Digital Marketing as a Marketing Medium

Digital Marketing, commonly referred to as internet marketing, web marketing, online marketing and e-marketing, represents marketing goods and services via the internet and mobile platforms.  

Digital Marketing hold a number of various techniques. These include; Search Engine optimisation ,Search Engine Marketing, email marketing, viral marketing, micro blogging, blogging, podcasting, vodcasting, virtual worlds, photo and video sharing, social networking, and mobile phone campaigns using SMS. 

Within digital marketing, there are a number of tools to enhance marketing strategy, examples of these include: WordPress and blogger, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, Flicker and YouTube and Google Analytics.  

Q1. There are a number of characteristics of the web as a marketing medium. These Include, Global Nature, Cost, Viral marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media, Push and Pull advertising, Interactivity, Feedback, Google Analytics, Speed, PPC, 24/7. 

Global Nature:  

Within digital marketing, there are no confinements to where you advertise, which results in companies spreading the awareness of their product or service at a more rapid pace. Emails and campaigns can be sent by email or posted on various websites, which in turn, will reach consumers worldwide, not dependent of geographical location. Global marketing can enable a company to gain more financial stability. 

Cost: 

Digital Marketing has cost effective advantages over traditional marketing. A skilfully planned and effectively targeted digital marketing campaign can reach at a faster rate to targeted customers at a substantially lower cost. Digital marketing can allow companies to nearly permanently replace costly advertising in newspapers, television and radio channels.  

Viral Marketing:  

Viral marketing is a marketing technique that encourages receivers to spread the awareness of information, a video clip or a product, and in turn, the information develops like a virus. Viral marketing entails brands and companies using pre-existing social networks to make consumers aware of their brand focus and products/services. Viral marketing will only be successful if the receivers will be willing to pass the information along their social platforms.  

Google Analytics 

Google Analytics presents where your visitors on your site are coming from, their activity on your site, and how long they stay on your website. Google Analytics provide the most successful activity and pages on your site, which in turn can improve your website by providing information that consumers take an interest in. By using Google Analytics, a business can make intellectual decisions that can lead to beneifical advantages to your business, e.g., if a certain website was dominating your traffic, a business could look for alternative websites that can possibly gain exposure with consumers who could be interested in your product or service.  

SEM (PPC) 

Search Engine Marketing is based on a pay per click basis. PPC involves when a company pays when a user of from their website clicks from an ad that directs them to your website. SEMs are a cost effective digital marketing technique as the ad is only produced when certain search words are entered, and the company solely pays when the traffic is directed to your site.  

Social Media  

Social Media provides a way to connect with people of similar interests, regardless of a geographical region. Social media allows businesses to share and create content to promote and spread the awareness of their products and services. Many companies create official pages and post videos demonstrating products, text updates, and anything that encourages brand engagement, which includes competitions and paid promotional videos. 

Push and Pull Advertising 

Push advertising involves getting a product directly to a consumer. It is a strategy that companies use to “push” their product on a consumer. Push marketing is often used by new businesses to promote their products and services and to gain exposure, an example of a push strategy is face to face showrooms, selling products directly.  

Pull advertising is based off trying to get consumers to come to you as opposed to pushing your product upon them. This form of advertising entails companies stocking products based on the demand of their consumer base. Examples of pull advertising includes sales and discounts and mass promotion amongst social media.  

SEOs 

SEO’s, commonly referred to as Search Engine Optimisation ensures that your website is created so that your pages are returned first when completing any search into search engines. SEOs are very beneficial to businesses as they are cost effective. Since there are hundreds of millions of websites available, it can be difficult to gain exposure, so in turn using SEOs will aid businesses to make their brand known.  

Rich Media 

Rich media is an effective way to advertise within digital marketing as it is more advanced and it allows for videos and audio within advertisements which in turn permits more engagement with viewers and consumers as opposed to text advertisements and display. Rich media has many benefits including brand awareness in comparison to other formats of online advertisements.  

Speed 

Digital marketing moves at a constantly rapid pace. It is very easy to find the information you need on a product within digital marketing due to its links with social media platforms and search engines such as Google and Bing. You don’t need to look for an ad on a TV or go through a magazine to discover what you need to know about a product or service