The importance and power of Digital Marketing

Things are changing every second in Information Technology Industry. In 21st century, the enhanced digital products have created a brand-new living style.

In the past, people tend to enjoy watching TV while they are having meals. For now, mobile phone has entirely replaced TV and can do even more.

People used to go to shops far away to get what they need but as time changed, most people tends to purchase in E-shops instead as it is much more convenient and saves lots of time.

Most consumers are so into this colorful online universe. And this has led to an enormous change in previous marketing environment. Nowadays, fewer and fewer people are shopping in person which has caused a gradual drop for offline shops. TV Ads are also out of time for the recent years as they are not supposed to reach a range of the target audiences. Smart marketers should have sensed the traditional Ads and medias have been a spent force. In this circumstance, what they need to do is to improve the existing situation is to find out a way. As a matter of fact, online marketing, one of the approaches of Digital Marketing, has been quite an obvious life-saving straw for them and it also seems to be the best for now.

So, what is Digital Marketing? You can say it is a combination of Information Technology and Internet, which aim to get a better promotion purpose.

Due to the surging technology enhancement, Digital Marketing is no longer limited to computer. It is also applied in smart phones, tablets and some other platforms. This has greatly solve the problem of limitation of location, time, cost and other factors.

#1.1 The importance and power of Digital Marketing

Digital Marketing is being more and more universal in the world. It has been commonly used through the whole hierarchy in every company which definitely shows its effectiveness.

According to data from Audit Commission, there is a steady growth in resources that was put in Digital and Media promotion areas. It is estimated till 2017, the annual increment has reached over 30% when compared with 2015, which presents a much faster pace to traditional marketing channels. Same situation happens in US. From data of U.S. Commerce Department, from second quarter of 2013 to same period of 2015, increment of Ecommerce has far beyond physical shops. What’s more, sales amount of latest Thanksgiving faced a drop unexpectedly.

Shopping online has no longer been a privilege for young people. As a matter of fact, over a half of users aged 45-64 have attempted to purchase online and even for users over 65, it is estimate over 48% of them have attempted to purchase online. Once you begin your Ecommerce, it is also a symbol that your products and services are facing the whole world. All users in the Internet may be your potential client through your website or E-shop.

# Personal Sharing

I would like to share my personal experience. As a father of three children, I would like to purchase health products for them to keep them healthy. Actually, there is a list for all the supplements and Organic products sorted out. Given most of the products are not available in HK, I have to find them on one of the E-shops from U.S. district. As time goes by, my own experience shows that this E-shop is very competitive among the industry as it has a wide coverage of products users may need and its pricing strategy is also very competitive. Besides, transportation has been efficient and fees are so reasonable (HKD 40 for each order).

Digital Marketing is always with a great impact on all industries. Even you have earned an Exclusive title for a brand in Hong Kong, users may still purchase online on other market. At the same time, we can see the rise of a new business model built up by Uber and Airbnb. These creative models are all accelerating Ecommerce to enter our life. The Eco-system in the entire industry is changing, if you want to keep the competitiveness of the brand, to study user’s behaviors and customize your own strategy is a must.

Plenty of professional term may ring a bell when talked about Digital Marketing. Most frequently, we can see: Search Engine Marketing (short for SEM), Search Engine Optimization (short for SEO), Social Media Optimization (short for SMO) and all related Analytics. These complex terms and concepts are becoming more and more important if you want to beyond your competitors and become a winner. So you’d better study and make good use of them.

Beside what we mentioned above, Digital Marketing itself, is also changing day by day and has outstretched some related strategies, such as: Search Marketing, Display Marketing, Video Marketing, Social Media Marketing and Mobile Marketing. All of them have different target audiences and can help on your business on different aspects. You may ask why and the reason is simple: all these marketing strategies are based on data of user’s behaviors. It’s the best way to provide what user might need by knowing their behaviors. It’s not an exaggeration that your business will be eliminated if you cannot catch up with the change of the market.

#1.2 Difficulty of Digital Marketing: Master of measurement

Marketing Giant Peter Drucker has ever said: If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it.

In the past, marketers used to wait for 1-2 weeks for a better understanding for the result of their marketing strategy. For now, instead, marketers can evaluate the results almost simultaneously as they can get instant data from digital tools. This proves how valuable data is and furthermore, the question is how to change data to business?

Marketers are supposed to find out users purchasing behavior and set up Digital Marketing Strategies accordingly. It is not a certainty the same pattern of strategy can suit different products and industries.

The key to success is to sort out the pattern and amend strategies timely due to plenty of factors reflected from data.

A brand new Digital Marketing Model may help you to enhance your competitiveness. It is also a compulsory measurement for your business.

As a Digital Marketing Planner/Strategist, there are so many Digital Strategies have been proposed to enterprises and mid-level companies. All those strategies are developed through the experiences and knowledges for the past years. Till now, they have helped on the companies we are cooperating, on catering targeted audience expanding their market and enhance users’ experience to the Ecommerce site.

I would like to take it as a metaphor: a Marketing Strategy is like a guiding star, which provides a clear direction for marketers and the company and lead them to the final destination. It is also an arsenal, whenever you need a weapon, you will always be able to find a suitable one in it to win the battle.

#1.3 Combination of Technical approaches and Operation

1)In the first interaction with the user, could the existing content solve their problem or satisfy their needs. Or is it special enough throughout all similar contents from your competitors?

2)Are you prepared to face to negative comments of your brand?

3)Once any PR Blunder happens unexpectedly, would there be any instant approach you can take to solve it so that you can maintain a good relationship with the users?

Professional markers should have a full picture of the marketing plan so that they can properly distribute the resources and budget to both Online and Offline aspects. For Start-ups and Non-Profit Organizations, it would be very helpful if they can make good use of Digital Marketing so that they may expand their TAs and markets.

As most of us know, Digital Marketing’s coverage is far beyond Traditional one. Of course we are not talking about Traditional Marketing Strategies are to be get rid of. Instead, we would rather say Traditional Marketing concepts are to be turned into Digital Marketing. Every Digital Marketing plan for a specific company is so how based on their Traditional Marketing purpose. The point is digital ones can achieve much more in this era.

# Case sharing: Timing and accuracy matter in Digital Marketing

Last Oct, an aesthetic medicine brand decided to launch an online advertising. They found two celebrities: Louis Yuen and Michelle Lo to act as twins. Two twins are treated very differently, which lead to a tremendous contrast for their external experience of skin. Through this angle, this brand wants to show the importance of skin care. Once the advertising is launched, voices and Social Mentions for both the brand and the 2 celebrities have greatly increased. Aside from the surging views to the advertising, the Facebook like amount of the brand also boosted for 10% due to the hot topic.

As a matter of fact, Louis Yuen and Michelle Lo has ever acted as twins before in a show in 2010. This aesthetic brand grabbed the opportunity and re-heated this topic successfully so that more users know their brand by this topic. Of course, the “twins topic” can also be adopted by other brands when it is still upsruging.

Hot topics are created every day. Whether they can bring in benefit to your own brand depends on how marketers use it. In 2016, one of the classical music “Mariage d’amour” from Mozart are matched with a single lyric “chicken, all of them are chicken”. Lots of ideas are linked up to this song from various industries’ marketers. In another case, there was a tutorial teacher showing a thank your message in WhatsApp on his Facebook, he claims the message was sent by his student. But soon, netizens doubts on the reality of the message. At the same time, plenty of marketers realized that this approach can make voice and social mentions. They just do the similar thing to attract more user to know their brand.

I suppose most markets know the importance of instant response in Digital Marketing, there ae still many factors that might not allow the posts in their brand Facebook to meet the “instant” criteria. We can think in this way, from the time we find out a topic, it takes 1-2 days for how to use it properly and design the post contents, some of the companies might also need to pass the hierarchy approval of the post, which should also take 1-2 day. Once it gets approved, the topic is not long heat anymore.

From the assumption above, we may see in this new era, Timing and Accuracy is so critical that it is directly link up to whether the plan can be successful or not.

#1.4 Three keywords in Digital Marketing

1.Relationship Marketing

There are three different modes of linkage in Digital Marketing: Financial Bonding, Social Bonding and Structural Bonding. The last Bonding will be the most practical way, let me explain more below:

1)Financial Bonding:

Financial Bonding mostly depend on the price and there is very few consideration paid in the quality and brand. We’ll take Ctrip as an example, it contains all kind of flight companies’ schedule. Most users can easily choose the lowest price ticket on it. This is what is called Financial Bonding.

2)Social Bonding

Not only focus on price, but also tend to rely on a certain brand. Given quality are the same, users still tend to focus on price. We’ll also take an example here. A Company is my frequent purchase company with reasonable price. But I found B Company is with a more attractive price. I will purchase in B Company this time but I will still consider to purchase in A Company in priority next time as I know the staff there and we always have some nice talks when I am finishing the payment.

3)Structural Bonding

Compared with the two bonding above, Structural Bonding is so different that users can not reject to choose you. For this part, we would like to take Apple as an example, getting an Iphone is so easy because Steve Jobs tells you Iphone can read out your email now. Later on Steve says you watch does not need to rely on your phone to get message, SIM card could be inserted to your watch. Then you become a big fan of Apple, expecting their latest product every moment. Maybe you think of to quit its product somehow, but you just can’t because you are linked with it and you can’t guarantee you can fit other product again.

2.Personalization

This part will contain four aspects: Product Personalization, Website Personalization, Email Personalization and Communication Personalization.

1)Product Personalization

Amazon is one of the biggest shopping website in US. After you search the books you want in the website, Amazon will remember your preference recommend thing that might interest you. More data you have ever searched, more accurate the recommendation will be.

2)Website Personalization

Have you ever think of this question, every one launched a website, they are seeing the exact same standard page. What if the website can know every time the user gets in, they tend to enlarge the wordings so that they can read the contents and next time he visit the website, the website can automatically enlarge the wordings to convenience the user.

3)Email Personalization

Promotional emails are so command in all industries, but have you ever checked whether the recipient’s name are correct or not or these email are read or not?

4)Communication Personalization

To customize every communication makes the users know they are respected and increase the possibility of success. To send them the content they need at a reasonable frequency can gradually build up their awareness to your brand.

E-CRM Strategy can be developed by customizations factors mentioned above, choice assistant will be very helpful at this stage. A choice assistance is a tool to narrow down what you need. In other words, it is trying to help you to find specific TAs.

Besides E-CRM Strategy, GA could be a very powerful weapon in customization.

No matter in what kind of social communication tools, customization is supposed to be the best way to get to users. When we are using EDM, it is only an anonymous letter to a user. We have entirely no idea who the user is, their preference, behavior or age. But once you can get more information or assumption what the user may like or what’s their age, thing can be really different.

Google Analytics, known as GA, have been widely used in Digital Marketing field. By installing this tool and study the data of your website, you know better what the users are reading in your website, what their preference are and which pages they barely read.

QR code is widely used for the recent years for joining some campaigns. People can easily access to corresponding page by scanning QR code. Of course, people don’t mind to scan the code to enter the website, but without GA, data can not be collected. It’s true that we might be able to evaluate the result of the campaign manually. But GA can collect the data, the result can be seen more accurate and faster.

3.Online Advertising Checking

1)Bounce right after click through

You might find some user tend to stay only on the page after they click through the Ad, other may go to a second page and some may go further. If most users only stay in the page right after they click through, that means there must be something wrong about the brand or about the content of the Ad.

2)Bounce At Payment Stage

This is a very important stage. You might see users download payment sheet, but eventually, they do not proceed the payment. All the payments that are not done might due to certain factors, which does not fit users’ behavior.

For some application form, you might have already gain some information of the user, like email address or phone number. Email can be sent to encourage to finish the payment and find out whether there is any question regarding the payment system.

There are so many important points and tips mentioned above for digital marketing. To conclude, to begin optimization of your website, you will need to install GA, find your TAs. You may both post your Ads to let users see your brand or you may also send out EDMs to get their attentions. Last but not least, once you got them, personalize the approaches to don’t let them go.

Wish you achieve your goal successfully by digital marketing approaches!