Throughout my first year at university, the same words keep creeping up time and time again, "Digital Marketing." Obviously times are changing, technology is becoming more and more advanced every day and the majority of people have smart phones which give them access to social networking sites almost 24/7.
So I guess yeah, digital marketing will becoming the "norm" in the next few years to come, but the first thing I thought to myself was "what is it" I mean yeah I know about social networking sites and how companies are using them more through PR to keep in contact with consumers, but what else is it?
What it is
Digital marketing contains a whole number of things:
- Web email
- Digital TV
- wireless media
- digital data about users.
And all of these different sections of digital marketing can be analysed thoroughly themselves. expanding those fields however, creates more "well known" types of digital marketing including:
- Internet marketing,
- Internet advertising,
- Search marketing,
- Email marketing,
- Mobile marketing,
- Viral marketing,
- Online retailing,
- Advergaming (Online games to advertise)
- Social web marketing. (Baines et al, 2011)
Why do companies need to use Digital Marketing?
Part 1- Social Web Marketing - Manage online reputations
The use of social web marketing can allow businesses to keep up to date with what their customers are talking about, their needs, their wants , and use that as an opportunity to create new ideas for products/services, or advertise existing product. Blogs are used more and more by people to review products created by companies, and users will look at the reviews and make a judgement there and then. (The Nielsen Company research shows: 70% of people trust online recommendations, from complete strangers). Books, such as "The New Rules of Marketing & PR by David Meerman Scott" which talks about how companies who are active user's on blogs can be involved with their customers, allowing them to comment on any problems that customers are having, or see a negative or positive side to their product, thus take into consideration any changes or features that they could adapt in their next model.
"The old way of doing business is over, the time of brands dictating and advertising interrupting is now being overtaken by inter-active community-orientated engagement marketing." ( Ahonen & Moore,2005).
So what social media should companies use/interactive/look at? The majority of social networking sites can be seen in "The conversation Prism" image, taken from http://www.theconversationprism.com/. Some think that every company should be active on every single social media, but really, is that what a company should do? There are millions of users on your social networking sites such as Twitter & Facebook, 72 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute! But what about the not so well known sites, should companies be active on every single one. Personally I'd say a big fat NO! Why is that? Because yes, companies should be proactive with social media, but if they were to invest into every single social media platform available, a lot would be irrelevant for that company, a waste of money or really just a waste of time. So yeah, the main social media sites is it definite for any company, even a sole trader/partnership, small enterprise business, especially as there is not cost at all, and it does not take a high-tech wizz kid to set up. And definitely keep track of Blogs, whether they're directed at your product/company directly, competitors, the same field of work or just generally related to you, what's the worse could happen!
Feel free to leave a comment on what you found interesting/liked about my first "proper" blog post, and all opinions are welcome,
Cheers guys :)
Kyle
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