UNIT III

DIGITAL MARKETING
Digital marketing
Digital marketing is an umbrella term for 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.
It is the process of building and maintaining customer relationships through online activities to facilitate the
exchange of ideas , products and services that satisfy the goals of both parties. With the constant growth of web and
more people connected everyday , digital marketing has become a necessity for many organizations.
Digital Marketing VersusTraditional Marketing
Traditional Marketing
Marketers can easily reach their target local
audience.
Traditional marketing has a more personal approach
since marketers can have a person-to-person
relationship in informing the public about their
brand’s name.
The public can have a hard copy of materials of
which they can read or browse through over and
over again.
It can be easily understood by the public because
they are already exposed to this kind of strategy. It
is something that most people can have access on.
Digital Marketing
Not only target local audience can be reached, but
as well as the audience from all around the globe.
Since it can reach a finite audience, getting more
popular is easy. There is no need to be physically
present in introducing the brand’s name to the
audience.
The public can also have access on different content
on websites and videos on Youtube or video sharing
websites.
Strategies implemented can reach target market
with Internet connection. Most target audience is
groups of people who have digital devices and are
always online 24/7.
There is only a little interaction between the medium Interaction is very possible especially with the use of
used and the customers. It is more of providing social media networks. Marketers take advantage of
information to the public that the brand exists with the convenience of communicating with their target
the hope of these people patronizing the brand. audience aiming to get positive customer feedback.

Print or radio advertisements can be very costly. Digital marketing is cost-efficient. The use of social
Printing materials can be expensive and you need to media websites is free of charge. Though some
hire people to distribute these. Businesses have the invest on paid ads online; however, the cost is still
need to invest money for this marketing strategy. cheaper compared to traditional marketing.
THE IMPACT OF DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES ON E-MARKETING

E-marketing refers to the use of the Internet and other electronic means to achieve marketing objectives. Due to the
rise of the Internet over the last decade, more and more businesses are now using the Internet to reach consumers.
E-marketing has risen in prominence because marketers have found that it is easier to identify customer
requirements, and satisfy them, using e-marketing.
For any business to succeed in the digital world, it needs an e-marketing strategy that can utilize the many
advantages presented by the Internet. Since the Internet is a very dynamic medium, a successful e-marketing
strategy is not only made for the present requirements, but also for the future requirements. Before we talk about
how you should plan your e-marketing strategy, let us discuss some digital technologies that are directly impacting
marketing.
Aspects of Digital Technologies that influence E-Marketing
On the Internet, the technological landscape changes so fast that it is hard to pin down all the technologies that are
impacting digital marketing in a brief overview. However, it helps our discussion if we can mention some of the
major factors that influence e-marketing today:
• Increased Speed of Dialogue
Since computers and networks are becoming faster every few months, it is appropriate that interactions in the
online world too happen very fast. If a potential customer sends a tweet towards you, you cannot reply to him after
four days. By that time the potential customer has likely moved on to your competitor. This is just one example of
the way digital networks require increased speed of response from your marketing department.
• Pictures and other Media
The rise and prominence of Pinterest has again reminded us the central importance of pictures and videos in reaching out to our
customers. Text does convey a message, but it a picture has more impact.

• Social Media Presence

We already know Twitter, which is just one of the many social sites that have changed how companies interact with their users.
Briefly, such sites allow a company to directly address their potential consumers at a personal level. Your business too needs to
have a presence in the social media so that it can reach as many consumers as possible.

• E-mailing Lists
E-mailing lists are not unique to the Internet. There were mailing lists even before it. However, digital tools allow you to easily
manage your subscribers’ list; they also allow you to run different types of campaigns on parts of your list, to research what
works with your subscribers and what does not.

• Web Presence and Website Design

In the online world, the best way to present your business to the end user is through good website design that leaves an
excellent first impression on the viewer. Website design should not just be an afterthought when creating your websites, because
it will influence your online brand for a long time to come. Good website design is one of the key features of digital marketing in
the online world.
Advantages and disadvantages of digital marketing

Advantages:

 One of the most important advantages is the fast availability of the information. The clients/users can easily get
information, by navigating the internet, about the products that they wish to purchase, and besides that, they
can check the information at anytime of the day.

 It allows the companies to save money, an aspect that is really taken into account by the companies since the
online marketing campaigns don’t require a large amount of investment.

 The previous mentioned aspect, gives less importance to the differences between large and small companies
in some way, thus increasing the competition and giving that way advantages to the customers.

 Presence on the Internet can help the expansion of the company from a local market to national and
international markets at the same time, offering almost infinite expanding possibilities.

 On the internet everything can be measured, thus it’s easier for the companies to know almost instantly if their
campaign is working or not, what company or user is interested in their products, from what cities or countries
are they, etc.
Disadvantages:

 Slow internet connections can cause difficulties. If the companies build too complex or
too large websites, it will take too long for users to check them or download them and
they will get bored eventually.

 One of the major disadvantages may be the lack of trust of the users because of the
constant virtual promotions that appear to be frauds. This is an aspect that deteriorates
the image and reputation of quality and honest companies.

 There are several customers still not aware of internet.

 The rule of trading in internet changed rapidly. It needs constant attention and
surveillance to make sure the marketing strategy really works.
Customer Retention
Customer Retention

Customer retention refers to the activities and actions companies and organizations take to reduce the number
of customer defections. The goal of customer retention programs is to help companies retain as many customers as
possible, often through customer loyalty and brand loyalty initiatives. . Successful customer retention starts with the
first contact an organization has with a customer and continues throughout the entire lifetime of a relationship.

Customer retention refers to the ability of a company or product to retain its customers over some specified period.
High customer retention means customers of the product or business tend to return to, continue to buy or in some
other way not defect to another product or business, or to non-use entirely. A company’s ability to attract and retain
new customers is related not only to its product or services, but also to the way it services its existing customers, the
value the customers actually generate as a result of utilizing the solutions, and the reputation it creates within and
across the marketplace.
Customer Retention Strategies

The easiest way to grow your customers is not to lose them

The average business loses around 20 percent of its customers annually simply by failing to attend to customer
relationships. In some industries this leakage is as high as 80 percent. The cost, in either case, is staggering, but few
businesses truly understand the implications.
1. Reducing Attrition(Wear and Tear)

Virtually every business loses some customers, but few ever measure or recognize how many of their
customers become inactive. Most businesses, ironically, invest an enormous amount of time, effort and expense
building that initial customer relationship. Then they let that relationship go unattended, in some cases even losing
interest as soon as the sale been made, or even worse.. The easiest way to grow your business is not to lose your
customers. Once you stop the leakage, it’s often possible to double or triple your growth rate because you’re no
longer forced to make up lost ground just to stand still.

2. Sell and then sell again

So many people do an excellent job of making the initial sale, then drop the ball and get complacent,
ignoring the customer, while they chase more business. To lock in that sale, and all of the referrals and repeat
business that will flow from it, you need to strike while the iron is hot to allay your customers’ fears and
demonstrate by your actions that you really care. You should thank them and remind them again why they’ve made
the right decision to deal with you … and put a system in place to sell to them again, and again, constantly proving
that they made the right decision.
3. Bring back the “lost sheep”

There’s little point in dedicating massive resources to generating new customers when 25-60% of your
dormant customers will be receptive to your attempts to regenerate their business if you approach them the right
way, with the right offer. Reactivating customers who already know you and your product is one of the easiest,
quickest ways to increase your revenues. Re-contacting and reminding them of your existence, finding out why
they’re no longer buying, overcoming their objections and demonstrating that you still value and respect them will
usually result in a tremendous bounty of sales and drastically increased revenues in a matter of days … and will lead
to some of your best and most loyal customers.

4. Frequent Communications Calendar

Avoid losing your customers by building relationships and keeping in touch using a rolling calendar of
communications. This is a programmed sequence of letters, events, phone calls, “thank you’s”, special offers, follow-
ups, magic moments, and cards or notes with a personal touch etc. that occur constantly and automatically at
defined points in the pre-sales, sales and post-sales process. People not only respond to this positively, they really
appreciate it because they feel valued and important. It acknowledges them, keeps them informed, offsets post-
purchase doubts, reinforces the reason they’re doing business with you and makes them feel part of your business
so that they want to come back again and again.
5. Extraordinary Customer Service

The never-ending pursuit of excellence to keep customers so satisfied that they tell others how well they
were treated when doing business with you. Moving the product or service you deliver into the realm of the
extraordinary by delivering higher than expected levels of service to each and every customer. Key facets include:
dedication to customer satisfaction by every employee; providing immediate response; going above and beyond the
call of duty; consistent on-time delivery; delivering what you promise before AND after the sale; a zero-defects and
error-free-delivery process and recruiting outstanding people to deliver your customer service. Extraordinary service
builds fortunes in repeat customers, whereas poor service will drive your customers to your competition.

6. Courtesy system

A powerful system that improves the interpersonal skills of your team and changes the spirit of your organization. It
involves speaking to colleagues politely and pleasantly, without sarcasm or parody, and treating them at least as well
as you would want them to treat your customers. This will help your team to feel worthwhile and important, which
makes for pleasant social contacts at work. It also motivates them to provide extraordinary service, encourages
them to be consistently pleasant in all of their dealings and to relate to customers in a warm, human and natural
manner. This results in better, warmer, stronger, more trusting relationships and longer term bonds with your
customers.
7. Product or service integrity
Long-term success and customer retention belongs to those who do not take ethical shortcuts. There must
always be total consistency between what you say and do and what your customers experience. The design, build
quality, reliability and service ability of your product or service must be of the standard your customers want, need
and expect. Service integrity is also demonstrated by the way you handle the small things, as well as the large.
Customers will be attracted to you if you are open and honest with them, care for them, take a genuine interest in
them, don’t let them down and practice what you preach.
8. Measure lifetime value
There’s a vast difference between the one-off profit you might make on an average sale, which ignores the
bigger picture, and the total aggregate profit your average customer represents over the lifetime of their business
relationship with you. Once you recognize how much combined profit a customer represents to your business when
they purchase from you again and again, over the months, years or decades, you’ll realize the critical importance of
taking good care of your customers. And because you’ll understand just how much time, effort and expense you can
afford to invest in retaining that customer, you’ll be in control of your marketing expenditure.

9. A complaint is a gift
96 percent of dissatisfied customers don’t complain. They just walk away, and you’ll never know why. That’s
because they often don’t know how to complain, or can’t be bothered, or are too frightened, or don’t believe it’ll
make any difference. Whilst they may not tell you what’s wrong, they will certainly tell plenty of others. A system for
unearthing complaints can therefore be the lifeblood of your business, because customers who complain are giving
you a gift, they’re still talking to you, they’re giving you another opportunity to return them to a state of satisfaction
and delight them and the manner in which you respond gives you another chance to show what you’re made of and
The importance of delivery for retention

Get the last mile right

Here, a reliable courier and close monitoring of service levels helps, but you can also keep customers informed on the
progress of their delivery and make the process as convenient as possible.
Get the packaging right
Not all retailers have complete control over the delivery process, but they can ensure that the packaging has that 'wow
factor’.
Offer fast delivery options
Retailers should never underestimate the 'want it now' mentality. If customers know that they will receive goods
quickly when they order, they'll keep coming back.
Set and beat customer expectations
This is vitally important, as delivery issues are guaranteed to deter repeat purchases.
Easy repeat purchases
Amazon’s one-click payments are a big part of its success online, as it makes purchases incredibly simple so encourages
shoppers to keep coming back. In combination with next day delivery, it makes it almost too easy to buy from the site.
CRM

Customer relationship management (CRM) is a term that refers to practices, strategies and technologies
that companies use to manage and analyze customer interactions and data throughout the customer
lifecycle, with the goal of improving business relationships with customers, assisting in customer retention
and driving sales growth.

Customer relationship management (CRM) is an approach to managing a company's interaction with current and
potential future customers. The CRM approach tries to analyse data about customers' history with a company, to
improve business relationships with customers, specifically focusing on customer retention, and ultimately to drive
sales growth.

E-CRM

E-CRM is the process of maximizing sales to the existing customer, encouraging continuous relationships through the
use of digital communications technologies such as operational databases, personalized web messages, Customer
Service, Email and Social Media Marketing.
One important aspect of the CRM approach is the systems of CRM that compile information from a range of
different communication channels, including a company's website, telephone, email, live chat, marketing materials,
social media, and more. Through the CRM approach and the systems used to facilitate CRM, businesses learn more
about their target audiences and how to best cater to their needs.
Contd..

As the Internet is becoming more and more important in business life, many companies consider it as an
opportunity to reduce customer-service costs, tighten customer relationships and most important, further
personalize marketing messages and enable mass customization. ECRM is being adopted by companies because it
increases customer loyalty and customer retention by improving customer satisfaction, one of the objectives of
eCRM. E-loyalty results in long-term profits for online retailers because they incur less costs of recruiting new
customers, plus they have an increase in customer retention.

As we implement eCRM process, there are three steps life cycle:

1.Data collection: About customers preference information for actively (answer knowledge) and passively (surfing
record) ways via website, email, questionnaire.

2.Data aggregation: Filter and analysis for firm’s specific needs to fulfill their customers.

3.Customer interaction: According to customer’s need, company provide the proper feedback to them.
eCRM can be defined as activities to manage customer relationships by using the Internet, web browsers or other
electronic touch points. The challenge hereby is to offer communication and information on the right topic, in the
right amount, and at the right time that fits the customer’s specific needs.
What is e CRM about?

• Customer Selection • Customer Acquisition • Customer Retention • Customer Extension

Customer Selection Customer Acquisition

• Who do you target? • Focus on the right segments and target them
• What value do they bring to your objectives? • Minimize acquisition costs
• What is their lifecycle? • Make customer relationship and service quality a priority
• Where do we find these customers? • Approach the appropriate platforms

Customer Retention Customer Extension

• Know customers’ needs individually in order to develop a • Recognize the customer’s relationship interest and
good e CRM strategy respond
• Offer value continuously in order to retain online interest • “Cross Sell” and “Up Sell”
and improve customer relationship • Service Quality
• Focus on delivering service quality to the utmost standard • Use appropriate platforms/channels
• Choose the right channels for your strategy
Differences between CRM and eCRM
CRM
Customer contacts Contact with customer made through the
retail store, phone, and fax.
System interface Implements the use of ERP systems,
emphasis is on the back-end.
System overhead The client must download various
(client computers) applications to view the web-enabled
applications. They would have to be rewritten
for different platform.
Customization and Views differ based on the audience, and
personalization of personalized views are not available.
information Individual personalization requires program
changes.
eCRM
All of the traditional methods are
used in addition to Internet, email,
wireless, and PDA technologies.
Geared more toward front end,
which interacts with the back-end
through use of ERP systems, data
warehouses, and data marts.
Does not have these requirements
because the client uses the
browser.
Personalized individual views
based on purchase history and
preferences. Individual has ability
to customize view.
Contd….
System focus System (created for internal use)
designed based on job function
and products. Web applications
designed for a single department
or business unit.
System maintenance and More time involved in
modification implementation and maintenance
is more expensive because the
system exists at different
locations and on various servers.
System (created for external use)
designed based on customer
needs. Web application designed
for enterprise-wide use.
Reduction in time and cost.
Implementation and maintenance
can take place at one location and
on one server.
eCRM strategy components:
When enterprises integrate their customer information, there are three eCRM strategy components:

• Operational: Because of sharing information, the processes in business should make customer’s need as first and
seamlessly implement. This avoids multiple times to bother customers and redundant process.

• Analytical: Analysis helps company maintain a long-term relationship with customers.

• Collaborative: Due to improved communication technology, different departments in company implement

(intraorganizational) or work with business partners (interorganizational) more efficiently by sharing information.
Different levels of eCRM

In defining the scope of eCRM, three different levels can be distinguished:

• Foundational services: This includes the minimum necessary services such as web site effectiveness and
responsiveness as well as order fulfillment.

• Customer-centered services: These services include order tracking, product configuration and customization as
well as security/trust.

• Value-added services: These are extra services such as online auctions and online training and education. Self-
services are becoming increasingly important in CRM activities. The rise of the Internet and eCRM has boosted
the options for self-service activities. A critical success factor is the integration of such activities into traditional
channels.

An example was Ford’s plan to sell cars directly to customers via its Web Site, which provoked an outcry
among its dealers network. CRM activities are mainly of two different types. Reactive service is where the customer
has a problem and contacts the company. Proactive service is where the manager has decided not to wait for the
customer to contact the firm, but to be aggressive and contact the customer himself in order to establish a dialogue
and solve problems.
Steps to eCRM Success

Many factors play a part in ensuring that the implementation any level of eCRM is successful. One obvious way it
could be measured is by the ability for the system to add value to the existing business. There are four suggested
implementation steps that affect the viability of a project like this:

• Developing customer-centric strategies

• Redesigning workflow management systems
• Re-engineering work processes
• Supporting with the right technology

Mobile CRM

One subset of Electronic CRM is Mobile CRM (mCRM). This is defined as "services that aim at nurturing
customer relationships, acquiring or maintaining customers, support marketing, sales or services processes, and use
wireless networks as the medium of delivery to the customers. However, since communications is the central aspect
of customer relations activities, many opt for the following definition of mCRM: "communication, either one-way or
interactive, which is related to sales, marketing and customer service activities conducted through mobile medium
for the purpose of building and maintaining customer relationships between a company and its customer(s)
Measuring the Digital Marketing :

Many businesses now are trying their hand in using digital marketing tools for promoting, creating awareness for
their brands. Many have studied how these digital marketing tools work or how to conduct an effective digital
marketing but yet many fall short of their expectations and fail to reap a successful outcome from all their efforts.

The following delves into this to help readers understand the measurement analytics process and apply these
effectively into their own digital marketing process:

Step 1. Identify and Set Your Business Objectives

One of the keys to success in Digital Marketing is to get everyone in your organization or business directly
involved with your campaign efforts, from top management down to every employee or member of your
organization. Senior executives and top management may not take an active part in the actual marketing activities,
but they are key to identifying and setting up your organization or companies business and digital marketing
objectives.
At this point, the business objectives you set may still be at the broadest of parameters, but it may require deeper
thinking and brainstorming than one might expect. It may answer questions like
• why you are performing digital marketing,
• why you have a website
• why you have a social media page and presence.
• These are real world objectives that are achievable and can bring great benefits to your organization in both the
short term and the long haul.
Step 2. Identify and Set Targets for Each of Your Business Objectives

Once you’ve identified your business objectives, you can now set specific goals for each of these objectives.
Top management should still be part of this process of identifying the goals of your digital marketing campaign as
this will involve a critical thinking process that involves leaders, analysts and the marketers who will execute the
campaigns to reach these goals.
Target setting for your business objectives should take into consideration all the activities, products or services
presented in your website or online presence. This can range from simply creating awareness and brand identity, or
it can be results oriented like generating leads and highlighting promos and events.

Step 3. Identify Target Segments to Focus On

Once you have a firm target or targets for your digital marketing campaign, it would be necessary at this
point to identify the target segments that your campaign will be focusing on. Segments can be people or groups of
people from a certain demographic or you can focus on certain businesses or organizations involve in a particular
undertaking or niche.
One of the sources of failures many digital marketers encounter is their lack of focus in their targeting. Many go for a
broad, shotgun approach in an attempt to reach as much mileage as possible, only to end up with a stream of traffic
that doesn’t generate leads, or low-quality leads that do not convert.
Facebook Insights gives valuable information on your social media presence traffic, such as identifying
where majority of your “likes” come from. It would be to your advantage to know that most of the likers in your
page are middle-aged men or women. This will allow you to streamline your marketing campaigns to cater to these
numbers.
Step 4. Establish Your Key Performance Indicators (KPI)
While specific objectives provide you with pinpoint accuracy to guide your campaign, you will also need to
establish Key Performance Indicators or KPI as your overall digital marketing performance gauge. These metrics can
help you monitor and identify your performance against the goals and targets you set in your objectives. Key
Performance Indicators that you can establish for your digital marketing campaign includes:

•Search Engine Rankings – good ranking can deliver tons of traffic to your website, and traffic is where you can
generate leads and sales. Measure your rank and position before and after your digital marketing campaigns
•Traffic – as mentioned earlier, traffic is your source for leads and sales. There are however different types of traffic
that you can monitor, and these include:
Overall Site Traffic – This is the baseline information of all visits to your website or landing page
New/Returning Traffic – New and returning traffic are good information to track and will give your business
importance depending on your specific goals, particularly in what kind of traffic you want to increase in your
campaigns
Mobile Traffic – The recent Cisco VNI Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast, 2014 – 2019 highlighted that
there will be 5.2 billion global mobile users in 2015. It has already reached where mobile users overtake desktop
users in terms on numbers. This infographic(a visual representation of information or data,) from SmartInsights gives
an overview of how mobile traffic will be very substantial in the very near future – and this should be taken well into
consideration in your digital marketing plan.
Contd….
Traffic Sources – This will provide you insight as to where your website visitors are coming from, so you can shift your
campaigns to exploit this opportunity
Average Stay per Visit – How long visitors stay in your sight and in particular pages matters as this can give you insight
as to whether your content is generating engagement or not
Return on Investment – ROI is an important KPI every business should track as this spells the survival of the business if
all your efforts do not contribute to the realization of your ROI

Step 5. Identify Targets for Your Success Indicators

Once you’ve identified the KPIs you will track and monitor, you need to set specific targets for each of your KPI. Targets
are numerical values and measuring performance against these values can help you measure success in quantifiable terms. The
key is to set a starting point which you can determine by following industry benchmarks as well as averages from your existing
analytics data.
Do not put targets that you do not know is good or bad from your business perspective. You might be putting targets that are too
farfetched and is impossible to achieve with your existing resources. You might also be setting up targets that are too easy,
making you waste valuable resources when you can get more results from what you already have.

Step 6. Choose and Use a Good Analytics Platform

Monitoring and measuring these metrics would be too tedious (or nearly impossible) to do manually. You need good
programs and applications, both free to use or paid, that will help you facilitate measurement. Some of the more popular
applications are listed below and are categorized according to their intended measurement index:
Website Analytics

Google Analytics– This is a free application provided by Google itself that allows you to track various information about
traffic and other information about your website
HubSpot– This is a good analytics platform that can help you measure traffic and inbound marketing that is ideal for
use by small businesses
Adobe Marketing Cloud– This integrated platform can provide you with good real-time and predictive analysis of your
website performance
GoSquared– This is another platform for real-time performance monitoring which also features a good reporting
channel to help you track revenues and ROI
Moz– Moz is a comprehensive analytics platform that combine search, social, social listening and inbound marketing
analytics
Webtrends – This platform can provide you with multi-channel measurement that includes web, mobile and social
analyticss
Contd…

SEO(Search Engine Optimization) Analytics

Google Analytics – You can get great SEO reports when you link Google Webmaster Tools into your account at Google
Analytics
Moz – Moz provides good insights on how social presence and its impact on SEO is correlating or behaving
HubSpot – The SEO tool from HubSpot can be integrated into your content for easy monitoring and optimization
RavenTools– It can give you an interactive list of where you can improve with your ranking, with data coming from
both Google and Bing

Social Media
Simply Measured– Get in-depth measurement data from various social networks which you can also integrate with
Google Analytics
Socialbakers Analytics– Provides social analytics and other comparative analysis data with your competitors
Falcon Social– Provides various applications that includes social listening and social media management of various
social networks
Adobe Social– This is a good and comprehensive tool for publishing, social listening, and social media measurement
Hootsuite– One of the more popular social media management suite available, Hootsuite can provide you with good
real-time social media performance
Step 7. Execute Real Time Improvements Based on Measurement Results

Once you have good and substantial analytics and measurement data available, you can now make
adjustments and changes to your digital marketing campaign to cater to the insights presented by these gather
information. These insights should trigger immediate action and should be executed promptly should the situation
calls for such kind of actions. But do not get too excited with every data you receive. Track only what you can take
action on and get sufficient data before you jump in and make changes.
What is online marketplace analysis?

In modern marketing, it's essential that situation analysis aims to summarize an organizations online marketplace
and its own performance to help devise or refine a digital marketing strategy.
The fig shows the summarization of different areas to review as part of broader marketplace analysis using the
classic view:
Contd.
Marketplace analysis should always start with your online audience and involves review of these 4 main
areas, asking these questions and analyzing the dynamics of the interactions between:

• Potential online audience - "What are their profile, characteristics, behaviors, needs and wants of audiences
from digital media platforms?
•Customers - A similar analysis to potential audience, but also gaining feedback on their views of your current
online presence.
• Competitors - Benchmarking the capabilities of direct competitors for your services and indirect competitors for
traffic or review of other sites for "out-of-sector"•best practice.
• Online intermediaries, influencers and partners - Establishing the strengths and weaknesses of intermediaries
who can included current or potential partners to reach and influence your audience. These include different
types of publishers from general online news to more specific blogs and affiliates. Intermediaries also include
social networks and communities
Benefits of marketplace analysis:

Marketplace analysis can help you compete by becoming more customer-centred in your online marketing
since it will show you:

• How customers research and select your products. Research gathering insight on how users search and use
social media will help you understand how you can gain visibility on search engines and with relevant
influencers.
• Where you need to improve the marketing effectiveness of your site. Competitor benchmarking using
personas can show you how well your site and marketing is appealing to different audiences and you can
learn from marketing approaches used by other competitors for traffic
• Potential revenue improvements from gap analysis. You can justify increased investment in digital marketing
by showing what potential lead and sales increase you can achieve for based by creating conversion budget
models of the size of online audience searching for your products or services and potential sales
• How your marketing capabilities compares. How your digital marketing capabilities compare to direct
competitors or out-of-sector sites to help create a roadmap of new projects or to implement "quick wins"•
• Where the quick wins lie. Where are your biggest inefficiencies in search, email marketing or different parts
of your website which you need to fix.
• Future opportunities and threats. Using a SWOT analysis will highlight future opportunities and threats from
new digital or marketing platforms, for example currently communities, mobile and branded applications or
utilities.
Viral Marketing
Viral marketing

Viral marketing describes any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to
others, creating the potential for exponential growth in the message’s exposure and influence. Like viruses,
such strategies take advantage of rapid multiplication to explode the message to thousands, to millions.

The basis of viral marketing is in the spread of information by word-of-mouth (see Word-of-Mouth
marketing), but modern technology has allowed the viral effect to include many Internet-based platforms
as well. Viral marketing may take the form of videoclips ,
interactive Flash games, advergames, ebooks, brandable software, images, text messages, email messages,
or web pages.

A new energy drink company, for example, could create an Internet video featuring a person who consumes
the energy drink before performing a seemingly impossible bicycle jump. If the video is made to look real,
it may encourage people who see it to share it with others. After the video receives enough views, the
company could reveal its true purpose, convincing its viewers to seek out more information about the drink
without ever using a traditional advertisement.
The Classic Hotmail Example

The classic example of viral marketing is Hotmail.com, one of the first free web-based email services. The strategy is
simple:

1.Give away free email addresses and services;

2.Attach a simple tag at the bottom of every free message sent out: “Get your private, free email at
http://www.hotmail.com”;

3.Then stand back while people email to their own network of friends and associates;

4.Who see the message;

5.Sign up for their own free email service; and then

6.Propel the message still wider to their own ever-increasing circles of friends and associates.
The Digital Marketing toolkit

First generation digital marketing tools

Tool Description
Email-Marketing Targeted communication composed and transmitted from a computer
network
Online Advertisement Commercial messages placed on third-party web sites

Podcasts/Video Digital media files distributed via electronic networks .(a digital audio file
podcasts/webcasts made available on the Internet for downloading to a computer or portable
media player, typically available as a series, new installments of which can
be received by subscribers automatically.

Referrals and affiliate Revenue sharing between online advertisers/merchants and other online
marketing publishers.
Search Marketing Website Promotion through optimization of search engine results pages
Second generation digital marketing tools

Tool Description
Blogs Online journal

Online Gaming Massive multiplayer games or networked games

Mashups Integration of data from more than one source into a single application

RSS/Atom A standard for web feed subscription to frequently updated content from
logs,news,sites etc.
Social Networks Online aggregations of common interest, talents, or knowledge created and maintained
by end users.

Virtual Works Holistic online environments

Widgets Programmes allowing immediate access to specific web-based content

Wikis Collaborative publishing vehicles, outsourcing content to end users