What is digital marketing? How does it impact your startup business?

 What is digital marketing?

It is the term used to describe the marketing services of integrated market used to attract, convert and even engage customers online. Digital marketing is basically the process of the promotion of material or anything with the help of one or more kind of electronic media. Nowadays you must be very good at digital marketing in online world to get more eyes on your merchandise.

For example, ways of advertising which might be used as the part of digital marketing strategy of any business must include promotional efforts made with the help of the social media, internet, online marketplace, electronic billboards and mobile phones, even also with the help of internet ads television and radio channels.

The role of digital platforms:

Its role in supporting multichannel marketing is very important sort or component part of digital marketing, oftenly overlook. Online channels also manage to support the buying process for small-scale to large-scale customer relationship.

How does it work?

Source:http://www.slideshare.net/liblog/cipraworkshop-future-communications-by-michael-slaby-edelman-digital 

Measuring The Effectiveness of Digital Marketing :

• The ultimate criteria to expand any type of business initiative should be its return on every investment or different financial metrics in common; the evaluation criteria for the digital marketing campaigns can be discussed in more briefly.
• All the criteria or metrics is classified according to their type and time of span. According the type, either we can evaluate these campaigns quantitatively or qualitatively. Quantitative metric includes “Sales Volume” and “Revenue Increase or Decrease”.
• On shifting the focus to the time of span, we may or may not need to measure some “Interim Metrics”, if the overall initiative was successful or not. As an example, most of social media metrics and indicators such as shares, likes and comments may be classified as interim metrics while the final increase/decrease in sales volume is clearly about from the final category.
• The correlation between these categories should exist for sure. Or else disappointing results will happen at the end in-spite of the illusion of success perceived early during the project.
• In contrast to traditional methods of marketing, Digital Marketing generates more revenue and is less time consuming.
• Digital Marketing provides exact data and figures whereas in traditional business, we work on Approximate data and figures, which are not exact.
• Due to changing trends and advancing technology, Internet has become a great medium for advertising. It provides marketing on one click.

Conclusion:

Digital marketing is all about utilizing every digital technology to achieve your marketing goals or objectives. There is no necessary need for the digital marketing to be separate from the marketing department all the time. The objectives of both are very similar. For now, it remains a very useful term because of the requirements of certain skills for utilization of the digital technology necessarily. As per our developing skills report, many of the marketers are now spending more than 50% of their precious time on the digital marketing activities or terms and two of the three top job roles in marketing are digital, so clearly digital skills are needed.

How can marketing automation support startups through festive season?

The festive season has already knocked the door and this is the right time for most of the retailers especially the one dealing in consumer good to make the most out of ,or over, it’s the right time to convert your prospective leads into long-term clients. But, how does one do that? Well, the answer lies in technology. All of you who would be reading this right now would agree with me on the fact that technology is a panacea and is helpful in finding out the right way to make more business. Marketing automation can prove as one shot that will hit the dart right at the point.

How marketing automation will help your business this festive season?

If you have been using marketing automation, I’m sure you would have noticed the difference in your war of working from what it was before but for those who still haven’t experienced the difference, you must immediately get this tool on board so that your sales and marketing performance escalates.

The success of any business lies in the fact that how well-connected you are with your customer. Marketing automation helps in regular and continuous interaction with the customer on time and real-time.

Marketing automation helps in managing action points of communication with consumers in advance to avoid any indistinctness especially when the flow of traffic is high during the festive season.

Application of marketing automation:

Here we will be focussing on a case study which shows how marketing automation tool can help business flourish during the festive season. We all know that all the e-commerce companies come up with various offers and sale during the festive season and they promote offers during a limited period and date, thus, it becomes paramount that the information about the date of offer and details of offer should be intimated to the customer well in advance. Here comes the role of marketing automation which helps pre-planning the communication workflow with the consumer. The tool runs through the historical data of the consumer and identifies the preferred channel of interaction like email, messages, social media, mobile apps etc. and then this data is used to interact with the customer and disseminate information accordingly. Marketing automation allows traction with consumer and hence, is the best tool to gain back the interest of the consumer in buying a particular product or service.

Let’s take another example, suppose a person buys mobile phone online, then there is a high probability that the person will also buy a mobile accessory in future. Marketing automation can help the company reach out the customer with various offers related to mobile accessory thereby leading to purchase from the same portal.

The applicability of marketing automation is not restricted to e-commerce or online purchase, rather, companies and retailers can use this tool in their store as well. For example, when a customer visits a store and is connected to Wi-Fi, marketing automation tool identifies the customer and can send information related to offers that the store is offering on a particular day. This real-time interaction can help in increasing the probability of sales, especially during festive season.

Email marketing is yet another version of marketing automation which will help you gain your customer’s interest and regularly engage customer with the brand and its offers.

Marketing automation has proven to be a tool that can help your business grow and escalate to the high level of success.

A deep dive into online marketplace : how does it works, pros and cons

A marketplace is generally a location where people purchase or sell goods and services. It is the place where the seller meets the buyer, whether it is a B2B or B2C type of market. A market can be a wholesale market, retail market, high end or a street market according to the brands available, and the target customers of the locality. There are concepts like Supermarkets and Hypermarkets where one can find everything, from Safety pin to High-End cars under one roof.

Online Marketplace is an e-Commerce marketplace where products/goods/services are provided on an online interface. Here the transactions are facilitated by the operators of such online marketplace. e.g Amazon, Flipkart etc. the online marketplace is a dais from where the sellers display their products with the help of online marketplace operators, who in turn facilitate the financial transactions on a commission basis, while the final delivery of the goods, the after sales services responsibilities lie with the sellers. Hence and online marketplace provides a vast array of goods /services as compared to retail stores, where the prices are also competitive due to huge inventories of goods.

Sellers/Wholesalers have started selling their products through the online marketplace with the help of marketplace operators. Sometimes, these sellers also concern business mentor who guide them to select the best suited platform for business. Sellers can sell their products to the customers through multiple online marketplace operators, simultaneously. The inventories/ stock, never lie with these online marketplace operators. These online marketplace operators enable buyers meet sellers online and facilitate financial transactions thereof. The sellers usually make a list of products they intend to sell and thus upload them with the online marketplace operators. In few cases the sellers give the responsibilities of advertising, financial transactions, delivery of the goods, and after sales services of their product entirely wit the online marketplace operators, while in some cases the responsibility of delivery and after sales services lie with the sellers, while the responsibility of advertising the product lies with the online marketplace operators. The online marketplace operators generally pay the sellers for the goods sold in 7 days. On an average, the online marketplace operators charge around 15% commission for the products on their portal.

Worldwide Statistical Analysis :

Customers prefer online marketplace because,

• 73% find it time-saving.
• 67% think there are more varieties.
• 58% feel relaxed because it is less crowded.
• 59% think it’s easy to compare prices.

From a sales perspective, in 2016 global B2C e-commerce sales is expected to reach 1.92 trillion US dollars which will increase to 2.14 trillion, 2.36 trillion and 3.42 trillion US dollars in 2017, 2018 and 2019 respectively. In 2020, it is expected to grow almost double the figure of 2016 to 4.06 trillion US dollars.

In India, the sales figure of e-commerce marketplace in 2016 will be around 23.39 billion US dollars which will zoom to 37.5 billion US dollars in 2017, 52.54 billion US dollars in 2018, 65.09 billion US dollars in 2019 and 79.41 billion US dollars in 2020.

In 2016, Worldwide number of digital buyers is expected to reach 1.61 billion which will increase to 1.77 billion, 1.91 billion, 2.07 billion in 2017, 2018 and 2019 respectively. The forecast for a number of digital buyers in 2020 is 2.59 billion.

A number of digital buyers in India is expected to touch 112.7 million from there it will go on increasing to 153.2 million in 2017, 192.6 million in 2018 and 239.7 million in 2019. Further, it will go on and reach 288.9 million in 2020.

Let’s look at some benefits of online marketplace:

• The online shopping trends are increasing day by day and the sellers have also started catering to the demands of the consumers.
• The online marketplace is having its own numerous profits and positive points involved, both for the consumers as well as the sellers.
• All the products are just a couple of clicks away, as one can shop right from his home, flexible payment options, the customers can easily return the products if no satisfied with the products, can review his shopping etc. the buyers can compare thousands of products and prices to purchase accordingly.
• A consumer can shop anytime as the online marketplaces are open throughout the entire day and night.
• A local seller gets an opportunity to sell his products to the customers of the entire world with the help of online market.

There are some drawbacks as well:

• The consumers cannot check the product quality before the delivery of the products.
• The consumers in few cases, incur losses due to the faulty products and faulty handling during delivery.
• The sellers incur losses due to the return of the products, logistics involved in it and in some cases return of used products (used by the customers for 5-7 days).
• The online marketplace operators take around 7-30 days for the payment of goods to the sellers.
• Sellers have to offer coupons and discounts to stay ahead in the competition which will affect their profitably.
• Apart from product cost, a buyer has to pay shipping cost as well.