The Impact of Digital Marketing on Business

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Digital marketing presents opportunities and challenges to organizations.

Digital marketing is the dissemination of information regarding a product or service to the consumers digitally through the internet. It involves use of video or audio materials to enforce marketing campaigns. It can therefore be defined as means of advertising and promoting costumed goods and services to the clients using web based channels in a faster and efficient way. Digital marketing involves use of technologies such as “banner, e-mail, instant messages, pop up advertising, pay per click, search engine optimization, RSS, and voice broadcast” (Ryan & Jones, 2012, p, 43). In marketing, digital media can be used to deliver advertising data to the potential clients in a personalized way. It can also be used to direct customers to an organization. With the rise of new technology, marketing has undergone revolution to incorporate social media and different applications. Organizations reach their current and prospective clients in an interactive way hence enabling delivery of personalized information quickly in a cost effective manner. Encroachment of digital tools into organization has shifted the usual way of doing things, communication and selling.

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Organizations nowadays have a wide range of digital tools at their disposal that can be employed to drive marketing. The new media has also changed consumer habits and brought many opportunities in marketing across all fields. The challenge of to many organization is connecting the digital marketing with their organizational objectives, and to derive benefits from investing in digital marketing. Digital media has disrupted the traditional marketing models, forcing organizations to reevaluate the uniqueness of the goods and services they provide to their clients. With a more informed consumer who has an array of products and services to choose from through new media, intimate brands having less tangible attributes are needed. Organizations must establish trust of their brands by adopting technologies that allow deliver more personalized and interactive content to the consumers.

The intention of this discussion is to identify the opportunities and challenges of organizations who wish to use digital marketing techniques. Organizations spend a huge sum of money in new media marketing as they seek to reap from their investments in an environment characterized by dynamic marketing communications. This has caused market fragment, with reduced effectiveness being the likely outcome. Successive organizations respond to the demands of their consumers, hence endeavor to satisfy the needs of the clients by offering goods and promotions efficiently. To satisfy their current and potential clients, organizations capitalize on new media to assess the consumer’s behavior when they are doing shopping. This enables them to interact with the consumers so that they are able to create personalized products and services (Sheehan, 2010).

Digital marketing challenges identified by Valos (2008), include internal resistance because of the shift from the traditional marketing models, understanding synergies of integrating different platforms having similar functions, and managing the mobility of clients between digital and traditional models for the various goods or phases of marketing.

Organizations are also challenged in implementing digital marketing because of the great variety of digital media available. Valos however sees organization opportunities in digital marketing, including increased revenue and cost effectiveness. Other opportunities include expanded market, enhanced decision making, and increased innovativeness (Valos, 2009).

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Digital marketing presents opportunities for organizations to shift the way they interact with their clients. The interaction surpasses physical barriers hence marketers can enhance their social and personal involvement with the clients. Digital marketing can be quantified hence organizations optimize their expenditure to be relevant and costumed. This is because many consumers are increasingly moving online. The availability of many digital media means that organizations have a wide array to select from hence finding a means of reaching their consumers in efficient and effective way. Digital media can help marketers obtain real-time information from their consumers, thus marketers can respond with appropriate messages using a suitable media quickly (Valos, 2009).

According to Brady, Fellenz & Brookers, digital media increases the profitability of an organization. This is because of the potential opportunities such as viral marketing which are availed through employing new media and social networking. However, with the great variety of digital media, organizations find it difficult to identify the appropriate technology that can merge in their business objectives. Many organizations are reactive in selecting the type of digital media they use without considering their objectives and market dynamics. This technology also has the potential of closing down businesses, especially if consumer trust is abused. Digital media provides a lot of avenues for consumer interaction. If consumer expectations are not addressed effectively, the organization might be maligned through the sharing of information relating to the organization, hence breaking the organization. Another major challenge of digital marketing is the perceived intrusiveness of this model as compared to traditional marketing. Digital media having web-bugs and cookies are considered to be intrusive to consumers when they are busy on-net with different activities. The consumers are likely to develop negative attitudes, lowering the perception of the brand. The privacy of the consumers is thus invaded. Legislative measures are also a challenge to organizations using digital media in marketing (Brady, Fellenz & Brookers, 2008).

Opportunities availed by digital marketing to organization include increased interactions with the clients, hence enabling organization top develop marketing strategies based on consumer behaviors. Bird postulates that digital marketing enables personalized selling of

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brands. This is especially facilitated by use of e mail and mobile marketing. Through direct marketing and interactions with consumers, organizations can collect important feedback from the consumers which can be modeled in the development of their brands. Digital marketing also provides opportunities for organizations to do direct marketing through incorporation of technologies such as E vouchers, mobile marketing. The rapid evolution of digital technology is making it difficult for organizations to make long term marketing plans. Planning for digital investments becomes a challenge as a technology which is popular today fades as more sophisticates ones emerge. Most organizations have also concentrated more on the technological aspect while ignoring the impacts on marketing. Some customers prefer to touch and feel the products they need, hence physical location. This means that organizations have to maintain both models of marketing, translating to extra costs. Other challenges identified include higher competition, and reduced customer loyalty (Bird, 2007).

In planning and implementing digital marketing, organizations must bear in mind that the wide availability of digital media complicates design decisions hence possibility of errors which might lower competitiveness of an organization. Consumers are very dynamic and with the great diversity of digital media, the consumers migrate from one platform to another at various phases of purchase. This further complicates digital marketing. Digital media has empowered the consumers as they can tap readily unlimited information from digital marketers and interact with other clients, hence making informed decisions. This challenges the marketers to develop strategic competencies. Organizations thus must redesign their marketing objectives to integrate them in the new media to enhance communication with the consumers.

The planning and implementation of digital marketing therefore requires focus on the consumers, interactivity and building trust (MacDonald & Wilson, 2011). Many organizations have utilized the capabilities of digital marketing to reap benefits in otherwise highly competitive markets. Examples of these organizations are apple Inc. and virgin Atlantic airways.

Apple Inc. has come a long way to be one of the most successful companies that have introduced digital marketing to grow their revenues by attracting and retaining customers. A number of strategies contributed to the success of this company, including creative

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advertisements, innovative brands, and the ability to respond to the environment, hence utilizing convergence of media to market their products (Barrile, 2006). Through intensive research and development, the company came up with significant differentiation strategies including creative marketing and design of web site to handle marketing. To build brand awareness, creative and innovative marketing concepts were evolved; hence digital marketing which helped increase the acceptability of the Mac computers. Besides innovativeness, marketing is a significant determinant to success of an organization. IPod, for example has dominated the market because proper application of digital marketing. Apple employed different methods to market iPod, among them “electronic, print, the internet and alternative media” (Barrile, 2006, 147). Digital marketing was instrumental in building brand awareness hence success.

Virgin Atlantic has integrated the importance of digital media to enhance customer loyalty. This is achieved through feeding the consumers with clear objectives of the organization and enhancing their trust by working on those objectives. The organizations in turn use the media to obtain feedback from the consumers. To deliver consumer’s promise, virgin atlantics airways use every contact avenue with their clients to grow their market. The company utilizes travel websites, to get information from potential clients. It uses the social media to make a follow up how their brand is received and to check the relevance of their objectives. The company’s presence in social media like face book and twitter enhances its relationship with the clients, keeping the clients informed of any major developments in an interactive way. It has also created a number of web based interactions sites to enhance their customer’s experience, for example a system that enables on flight clients to arrange for taxi (Barwise & Meehen, 2010).

In conclusion, digital media is an effective marketing tool that organizations can utilize to reach their potential clients. This technology is however very dynamic. Organizations must uphold innovation to be able to take advantage of opportunities that are provided by digital marketing. In Rowley’s views, organizations need to make marketing a learning process to open up for the challenges and opportunities in digital marketing. Use of digital media by an

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organization must allow inputs from the consumers, use of technology and research and design. Expertise input is also fundamental in this process (Rowley, 2004).

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Rowley, J 2004, Just another channel? Marketing communications in e-business. Marketing Intelligence and Planning, 22(1), 24–41.

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