networks offer advertisers
all the formats found on portal and search sites including banner ads (the most common), short
pre-roll and post-roll ads associated with videos, and sponsorship of content. Having a corporate
Facebook page is in itself an advertising portal for brands just like a Web page. Many firms, such
as Coca-Cola, have shut down product-specific Web pages and instead use Facebook pages.
Blogs and online games can also be used for social marketing. Blogs have been around for a
decade and are a part of the mainstream online culture. Around 26 million people write blogs,
and around 74 million read blogs. Blogs play a vital role in online marketing. Around 43% of all
U.S. companies used blogs for marketing in 2012. Although more firms use Twitter and
Facebook, these sites have not replaced blogs, and in fact often point to blogs for long-form
content. Because blog readers and creators tend to be more educated, have higher incomes, and
be opinion leaders, blogs are ideal platforms for ads for many products and services that cater to
this kind of audience. Because blogs are based on
the personal opinions of the writers, they are also an ideal platform to start a viral marketing
campaign. Advertising networks that specialize in blogs provide some efficiency in placing ads,
as do blog networks, which are collections of a small number of popular blogs, coordinated by a
central management team, and which can deliver a larger audience to advertisers.

The online gaming marketplace continues to expand rapidly as users are able to play games on
smartphones and tablets, as well as PCs and consoles. The story of game advertising in 2013 is
social, local, and mobile: social games are ascendant, mobile devices are the high-growth
platform, and location-based local advertising is starting to show real traction. The objective of
game advertising is both branding and driving customers to purchase moments at restaurants and
retail stores. In 2013, over 125 million people played games on their mobile devices, another 43
million on consoles, and another 97 million played online games with a PC. Of the online
gamers, about 80 million played social games, such as Zynga’s FarmVille, CityVille, and Words
With Friends. Between 2012 and 2017, gaming is expected to grow at nearly 40%, driven largely
by mobile app games and social site games.
Mobile Marketing and Advertising Marketing on the mobile platform is growing rapidly
although it remains a small part (7%) of the overall $43.3 billion online marketing spending. In
2013, spending on all forms of mobile marketing is estimated to be about $7.7 billion, and it is
growing at over 50% a year (eMarketer, Inc., 2013j). A number of factors are driving advertisers
to the mobile platform of smartphones and tablets, including much more powerful devices, faster
networks, wireless local networks, rich media and video ads, and growing demand for local
advertising by small business and consumers. Most important, mobile is where the eyeballs are
now and increasingly will be in the future: 143 million people access the Internet at least some of
the time from mobile devices.
Although still in its infancy, mobile marketing includes the use of display banner ads, rich media,
video, games, e-mail, text messaging, in-store messaging, Quick Response (QR) codes, and
couponing. Over 90% of retail marketing professionals had plans for mobile marketing
campaigns in 2012, and mobile is now a required part of the standard marketing budget. In 2013,
search engine advertising was the most popular mobile advertising format, accounting for over
50% of all mobile ad spending, and not surprising given that search is the second most common
smartphone application (after voice and text communication). Search engine ads can be further
optimized for the mobile platform by showing ads based on the physical location of
the user. Display ads are also a popular format, accounting for about 45% of mobile ad spending.
Display ads can be served as a part of a mobile Web site or inside apps and games. Mobile
messaging generally involves SMS text messaging to consumers offering coupons or flash
marketing messages. Messaging is especially effective for local advertising because consumers
can be sent messages and coupons as they pass by or visit locations. Video advertising currently
accounts for the smallest percentage of mobile ad spending, but it is one of the fastest growing
formats. Ad networks such as Google’s AdMob, Apple’s iAd, and Millennial Media are the
largest providers of mobile advertising.
Apps on mobile devices constitute a new marketing platform that did not exist a few years ago.
Apps are a nonbrowser pathway for users to experience the Web and perform a number of tasks
from reading the newspaper to shopping, searching, and buying. Apps provide users much faster
access to content than do multi-purpose browsers. Apps are also starting to influence the design
and function of traditional Web sites as consumers are attracted to the look and feel of apps, and
their speed of operation. There are over a million apps on Apple iTunes and Google Apps
Marketplace and another million apps provided by Internet carriers and third-party storefronts
like GetJar and PocketGear, app portals like dev.appia.com, and the Amazon Appstore. An
estimated 1.2 billion people use apps in 2013 worldwide (SocialMediaToday.com, 2013). By
2013, more than 100 billion apps had been downloaded.

Local Marketing: The Social-Mobile-Local Nexus Along with social marketing and mobile
marketing, local marketing is the third major trend in e-commerce marketing in 2013–2014. The
growth of mobile devices has accelerated the growth of local search and purchasing since 2007.
According to Google, local searches represented about 25% of all searches, and 50% of all
mobile searches in 2012 (Screenwerk, 2012; Searchengineland.com, 2012). New marketing tools
like local advertisements on social networks and daily deal sites are also contributing to local
marketing growth.
Spending on online local ads in the United States is estimated at around $27.6 billion in 2013 and
is expected to grow to more than $48 billion by 2017 (BIA/Kelsey, 2013). In contrast, spending
on traditional local advertising is expected to be flat during the same time period. The most
common local marketing tools are geotargeting using Google Maps (local stores appearing on a
Google map), display ads in hyperlocal publications like those created by Patch Properties,
aimed at narrowly defined communities, daily deals, and coupons.
The most commonly used venues include Facebook, Google, Amazon Local, Groupon,
LivingSocial, LinkedIn, Yahoo, Bing, and Twitter, as well as more specific location-based
offerings such as Google Places, Yahoo Local, Citysearch, YellowBook, SuperPages, and Yelp.
The “daily deal” coupon sites, Groupon and LivingSocial, and location-based mobile firms such
as Foursquare are also a significant part of this trend.

The Social Marketing Process

At first glance the large number of different social sites is confusing, each with a unique user
experience to offer, from Twitter’s micro blogging text messaging service, to Tumblr’s blogging
capability, and to graphical social sites like Pinterest and Instagram. Yet they can all be
approached with a common framework. Figure 7.5 illustrates a social marketing framework that can be
applied to all social, mobile, and local marketing efforts.
There are five steps in the social marketing process: Fan acquisition, engagement, amplification,
community, and brand strength (sales). Each of these steps in the process can be measured. The
metrics of social marketing are quite different from those of traditional Web marketing or
television marketing. This is what makes social marketing so different—the objectives and the
measures. This will become more apparent as we describe marketing on specific social sites.
Social marketing campaigns begin with fan acquisition, which involves using any of a variety of
means, from display ads to News Feed and page pop-ups, to attract people to your Facebook
page, Twitter feed, or other platform like a Web page. It’s getting your brand “out there” in the
stream of social messages. Display ads on social sites have a social dimension (sometimes called
“display ads with social features” or simply “social ads”). Social ads encourage visitors to
interact and do something social, such as participate in a contest, obtain a coupon, or obtain free
services for attracting friends.
The next step is to generate engagement, which involves using a variety of tools to encourage
users to interact with your content and brand located on your Facebook or Web pages. You can
think of this as “starting the conversation” around your brand. You want your fans to talk about
your content and products. You can generate engagement through attractive photos, interesting
text content, and blogger reports, with plenty of opportunities for users to express opinions. You
can also provide links to Pinterest photos of your products or fan comments on blog sites like
Tumblr.
Once you have engaged visitors, you can begin to use social site features to amplify your
messages by encouraging users to tell their friends by clicking a Like or +1 button, or by sending
a message to their followers on Twitter. Amplification involves using the inherent strength of
social networks. On Facebook, the average user has 120 “friends.” This includes all people they
have ever friended, including people whom they don’t really know (and who don’t really know
them). Facebook users typically have only three to four close friends with whom they can discuss
confidential matters, and a larger set of around 20 friends with whom they have two-way
communications (mutual friends). Let’s use 20 as a reasonable number of mutual friends for
marketing purposes. For marketers, this means that if they can attract one fan and encourage that
fan to share his or her approval with his or her friends, the message can be amplified twenty
times: 20 friends of the one fan can be influenced. Best of all: the friends of fans are free.
Marketers pay to attract only the initial fan and they are not charged by social sites (currently)
for the amplification that can result.
Once you have gathered enough engaged fans, you will have created the foundation for a
community—a more or less stable group of fans who are engaged and communicating with one
another over a substantial period of time (say several months or more). Marketers have a number
of tactics to nurture these communities, including inside information on new products, price
breaks for loyalty, and free gifts for bringing in new members. The ultimate goal is to enlarge
your firm’s “share of the online conversation.” The process ends with strengthening the brand
and, hopefully, additional sales of products and services. Brand strength can be measured in a
variety of ways both online and offline, a subject that is beyond the boundaries of this text
(Ailawadi, et al., 2003; Aaker, 1996; Simon and Sullivan, 1993; Keller, 1993).
Ultimately, the point of marketing is to drive sales revenue. Measuring the impact of a social
marketing campaign on brand strength and sales is still being explored by marketers, social site
managers, and researchers, but generally the results are positive: social marketing campaigns
drive sales. Whether they drive sales better than alternative online marketing measures is still a
matter of research.
In the sections that follow we will examine social, mobile, and local marketing more closely. The
focus will be on describing the primary marketing tools of each platform and how to envision
and manage a marketing campaign on each platform.

Facebook Marketing
Nearly everyone reading this book has a Facebook page. There are power users who spend hours
a day on the site, some with thousands of “friends,” and there are casual users who have a small
set of perhaps 20 friends and relatives. While most have a basic understanding of Facebook, it’s
worthwhile to review the major features of Facebook before discussing its marketing potential.
Mobile Marketing
Although still in its infancy, mobile marketing involves the use of mobile devices such as
smartphones and tablet computers to display banner ads, rich media, video, games, e-mail, text
messaging, in-store messaging, QuickResponse (QR) codes, and couponing. Over 90% of retail
marketing professionals have plans for mobile marketing campaigns ,and mobile is now a
required part of the standard marketing budget. Mobile smartphones represent a radical departure
from previous marketing technologies simply because the devices integrate so many human and
consumer activities from telephoning or texting friends, to listening to music, watching videos,
and using the Web to shop and purchase goods. The more phones can do, the more people rely
on them in daily life. More than 246 million Americans are now using mobile devices, while 140
million of these use smartphones (eMarketer, Inc., 2013d). One report found that people look at
their mobile devices at least 40 times a day. Most mobile phone
users keep the device within arm’s length 24 hours a day. For many, it’s the first thing they
check in the morning, the last thing they check at night, and the first tool to use when there’s a
question of where to go, what to do, and where to meet up.

Refer m-Commerce also.