Currently, there are approximately 7.8 billion people on Earth. A total of 3.6 billion of these are on social media, with 4.57 billion people using the Internet. These figures show us that people are preferring to perform increasing numbers of tasks – such as banking, shopping and keeping in touch with family and friends in other countries – using the Internet and social media.
This means that with people spending so much time online, they won’t be spending nearly as much of their days consuming other forms of media, such as magazines and hard-copy newspapers. With the new work-from-home necessity that Covid-19 has introduced, as people are not driving around as much, they are not consuming outdoor media, for example, billboards on the side of the highway.
This means that marketers and business owners need to think out of the box to reach their customers. With the surge in usage of digital spaces, this means that the most effective way that marketers can use –to communicate with their customers and potential clients – is digital marketing.
What Is Digital Marketing?
‘Digital marketing’ is the use of digital techniques to market a particular product or service. Sometimes also called ‘online marketing’, digital marketing has several techniques at its disposal. These are, for example:
- Social media marketing
- Search engine optimisation
- Pay-per-click advertising
- Email marketing
The process of digital marketing is not wholly separate from the traditional process of marketing. It still uses the tried-and-trusted mechanisms (like the marketing mix) but reinterprets it for the digital space. Let’s have a look at an example.
The marketing mix is more commonly known as the 4Ps, which stand for:
- Price
- Product
- Place
- Promotion
Price is the amount that you are going to sell your product or service to the end-user. Remember that in the digital space, as you don’t have to pay for extras such as rent and electricity for a bricks-and-mortar shop, you can afford to sell your goods for less – which makes these more attractive to the consumer.
Product is the product or service that you’re going to sell, whether its slots Canada merchandise, cheese or T-shirts! When you’re selling online, you don’t have the benefit of a human shop assistant who is there to try and close the sale. The way you present the product or service online has to be so irresistible that the consumer feels that they have no choice but to buy.
Place and promotion go hand in hand. In online marketing, the place would refer to where you’re going to market your goods. For example, are you going to use email, SMS marketing or social media marketing? Promotion refers to the type of promotion that you’re going to use to market your product. Are you, for instance, going to use Facebook Carousel Ads or are you going to boost posts that you make on your page?
The great thing about digital marketing is that it’s much cheaper than traditional marketing which allows small business owners to compete at the level of the large corporations but still produce a stunning-looking campaign.