INTRODUCTION:

Marketing plays a significant role in the success of big or small businesses. Traditional marketing used to adopt a combination of print, broadcast, or outdoor commercials to improve brand awareness. Marketing is significantly affected by the development and acceptance of technology. According to statista, India’s digital population as of January 2019 was approximately 560 million which is largely dominated by mobile internet users (Diwanji, October 2019)¹. With the advent of digitalization, companies started using a combination of traditional and digital marketing.

The prominence of digital marketing can be understood with the help of Digital 2019 reports from Hootsuite and We Are Social. It stated that as of Jan 2019, 67% world population were unique mobile users, 57% were internet users, 45% were active social media users out of which 42% were mobile social media users (Kemp, 2019)². The rise in the use of handy devices with internet facilities has added to the pace of change in marketing tools and techniques.

Technological advancement enables marketers to reach, interact and engage with customers directly no matter where they are and what they are doing. To compete in the digital landscape and mark presence among netizens it is important to focus on SEO to remarketing techniques according to business, budget, and type of the product.

REVIEW OF LITERATURE:

Durmaz and Efendioglu (2016)³ tried to explain digital marketing periods and advantages, experienced transitions and differences between traditional and digital marketing. SEM and SEO were considered to be the two most important bases for digital marketing. The research suggested that in digital marketing, building good communication with customers, determining their needs and requests are crucial. While companies using digital marketing make difference with dual communication, others who do not get involved in this race, become distanced from competition gradually. The biggest advantage of digital marketing mentioned in their research is reaching the target audience in the right way by using social media and search engines.

Ištvanić et al. (2017)⁴ discussed digital advertising technologies, techniques, and media, and their advantages and disadvantages. They considered search engine optimization, search engine marketing, display advertising, social networking marketing, and e-mail marketing. Researchers are of the view that the development of modern technologies and devices that allow everyday use of the internet, even the most traditional entrepreneurs will not resist this form of advertising today and in the future. Bala and Verma (2018)⁵ acknowledged that businesses can benefit from digital marketing such as SEO and SEM, content marketing, influencer marketing, content automation, e-commerce marketing, campaign marketing, and social media marketing, social media optimization, e-mail direct marketing, display advertising, e-books, optical disks, and games.

Leeflang et al (2014)⁶ presented challenges faced by companies going digital. The result by analyzing 777 marketing executive responses revealed that filling talent gaps, adjusting organizational design, and implementing actionable metrics are the biggest improvement opportunities. Understanding the rise in popularity, Gibson (2018)⁷ conducted an in-depth review of digital marketing strategies. The study provided individuals, companies, organizations, businesses, and researchers, with digital marketing strategies to increase visibility to their target market.

OBJECTIVES:

The objectives of the present study are:

· To examine the prevailing digital marketing practices

· To integrate prevailing digital marketing tools in sales funnel using See-Think-Do-Model.

· To evaluate the opportunities and challenges related to use of digital marketing.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY:

The present research is exploratory in nature. So, the content is based on secondary data available in the form of articles, reports, newspapers, and information available on the internet.

DIGITAL MARKETING:

Attracting and engaging customers online is important as more and more people are using the internet constantly. The Internet offers opportunities to grow by engaging with potential buyers in real time. Therefore, in the modern landscape, to increase the reach, promote the product, and gain more customers companies around the world are finding new and effective ways to use the internet in marketing. Digital marketing encompasses all the marketing efforts using information technology. It includes spectrum of tactics like website marketing, search engine optimization, pay-per-click advertising, e-mail marketing, social media marketing, affiliate marketing, mobile marketing video marketing, content marketing, etc. Depending on the type and scale of business, companies need to use digital marketing tools to compete in an overly competitive digital landscape.

Digital marketing is an umbrella term for various promotional techniques used to reach customers by digital mode. Like traditional marketing, it is important to monitor the success of digital marketing using analytical tools and ROI. In simple words, digital marketing is combining technology with marketing. Digital marketing is also known as web marketing, internet marketing, or online marketing. It is both outbound and inbound. It helps in spreading awareness, attracting potential customers, and converting them into buyers. Besides, target customers search information or product or services online by themselves using search engines. The current paper discusses the eleven marketing tools in detail to attract and convert customers:

1. Search Engine Optimization:

SEO is a process of getting traffic from free or natural or organic search results by optimizing websites to rank higher in search engine result pages. Search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc show the most relevant content based on a ranking determined by an algorithm. One strategy is to use HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure) instead of HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) format as it is more secure and shows better results in search. Optimizing content for search engines helps in increasing relevant traffic. Some techniques to optimize SEO include relevant keywords, optimizing website title, description, reducing loading speed, backlinks, etc. There are three types of SEO:

· On-page SEO: This SEO focuses on all the content that is available “on the page”. Important keywords are to be used to rank higher on search engine results pages (SERPs). Keywords must be related to real-world problems or burning desires that customers might be searching for.

· Off-page SEO: Activities that take place in “off the page” i.e inbound links known as backlinks. By networking with other publishers’ companies can improve their rank in search.

· Technical SEO: It is related to the backend of the website i.e how pages are coded. Technical SEO like image compression, structured data, and CSS file optimization increase the website’s loading speed which is an important factor of ranking in search.

SEO is the cheapest way to advertise but it takes time to come to the top of the search. SEO gives long term benefits as appearing more organically is a signal of good reach. Scaling of rank reinforces name recognition and familiarity among target customers.

2. Search Engine Marketing ( SEM):

SEM is a method to increase SERP’s through paid advertising. It aims at increasing the visibility of websites in search engines using paid methods like Google AdWords, Bing Ads, etc. In this, advertisers bid on keywords. Paid methods contain little sign “Ad” at the beginning of the URL. Following are the tools of SEM:

· Paid Advertisement: Paid advertisement relies on keywords people are searching for. Advertising inventory is sold based on real-time bidding. Combination of bid amount with quality of ad and keywords decide the spot in the SERP.

· Pay-Per-Click Marketing (PPC): PPC is a paid search method of driving traffic by paying a fee to a host of the platform every time the ad is clicked. It brings a lot of budget flexibility. The biggest problem with PPC is click frauds.

SEM is the best way to increase the visibility of the business as paid ads are placed on the top of the research results. It is the most effective way to grow business for old as well as for new businesses with no visibility. It drives instant brand awareness and more leads in a short time.

3. Content Marketing:

Content marketing is the creation and promotion of valuable and relevant free content to drive traffic and leads by generating brand awareness. Content must be honest, educational, and fun to read. It must be consistent with the profile of prospects or buyers. It prompts prospects, or customers to relate, trust, purchase, and promote the product. Content marketing uses things like educational articles, infographics, white papers, e-books, videos, entertainment, webinars, blogs, and podcasts to answer specific questions of potential customers. Stimulating content leads to buying. Tie up content with a specific offer via a landing page, can easily boost the conversion of visitors.

Content marketing is the best way to create awareness among the right audience and increase the organic search. By providing relevant information it helps in boosting the interest to buy among customers.

4. Video Marketing:

Video marketing is using videos to promote products and services. It is a forward-facing marketing strategy. Visual culture is flourishing in digital realms. According to a report from HubSpot Research by Collins (2018)⁸ more than 50% of consumers want to see videos from brands. Moreover, the conversion rate of video on the landing page is over 80%. So, to outreach, it is an important piece of digital marketing strategy. According to NG Data by Stringfellow (2017)⁹, “customers prefer to watch a product video four times more than reading a product description.” Different types of video marketing used are demo video, brand video, event video, expert interview, explainer videos, animated videos, customer testimonial videos, live videos, augmented reality videos, etc.

Videos boost the retention of information. So, the video must be clear and engaging to reap good results. At present video making equipment, editing software, and delivery platform are also very cost-effective. The cost of consuming video content is also decreasing. From eyes to heart companies can connect to their audience by using effective video marketing. Video marketing is helpful in all the sphere of business like promoting the product, creating brand awareness, giving a demo on how to use products, building customer rapport, etc. It facilitates education, connection, and conversions. It helps in building backlinks to site boosting SEO results.

5. Email Marketing:

Email marketing is the use of e-mail to communicate and promote products and services. Sending mails helps in enhancing the relationship by acquiring new customers and maintaining old customers. Email is often used to promote content, discounts, and events, as well as to direct people toward the business's website. The types of emails sent in an email marketing campaign include blog subscription newsletters, welcome email, follow-up emails, special promotional offers, loyalty programs, etc. The rejection of email is the biggest problem negatively affecting email marketing. Therefore, companies should adopt opt-in email to increase the acceptance rate. Further, the email message must be relevant, creative, and personalized in small files which are compatible with different electronic devices. Lastly, to increase the success rate it is suggested to send it during working hours.

Email marketing can be used to reach a large audience easily. Therefore, the biggest advantage of email marketing is that the prospects and customers are more likely to see the mail. But on the other side, large numbers of useless emails irritate customers and force them to ignore by not reading, deleting or unsubscribing.

6. Social Media Marketing (SMM):

SMM is using social media platforms to boost brand awareness. In SMM, content, and advertorials are shared through social media based on information collected by social media platforms about individuals. Sharing content and actively engaging with prospects and customers attract the attention of the traffic using social media. It further helps companies to drive traffic to the website, and generate leads. The channels used in social media marketing include Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest, etc. Social media marketing can be owned, earned, or free.

To maximize the reach, it is important to select social media according to the target audience. Proper selection of social media leads to ripple effect as audience comment, like, share or/and follow content if they connect. The company can also leverage audience engagements in the form of word of mouth and recommendation by incentivizing audiences to share content. Social buzz can be created using promotional codes, contents, giveaways, etc.

Social media listening and engagement tools are important to monitor peoples’ comments regarding products in social media. It is very important to analyze comments to reap the benefit of good comments and to correct any bad situations in advance. Social media marketing helps in establishing a social media presence. Consistence presence on social media is important to be discovered. It is a powerful digital marketing tool as social media is one of the most important online activities as per the projection of Statista (2019)¹⁰, as of 2020, there will be 2.82 billion social network users worldwide.

7. Ephemeral Marketing:

Ephemeral Marketing is providing well-crafted visual content- image or videos for a short period, which lasts only for 24 hours. Companies use ephemeral marketing by showing day-to-day activities of a business, company culture and celebrations, training videos, contests of giveaways and live events . It is designed to take a benefit of fear of missing out (FOMO) among the young audience. Ephemeral marketing was first used by Snapchat in 2011.

Short-lived content leads to an immediate response from the user. It also helps in boosting brand loyalty by encouraging user-generated-content (UGC) related to the brand and by showing authenticity regarding faces and minds behind the brands. A sense of urgency drives the audience to take quick actions. Now days when attention span is getting shorter, ephemeral marketing able to capture the attention in a small time. Moreover, including call-to-action links to a landing page improves the utility of ephemeral marketing. Being raw, genuine, and spontaneous ephemeral marketing requires less effort to make and present the content.

8. Retargeting:

Retargeting is a revolutionary marketing tool. (Gupta, 2019)¹¹ defined remarketing as, “a personalized form of online advertising based on customers browsing history. A database is generated when a customer visits any online retailer. Pixels or cookies-based tracking technologies record navigation done by customers.” Tracking the surfing history of the customers helps in improving brand recognition and converting interest to conversion. Triggering desires by reminders encourages potential customers to return. Strong association between clicks and purchase is established in the research of (Gupta, 2019)¹¹ in context of social media retargeting. But on another hand, remarketing is very annoying as products keep popping up on every site person surf, or social media they use. Offending customers can lead to more loss than profit in the long run. Therefore, it is important to put a frequency cap so that people are not seeing ads too often or too less. It is suggested to remove ad after a certain amount of time or frequency of display.

9. Influencer Marketing:

Celebrity endorsement was the origin of influencer marketing. With the advent of ‘follow culture’ in an online environment individual having social following becomes experts within their niche. They are great influencers as they are seen as authentic. These influencers on social media are asked to promote the brand by companies for fees, commission, or free products. They generally get access to a soon-to-be-released product to promote them by making videos, writing blogs, or posting affiliated links on their blog or social media accounts. The only major drawback of influencer marketing is that a positive or negative impact on the image of the product is based on the image of the influencer.

10. Online PR:

Online PR is very much like traditional PR to increase online presence. E-PR influences people using creative writing and story-telling in the online space. The exclusive focus of digital PR is on the number of followers, readers, and shares. It includes an array of online platforms and networks like columnists, personal and professional bloggers, websites, social media, community management, customer relation, web searches, etc. PR can have media or influencers or customers themselves. Digital PR aims to gain PR hits or backlinks. It is very cost-effective and increases the trust and credibility of the brand. Digital PR effectiveness can be easily measured using Google analytics, Google URL builder, open site explorer, or share counts.

11. Marketing Automation:

Integrating online marketing tools to present consistent content across all the channels. Messages are sent automatically according to the sets of instructions called workflows. It automatically helps in identifying the audience, implement action as per schedule or customer behaviour. Marketing automation is the best way to increasing efficiency of the online marketing campaigns by time and cost-saving efforts. It helps in reaching the right audiences quickly and at scale without any error because no manual action is involved. Repetitive tasks like an email newsletter, social media post scheduling, lead-nurturing workflows, campaign tracking, and reporting, etc marketing automation can help in sorting work and tracking the performance of all the campaigns make over time.

INTEGRATION OF DIGITAL MARKETING TOOL IN SALES FUNNEL:

After critically understanding trending digital marketing tools the author tries to fit them in sales funnel based on Avinash Kaushik's See-think-do-care model presented in the Figure I. To create awareness social media, videos, and ephemeral marketing are the best tools as people are spending more and more time on social media and watching videos. Once customers see the advertisement, they shift to the consideration phase. More detailed information can be shared using SEO, SEM, email, and content marketing, which will encourage customers to think. To make products being preferred online PR and influencer marketing can play a major role. The ultimate role of marketing is to finalize the purchase. In the do phase, the possibility of purchase can be improved by hammering the customer's mind using retargeting. Lastly, to encourage customers to repurchase and like, comment, share, and subscribe care in the form of offering quality goods and services is important for loyalty and advocacy. All digital marketing tools must be integrated to get the best result.

Figure I: Integrating Digital Marketing Tools in Sales Funnel and See-Think-Do-Care model

Like, Comment, Share and Subscribe

OPPORTUNITIES IN DIGITAL MARKETING:

Digital marketing influences all sizes of business at affordable prices. It allows personalize marketing with the following benefits:

1. Bigger reach:

Digitalization has turned the world into a global village in true sense. It helps in reaching masses both globally and locally. Digital marketing reaches masses in a small-time using e-mail or social media. It can also go beyond geographies. Immense exposure gives the rare opportunity to go global for small, medium, or large businesses in a small period.

2. Precise targeting:

Digital marketing has changed the spray and pray tradition method into a precisely targeted game. A positive approach allows for targeted campaigning where ads of customers based on their preferences or initial action. It helps to increase the likelihood of sales as well as further cut down on the cost of marketing. It helps in gaining more traffic. Self-driven leads can be converted into sales easily as compared to traditional marketing. The use of digital tools ensures that the right person is viewing the content. Like, SEO allows reaching customers who are searching the web for content and topics relevant to one's business. While paid ads, videos, content marketing, and social media advertising enable businesses to target those who are most likely to be interested in products or services. The algorithm used by digital media tools helps in precise targeting worldwide and a higher conversion rate.

3. Multiplier Effect:

Digital marketing is fast and flexible to reach new customers, retain old, and build long term relationships. The sharing feature of digital marketing leads to a multiplier effect. More shares increase the ranking of the ads. Sharing of the content with followers on a personal level by viewers increases the audience as well as the brand value of the business. It can also lead to tremendous improvement in sales.

4. Interaction and engagement:

High-level interaction and engagement are offered in digital marketing. 24X7 association with potential customers by writing useful blog posts, newsletters, webinars, promotional offers, videos, etc. Like, share, and comment on them by prospects leads to direct-two-way interaction between customers and marketers. Holding the attention of customers for a long time helps the brand to build a long-lasting relationship and a credible reputation. It also helps in gaining the trustworthiness of customers. The key to remain competitive in an online environment is an association between business and customers through interaction and engagement.

5. Control:

Digital marketing is a powerful tool in the hands of businesses, which gives full control over time and budget. It is easy to make critical changes by working on criticism from customers. It also gives freedom to delete or upgrade the content or video when desired results are not achieved.

6. Cost effective:

Advertising is the biggest financial burden for big businesses and unbearable for small businesses. The digital marketing platform provides affordable advertising. Even a limited budget business can compete with large business houses for online space. The cost of digital marketing is less expensive when considered for traditional methods. Tools like Pay-per-click require payment only when someone clicks the advertisement. Content marketing, SEO, video marketing, etc when published brings visitors without any additional cost. Running an advertisement campaign on social media or websites is also cost-effective. Digital marketing, if planned properly reaches the right customers at a much lower cost as compared to traditional marketing. Cost-effective with more reach and anytime stop feature lead to high ROI in digital marketing.

7. Customization:

Reaching the right type of customer at the right time is the biggest advantage of digital marketing. The customer database is linked with digital marketing personalized messages and offers. Digital marketing techniques, market everyone according to their interest that is based on surfing history.

8. Measurable results in real time:

It is important to ascertain how successful a marketing campaign is. With advanced digital analytical tools and other online metric tools, it is easy to identify the effectiveness of digital marketing. Compared to traditional methods ad performance is shown in real-time. The number of visits, views, clicks, conversion rate, acquisition rate, cost per order all are available and can be easily monitored. The knowledge of ad performance by analyzing the data helps businesses to perform well.

9. Easy to adjust:

Traditional marketing is rigid due to long or medium-term agreements. But in digital marketing, the more budget and resources can be allocated effectively on successful campaigns or stopped altogether if the campaign is not delivering as expected. In addition to the budget adjustments, making adjustments, or updating the content is just a matter of few clicks in maximum digital tools. The easy adjustment makes digital marketing more useful and less risky.

10. Brand development:

Digital platforms help in building the company's brand reputation. Well-developed websites, well-written content, customized messages, good videos, and affiliations can help in developing a brand name.

CHALLENGES IN DIGITAL MARKETING:

Digital marketing boosts audience, deals, and profitability. But new technologies bring new challenges to deal with. Following are the challenges to be overcome by marketers:

1. Lack of skilled talent:

Right knowledge and expertise are important for success in digital marketing. Two main challenges related to skills are:

· Problem with hiring: Sourcing the candidate with creative as well as technical skill is difficult. There is a marketing skills gap as digital marketing jobs are increasing but sources are not increasing at the same pace.

· Problem with team up-skilling: Learning new expertise requires passion and commitment from employees. In general, people are always reluctant to learn new things and accepting change. But technologies are changing rapidly. So, continuously training for embedding new skills and changing behavior of the team is a big challenge for marketers.

2. Rapid changes:

The online world is changing rapidly. Investment in marketing strategies becomes obsolete more quickly due to constant change. A constantly evolving environment leads to high maintenance costs. Moreover, to boost visibility constant adjustment with changes in tools and platforms. Purchasing, upgrading, and integrating the right software and keeping oneself up-to-date regarding the application, search engines, etc, which audience are using is important to keep alive.

3. Requires a lot of hard work:

Digital marketing seems attractive but it requires a lot of time and energy to succeed. Like for crafting valuable content, attractive website, engaging with leads on different social media and sites, managing digital advertising platforms to remain in the top, etc. Updating the content or removing the outdated content in time is a critical issue. In addition, with time focus is shifting from keywords to key phrases. So, now to shoot to the top of search engines, businesses need to write around topics rather than just focusing on common keywords. All these activities require adequate staff and focus to work efficiently.

4. Needs thick skin to fight negative reactions:

Digital marketing is an open and transparent space to receive unexpected exposure to the brand. Negative feedbacks or criticisms can be visible through social media or review websites. Negative word of mouth spread more quickly than positive in an online environment. Someone’s negative comments or content can tarnish a brand reputation. Moreover, failure to respond effectively can badly damage brand reputation. Trolls have the power to destroy the brand's reputation. In addition to it, one must remain vigilant so that the marketing campaign or criticisms is not used against by competitors.

5. High competition:

Expanding locally or internationally both brings huge competition in online market space. To stand out against competitors companies must grab the attention of target customers worldwide. Organize and optimize message and site for different countries are the crux to succeed. Even for a local market, businesses need to compete with billions of websites, content, videos, ads, etc.

6. Noisier space:

The cyberspace is getting noisier day by day. Thousands of businesses are selling the same product. Million-billion of content is available on almost every topic, business, or product. The average bounce rate is increasing and the attention span of visitors is dropping. The audience wants a quick solution to their problems. The key to staying relevant in such an overcrowded space is to stay relevant to ensure continuous engagement.

7. Security vulnerabilities:

The risk of a cyber attack is the biggest challenge in the internet-dependent digital marketing. Different attacks are like Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS), phishing attacks, data breaches, identity theft, malware, etc. Such attacks affect the infrastructure system of the companies and customer’s confidence. To safeguard personal and confidential information it is important to employ additional software like firewall, use of virtual private networks (VPNs), HTPPS encryption, etc.

8. Annoying:

Excess of everything is bad. In general, a customer visiting any site is bombarded with content, ads, blogs, webinars, etc. A few digital tools like video ads, pop-up ads, retargeting ads are very annoying. They keep following the audience on every site or social media they surf. Another problem is receiving random promotional emails daily. As per CXM (2019)¹² in the report published by London-based tech firm Ogury, The Reality Report of 287,000 mobile users, fifty-two percent of respondents agree that intrusive or irrelevant messages give them a poor opinion of the app or website.

CONCLUSION:

Marketers vie for customer's eyeball. Understanding the fundamentals of digital marketing tools is essential to garnering revenues by converting leads into sales. This paper presents eleven digital marketing tools along with the opportunities and challenges in using digital marketing. According to the author, video marketing is the best technique to attract customers, and remarketing is the best technique to encourage customers to complete their purchase. To remain competitive companies, need to overcome challenges and harness opportunities for digital marketing. To conclude, it is important to prioritize digital marketing tools to stay on the top without wasting time and money. Success in the Internet age is about learning the new rules of business while not giving up on the basic business principles (Yannopoulos, 2011)¹³.

REFERENCES:

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Received on 15.07.2020 Modified on 08.08.2020

Asian Journal of Management. 2020;11(4):434-440.

DOI: 10.5958/2321-5763.2020.00066.9