Tag: email marketing

Marketing

Customer Outreach

Customer outreach is one of the oldest and simplest marketing strategies for banks and financial institutions to adopt. However, it’s also one of the most effective. Customer outreach is quite simply the concept of reaching out to customers to fill existing needs surrounding education, awareness, and help. This scales to a small organization in the form of free consultations and webinars and to larger ones in the form of financial education such as debt management programs or financial education in schools.

Social Media

61% of the India population is on a social media account and many use social for up to 4-5 hours per day. Your smart and consistent use of one or more social media platforms is a valuable financial marketing strategy that you cannot afford to ignore. Millennials, Generation Z, and even Baby Boomers use social media platforms to connect with brands, learn from peers, and follow current events and news. Maintaining a steady presence on one or more sites with a strategy in place to offer value to followers will help you to build brand trust, create marketing opportunities, and grow your customer base.

Self-Service and Digitization

Where baby boomers and previous generations largely preferred to receive products through sales representatives who could advise them and set up personalized (or not) accounts for them, millennials and Generation Z often want to do everything themselves with as little contact with human representatives as possible. Setting up and promoting digitized financial products and customer service or experience portals that enable customers to sign up for services online, change products and services online, and view their information without going into a branch is an effective and increasingly necessary trend for financial organizations. However, it is not a marketing strategy that applies to every organization, as you may not sell products only services.

Digital Storytelling

Storytelling is still one of the most effective marketing mediums, whether on social media, video, ads, or cross-channel platforms extending into the real world. Here, your marketing strategy should encompass telling a story that captures interest and evokes emotion to interest, excite, and move the viewer. Here, your goal is to create relatable and shareable content which can educate, entertain, or help the reader in some way and hopefully manage all three at once.

Automation and Big Data

Most financial organizations have more data than they know what to do with, but that is quickly changing. Today, customer experience platforms and automation tools make it easier than ever to utilize and apply data as part of your marketing strategy for financial services. For example, big data can tell you who is saving up for a big purchase and most likely to need pre-approval for a loan, big data can help you identify and offer services before or after they are needed, it can help you to target specific customers for additional customer service or digital financial education, and can help you to cut down on needed customer service.

Insurance

CCI covers your payments in the event of death, permanent disability or loss of income due to injury, illness or involuntary unemployment. Your CCI policy may pay the outstanding balance owed in a lump sum or cover your repayments for a period of time.

If a claim is approved, the insurer pays the money to the lender, not to the consumer.

CCI may also include merchandise protection cover, which covers damage, loss or theft of merchandise purchased with the loan product. It can also include stolen credit card cover, which provides a lump sum benefit if your credit card is stolen.

Consumer credit insurance (CCI) covers you if something happens to you that affects your ability to meet your credit repayment.

You may be offered CCI cover by your lender when it approves your credit (such as a credit card, personal loan or mortgage). Check that the lender’s product suits your needs it is wise to get other quotes as you might find a CCI policy that suits you better through another insurer.

Types:

Credit Disability Insurance

This coverage pays your minimum payment to your credit card issuer if you become disabled. You may have to be disabled for a certain amount of time before the insurance will kick in. There may be a waiting period before the benefit pays out. You can’t add this insurance and make a claim on the same day.

Credit Life Insurance

Credit life insurance pays off your credit card balance if you die. This prevents your loved ones from having to pay your balance out of your estate.

Credit Unemployment Insurance

Credit unemployment insurance makes your minimum payment for you if you lose your job through no fault of your own. The benefit doesn’t kick in if you quit or you’re fired. You may have to be out of work for a certain amount of time before the insurance takes over your payments.

Trade Credit Insurance

Trade credit insurance protects businesses that sell goods and services on credit. It shields them against the risk that clients won’t pay what they owe due to insolvency. A few other events may also be covered. Most consumers won’t need this type of insurance.

Credit Property Insurance

This protects any personal property you’ve used to secure a loan if that property is destroyed or lost due to theft, accident, or a natural disaster.

Radio Buys

Radio offers both a massive audience and a complex and changing pricing system. Clients rely on Capitol Media Solutions because we help them access the former and navigate the latter.

• Determine formats and top stations to target in each market.
• Explore native advertising in news, traffic, and weather reports (live-read or recorded.)
• Recommend spot lengths for promotional, branding, and informational messages.
• Establish target rating point (TRP) ranges for different types of spots.

The first step in effective radio media buying is understanding a client and a client’s marketing, advertising and overall business goals. Why do they want to advertise on radio and is it the best fit for their business goals? A media buyer will walk them through the process, and may compare the benefits of different types of strategies so that clients have a better idea of what they are working with.

If a client is committed to doing radio to start, a media buyer will do research based on the client’s target audience and demographic. It’s essential to find out which types of listeners are most likely to convert on radio advertising. This process helps narrow the field of opportunities for clients so that buyers can focus on negotiating with certain channels and networks only.

There are many different metrics that can be used to measure a campaign’s effectiveness. An essential part of a radio media-planning process is understanding the metrics that will be used to determine success. What should be measured and how does it relate to overall business goals? Once this metric or metrics have been established, it will be used as a success determiner throughout the life of the campaign. It will be used during the testing process and eventually the roll out.

Messaging and Radio Media Buying

The web copy (or ad copy) is another part of the buying process. Messaging is everything to the effectiveness of a campaign, so copy review is a must. Media buyers can put an advertiser on all of the right shows and in front of the right markets but they won’t take action without strong copy. If the messaging is convoluted or ambiguous at all, it will fall on deaf ears.

The copy for the ad(s) and for the website needs to be tweaked, tested and refined so that the client can get the best level of success for the investment. There may also need to be several different versions of the same messaging. It’s important to remember that 15-second, 30-second and 60-second spots need their own unique spin so that the messaging gets through without any important pieces missing.

Outdoor Buys

Out-of-home (OOH) advertising, also called outdoor advertising, outdoor media, and out-of-home media, is advertising experienced outside of the home. This includes billboards, wallscapes, and posters seen while “on the go;” it also includes place-based media seen in places such as convenience stores, medical centers, salons, and other brick-and-mortar venues.

OOH advertising formats fall into four main categories: billboards, street furniture, transit, and alternative.

The OOH advertising industry in the United States includes more than 2,100 operators in 50 states representing the major out of home format categories. These OOH media companies range from public, multinational media corporations to small, independent, family owned businesses.

• A lower cost per impression than other mass media.
• Targeted geographic reach.
• A constant broadcast of your message.
• High-impact, low-competition advertising.

Cinema Buys

Cinema advertising shouldn’t be confused with movie trailers the “coming attractions” that immediately precede the main feature. Movie ads come before the trailers, and they have been a presence in theaters since the first one opened in 1902.

This means that your parents or grandparents probably have fond memories of movie ads, too, if only for their comedic value. In the early days, movie ad montages were put together somewhat haphazardly, sometimes with slides appearing upside down or with sketchy lines blocking an advertiser’s phone number.

If you haven’t had the pleasure of meeting with someone who sells cinema ads, you may want to prepare yourself for the distinct possibility of hearing how Americans love movies and, perhaps even more intensely, the movie going experience.

They have a point. Aside from newly released movies that you can see only in a theater, there is no doubt that watching a movie in a theater offers some distinct advantages over watching the same movie on even a jumbo screen at home. A theater offers:

There are several advantages:

• Huge cinema screens give a ‘larger than life’ impact to the message.
• The audience is a captive audience since they cannot switch channels/flip pages of a print advertisement and are unlikely to walk out during advertisements.
• In-cinema advertising is viewed by an audience which is likely to be paying close attention to the screen or the cinema hall area.
• In-cinema advertising guarantees better attention span for the message to be communicated convincingly.
• Cinema, with its huge localized reach pan India, makes it suitable to reach out to a small geography as well as the entire country.

Internet Buys

Online advertising, also known as online marketing, Internet advertising, digital advertising or web advertising, is a form of marketing and advertising which uses the Internet to deliver promotional marketing messages to consumers. Many consumers find online advertising disruptive and have increasingly turned to ad blocking for a variety of reasons.

When software is used to do the purchasing, it is known as programmatic advertising.

Online advertising includes email marketing, search engine marketing (SEM), social media marketing, many types of display advertising (including web banner advertising), and mobile advertising. Like other advertising media, online advertising frequently involves a publisher, who integrates advertisements into its online content, and an advertiser, who provides the advertisements to be displayed on the publisher’s content. Other potential participants include advertising agencies who help generate and place the ad copy, an ad server which technologically delivers the ad and tracks statistics, and advertising affiliates who do independent promotional work for the advertiser.

Display advertising conveys its advertising message visually using text, logos, animations, videos, photographs, or other graphics. Display advertising is commonly used on social media, websites with slots for advertisements, and in real life. In real life, display advertising can be a sign in front of a building or a billboard alongside a highway. The goal of display advertising is to obtain more traffic, clicks, or popularity for the advertising brand or organization. Display advertisers frequently target users with particular traits to increase the ads’ effect. Online advertisers (typically through their ad servers) often use cookies, which are unique identifiers of specific computers, to decide which ads to serve to a particular consumer. Cookies can track whether a user left a page without buying anything, so the advertiser can later retarget the user with ads from the site the user visited.

As advertisers collect data across multiple external websites about a user’s online activity, they can create a detailed profile of the user’s interests to deliver even more targeted advertising. This aggregation of data is called behavioral targeting. Advertisers can also target their audience by using contextual to deliver display ads related to the content of the web page where the ads appear.  Retargeting, behavioral targeting, and contextual advertising all are designed to increase an advertiser’s return on investment, or ROI, over untargeted ads.

Impression Types:

CPM (cost per mille)

Cost per mille, often abbreviated to CPM, means that advertisers pay for every thousand displays of their message to potential customers (mille is the Latin word for thousand). In the online context, ad displays are usually called “impressions.” Definitions of an “impression” vary among publishers, and some impressions may not be charged because they don’t represent a new exposure to an actual customer. Advertisers can use technologies such as web bugs to verify if an impression is actually delivered.  Similarly, revenue generated can be measured in Revenue per mille (RPM).

Publishers use a variety of techniques to increase page views, such as dividing content across multiple pages, repurposing someone else’s content, using sensational titles, or publishing tabloid or sexual content.

CPM advertising is susceptible to “impression fraud,” and advertisers who want visitors to their sites may not find per-impression payments a good proxy for the results they desire.

CPC (cost per click)

CPC (Cost Per Click) or PPC (Pay per click) means advertisers pay each time a user clicks on the ad. CPC advertising works well when advertisers want visitors to their sites, but it’s a less accurate measurement for advertisers looking to build brand awareness. CPC’s market share has grown each year since its introduction, eclipsing CPM to dominate two-thirds of all online advertising compensation methods.

Like impressions, not all recorded clicks are valuable to advertisers. GoldSpot Media reported that up to 50% of clicks on static mobile banner ads are accidental and resulted in redirected visitors leaving the new site immediately.

CPE (cost per engagement)

Cost per engagement aims to track not just that an ad unit loaded on the page (i.e., an impression was served), but also that the viewer actually saw and/or interacted with the ad.

CPV (cost per view)

Cost per view video advertising. Both Google and TubeMogul endorsed this standardized CPV metric to the IAB’s (Interactive Advertising Bureau) Digital Video Committee, and it’s garnering a notable amount of industry support. CPV is the primary benchmark used in YouTube Advertising Campaigns, as part of Google’s AdWords platform.

CPI (cost per install)

The CPI compensation method is specific to mobile applications and mobile advertising. In CPI ad campaigns brands are charged a fixed of bid rate only when the application was installed.

CPL (cost per lead)

Cost per lead compensation method implies that the advertiser pays for an explicit sign-up from a consumer interested in the advertiser’s offer.

Mobile Buys

At a data first agency, the emphasis on mobile media buying deserves its own section on our site, despite being just one of the many media buying services we offer.  While consumer’s attention is grabbed by their mobile devices, it is our job to guide their attention to your mobile app or mobile services, all the while, understanding their cross-device interactions.

The audience available on the mobile Web is growing rapidly. Consequently, the interest in mobile advertising is growing rapidly. When an agency or advertiser asks about buying advertising on the mobile Web, they typically ask questions about media buying and questions about creative.

Advertising on the mobile Web is very similar to Web advertising. Many people try and make it complex, but it really isn’t. The primary ad units are very similar to the ad units you are used to buying on the Web: Graphical banner ads and text link ads.

The mobile industry varies from the add on subscription product services, to the free-to-download and hope we land a pod of whales making in-app purchases (while frantically trying to keep competitors off your in-app ads so you can still monetize without steering people elsewhere!).  We get it.  It’s fast-paced, and it’s important that you work with a fast-paced media agency.

Media Two offers just as wide a variety of media buying services to meet whatever need you might have.  We have campaigns that purely run on a cost per install basis.  We manage the self-serve Goliath’s of Facebook and Google’s Universal App.  But it’s how we approach the data that sets us apart.

A media buy is the purchase of advertising from a media company such as a television station, newspaper, magazine, blog or website. It also entails the negotiation for price and placement of ads, as well as research into the best new venues for ad placement.

Media buying is a process used in paid marketing efforts. The goal is to identify and purchase ad space on channels that are relevant to the target audience at the optimal time, for the least amount of money. Media buying is a process relevant to both traditional marketing channels (television, radio, print) and digital channels (websites, social media, streaming). When done effectively, media buyers achieve maximum exposure among their target market for the least amount of spend.

Media buying is the act of acquiring real estate or inventory where advertisements may be placed. In television buying, a variety of factors must be considered, such as time, space, rates, lead demand, and more. The price of a television media buy will depend on the specifics of the advertising campaign, such as whether it will appear in a single city, regionally, or nationwide. On a website, the price for media buys would be determined by factors such as where the ad will be placed on the page, how many pages of the website the ad will appear on, how large the ad will be, how many days the ad will run for, how much traffic the website receives, and the website’s user demographics. The more exposure the advertiser is expected to receive, the more expensive the media buy will usually be. A media buy is different from earned media and owned media in that it is purchased.

Tools used

Online Advertising Research Tools: Alexa, comScore, Nielsen Online, Quantcast, SimilarWeb, Thalamus, SpyFu, SRDS, and Compete.

Online Advertising Competitive Intelligence Tools: comScore, Integral Ad Science, MOAT, Adbeat, Whatrunswhere, Keywordspy.

Demand-side Platforms: Doubleclick Bid Manager, Turn, AppNexus, Adobe Media Optimizer, Rubicon Project.

Offline Advertising Research Tools: comScore TV, Nielsen Media Research for TV Audience Measurement GRPs, Nielsen Audio for Radio Measurement (previously known as Arbitron), SRDS by Kantar Media for Print Advertising Ratecards.

Media buyers often use the following tactics to execute on media plans:

• Programmatic buys: AI and algorithm enabled real-time bidding on ad space that matches consumer profiles (e.g. fashion designers leveraging a platform that will automatically bid on and place ads on fashion-oriented channels).
• Manual bidding: Bidding on ad space and managing bids directly through an ad platform such as AdWords.
• Direct buys: When a media buyer negotiates ad rates and run times with a specific advertiser (e.g. fashion designers working directly with the Vogue team to place ads on their site / magazine).

Role of Media Buyer

A media buyer is a person who places and negotiates the price of all the ads on different media. This media can be television, print, radio, or digital.

They ensure that the ads are placed on relevant and favorite sites. They have to consider the length and size of the placement of the ad on the website.

They are also responsible for ensuring that the budget does not exceed the budget for the advertising either while preparing the ad or while placing the ad on the website. They ensure that the advertisement reaches the maximum number of the target audience and is within budget.

The media buyer may work individually or with the advertising agencies. These days freelancing media buyer has become a popular trend in the advertising industry.

Having knowledge of digital marketing is essential for media buyers because media in digital marketing is not only economic compared to other forms of media but also has a wider and specific targeted reach.

A media buyer is expected to have exceptionally good communication skills in both verbal as well as written communication. Graduation in marketing and or communications is required to be eligible for the role of a media buyer.

Apart from communication, a media buyer is expected to have good negotiation skills, and networking skills are mandatory for this role.

Different Roles:

Negotiations

The media buyer is also responsible for contacting the media representative to establish a base price for the advertisements and negotiate for them. The media buyer has to have contacts in all of the media space where advertising can be done.

Media management

Planning the media for the customer and managing everything related to it is one of the most important roles of a media buyer. The media buyer makes a plan related to the ad placement, along with the estimated target audience and the reach of the media.

This is planned within the budget sanctioned by the client. Necessary changes may be made to fit the requirement of the client. The media buyer should prepare a detailed estimate giving delivery prices and the final budget required by the client.

Business Partnership

Media buyers establish business partnership with their media representatives and pull an extensive amount of business. There may be a mutual understanding between the representative and the media buyer, and some commission might be passed on to him, but the fact remains that media buyer is the primary business generator for the representative.

Revenue generator

A media buyer who is associated with an organization has the primary job of revenue generation. More often than not, the media buyer associated with an advertising firm or a media planning firm.

Their job is to bring different clients to utilize their advertising media and sell the advertising space in order to generate revenue. The media buyer also generates revenue for the client indirectly.

Mediator

Media buyer should have contacts everywhere in the industry right from market research to market planner. There are times when media buyer has to analyze market information and get the demographics data or other relevant data which is required for an advertiser to planners advertising.

The media buyer may have important inputs for the client regarding the advertising demand and the reach to the customers. This information can be collected from the market research team, which is why the media buyer has to remain in contact with them.

Campaigning

In some cases, media buyer helps in campaign preparation of the marketeers by providing technical information and being the missing link between the advertisement department and the market.

In the case of the inhouse advertising department, the media buyer, along with other teams of advertising and marketing plan as well as execute the campaign.

Objectives of Media Buying

Best slots assured

Media buyers understand how to achieve the highest level of engagement. Several events, such as the Olympics, political affairs, are held throughout the world, and as a result, ad impressions might be influenced.

Media buying guarantees that the ad receives the exact engagement and conversion that the company desires. While these events are receiving the most incredible attention, the transaction can be impacted little. But media buying doesn’t let the profit be influenced.

Ensure Best deals

Experts in media purchasing can assure excellent negotiating and the ultimate price of ad space. This undoubtedly leads to higher conversion rates for the company. These experts may promote their ad as a value-added procedure to media outlets.

At its finest, it may result in an impression tacked on a contract, which is a less fee agreement. This is portrayed as a win-win situation for both the company and the media outlet.

Higher ROI

When it comes to media buying, it involves more than just exchanging money for advertising space. Firms’ relationships with media houses improve when they maintain ties with them for outlets.

This makes it easier to reach out to media companies in the future and to receive the best prices for posting advertising. As a result, the ROI is projected to rise with time.

Yardstick Method

Yardstick method is an approach in which the company or business entities use in estimating the new operation challenges or damages, mainly through performance comparable guidelines for example the damages experienced in an agreement breaching.

Define criteria by which to choose a solution. This may mean including or excluding aspects of a solution. The criteria must be specific enough to narrow down the solutions. For example, the criteria for choosing an advertising method might include limited funds, broad appeal, and a desire to direct people to a website where they are able to purchase the specified product.

Compare each solution to the criteria. It is important that the analysis of each option be thorough and clearly explained. For example, television advertising would be expensive, but targets a wide range of people. Newspaper ads would target only a specific region of people, but would cost less. Internet ads would target a wide range of people and the budget can be adjusted as needed. Internet ads can also send people directly to website. Radio ads can reach a wide variety of people, but only in a specific geographic area and can cost a good deal of money. Billboard ads can be made cheaply with small roadside signs, but the size is limited and people driving by may not remember the web address.

Decide on a solution and make a recommendation. At this point, the facts should make the recommendation clear.

Effective Frequency

In advertising, the effective frequency is the number of times a person must be exposed to an advertising message before a response is made and before exposure is considered wasteful.

The subject on effective frequency is quite controversial. Many people have their own definition on what this phrase means. There are also numerous studies with their own theories or models as to what the correct number is for effective frequency.

The following are some key examples:

• Advertising Glossary defines effective frequency as “Exposures to an advertising message required to achieve effective communication. Generally expressed as a range below which the exposure is inadequate and above which the exposure is considered wastage.”
• Business Dictionary defines it as “Advertising the theory that a consumer has to be exposed to an ad at least three times within a purchasing cycle (time between two consecutive purchases) to buy that product.”
• Marketing Power defines it as “An advertiser’s determination of the optimum number of exposure opportunities required to effectively convey the advertising message to the desired audience or target market.”
• John Philip Jones says “Effective frequency can mean that a single advertising exposure is able to influence the purchase of a brand. However, as all experienced advertising people know, the phrase was really coined to communicate the idea that there must be enough concentration of media weight to cross a threshold. Repetition was considered necessary, and there had to be enough of it within the period before a consumer buys a product to influence his or her choice of brand.”

Reach Method

In the application of statistics to advertising and media analysis, reach refers to the total number of different people or households exposed, at least once, to a medium during a given period. Reach should not be confused with the number of people who will actually be exposed to and consume the advertising, though. It is just the number of people who are exposed to the medium and therefore have an opportunity to see or hear the ad or commercial. Reach may be stated either as an absolute number, or as a fraction of a given population (for instance ‘TV households’, ‘men’ or ‘those aged 25–35’).

For any given viewer, they have been “reached” by the work if they have viewed it at all (or a specified amount) during the specified period. Multiple viewings by a single member of the audience in the cited period do not increase reach; however, media people use the term effective reach to describe the quality of exposure. Effective reach and reach are two different measurements for a target audience who receive a given message or ad.

Since reach is a time-dependent summary of aggregate audience behavior, reach figures are meaningless without a period associated with them: an example of a valid reach figure would be to state that “[example website] had a one-day reach of 1565 per million on 21 March 2004” (though unique users, an equivalent measure, would be a more typical metric for a website).

Reach of television channels is often expressed in the form of “x minute weekly reach” that is, the number (or percentage) of viewers who watched the channel for at least x minutes in a given week.

Reach can be calculated indirectly as:

Reach = GRPs / Average frequency

Margin Analysis

The marketing margin, characterized as some function of the difference between retail and farm price of a given farm product, is intended to measure the cost of providiing marketing services. The margin is influenced primarily by shifts in retail demand, farm supply, and marketing input prices. But other factors also can be important, including time lags in supply and demand, market power, risk, technical change, quality, and spatial considerations. Topics for future research include improved specifications for margins and demand and supply shifters, retail-to-farm price transmission of retail demand changes, and impacts of vertical integration and policy interventions.

The limitations of the market share method are:

• The conversion of industry forecast to the company specific sales forecast is quite tedious and hence requires the expertise.
• It is a complex process as the entire business environment is scrutinized before reaching to the final forecast.
• The wrong information about the marketing environment may result into a wrong sales forecast.

ROI Based Approach

In the percentage-of-sales method, advertising budget depends on the level of sales. But advertising causes sales. In the marginal analysis and S-shaped curve approaches increase in advertisement budgets may lead to increases in sales. In other words the advertisement budget can be considered as an investment.

In the ROI budgeting method, advertising and promotions are considered investments, like plant and equipment. In other words investments in advertisements lead to certain returns. Like other aspects of the firm’s efforts, advertising and promotion are expected to earn a certain return.

To many the ROI method is an ideal method of setting advertisement budget. But in reality it is rarely possible to assess the returns provided by the promotional effort-at least as long as sales continue to be the basis for evaluation.

Experimental Approach

Traditional marketing was designed to create a message and distribute that message as efficiently and effectively as possible. Experiential advertising uses modern forms of communication and interactivity to approach marketing from a different, more personal angle. It combines salesmanship with the ability to connect with consumers and give them something to encounter and interact with, rather than just see or listen to. “Experiential marketing reaches out to the consumer prior to the actual purchase event in a retail store and gives them enough information about the product to motivate them to go to the retail store to make the purchase,” according to Augustine Fou of Marketing Science Consulting Group.

Experiential advertising became possible in the 1990s and began to develop in the 2000s as businesses sought new ways to reach out to consumers in meaningful ways. Too often, consumers ignored traditional ads, commercials, radio spots and other marketing techniques that had oversaturated the market and become easy to dismiss or forget. To make marketing memorable again, companies began to seek innovate ways of displaying messages to customers so that their engagement or direct involvement was a necessary part of the experience.

Break Even Planning

Marketers need to understand break-even analysis because it helps them choose the best pricing strategy and make smart decisions about the short- and long-term profitability of the product.

The break-even price is the price that will produce enough revenue to cover all costs at a given level of production. At the break-even point, there is neither profit nor loss. A company may choose to price its product below the break-even point, but we’ll discuss the different pricing strategies that might favor this option later in the module.

Break-Even Price = Costs / Units

Break-Even Quantity (in terms of units) = Costs / Price

Components

Fixed Costs

Fixed costs can be defined as the business costs, which are directly related to the business but not directly associated with the level of production. Therefore, whether your production level is zero or at its highest capacity, the fixed costs are going to be there. For example, you are supposed to pay the rent of your factory building, whether there is no production going on for about a month.

The followings are examples of fixed costs.

• Taxes
• Salaries and wages
• Rent of the building or lease charges
• Energy cost
• Depreciation cost
• Marketing costs
• Research and development expenses
• Administration cost

Variable Costs:

Variable costs are the costs that are directly associated with the level of production. That means the variable cost will reduce with the reduction in the production and will become zero when you cease the production process. For example, the cost of raw material required for the production of goods is directly related to the number of units produced in the production process.

The examples of direct variable costs.

• Cost of raw material
• Cost of wages of workers hired, especially for production work.
• Fuel consumed
• Packaging cost

Indirect Variable cost

Direct variable costs are the costs that are directly associated with the production of goods but does not get affected by the level of production. For example, depreciation cost, machine maintenance cost, and Labour cost.

Semi Variable cost

Semi variable costs are the costs that have characteristics of both variables as well as fixed costs.

Initially, these costs are fixed, but later these costs vary with the expansion of business or with the complex nature of the business.

Online

Online advertising, also known as online marketing, Internet advertising, digital advertising or web advertising, is a form of marketing and advertising which uses the Internet to deliver promotional marketing messages to consumers. Many consumers find online advertising disruptive and have increasingly turned to ad blocking for a variety of reasons.

When software is used to do the purchasing, it is known as programmatic advertising.

Online advertising includes email marketing, search engine marketing (SEM), social media marketing, many types of display advertising (including web banner advertising), and mobile advertising. Like other advertising media, online advertising frequently involves a publisher, who integrates advertisements into its online content, and an advertiser, who provides the advertisements to be displayed on the publisher’s content. Other potential participants include advertising agencies who help generate and place the ad copy, an ad server which technologically delivers the ad and tracks statistics, and advertising affiliates who do independent promotional work for the advertiser.

In 2016, Internet advertising revenues in the United States surpassed those of cable television and broadcast television.  In 2017, Internet advertising revenues in the United States totaled $83.0 billion, a 14% increase over the $72.50 billion in revenues in 2016. And research estimates from 2019’s online advertising spend puts it at $125.2 billion in the United States, some $54.8 billion higher than the spend on television ($70.4 billion).

Many common online advertising practices are controversial and, as a result, have been increasingly subject to regulation. Online ad revenues also may not adequately replace other publishers’ revenue streams. Declining ad revenue has led some publishers to place their content behind paywalls.

Mobile Advertising

Mobile advertising is a form of advertising via mobile (wireless) phones or other mobile devices. It is a subset of mobile marketing, mobile advertising can take place as text ads via SMS, or banner advertisements that appear embedded in a mobile web site.

It is estimated that U.S. mobile app-installed ads accounted for 30% of all mobile advertising revenue in 2014, and will top $4.6bn in 2016, and over $6.8bn by the end of 2019. Other ways mobile advertising can be purchased include working with a Mobile Demand Side Platform, in which ad impressions are bought in real-time on an Ad exchange. Another report has indicated that worldwide mobile digital advertising spend would reach $184.91 bn in 2018, $217.42 bn in 2019 and $247.36 bn in 2020 and $500 bn in 2025.

Types of mobile ads

• Click-to-download ads: The user will be directed to the Appstore or Google Play
• Click-to-call ads: The user will call to a phone number after clicking the button.
• Click-to-message ads: The user will be directed to an SMS application to message the advertiser.
• Image text and banner ads: A click opens your browser and re-directs you to a page
• Push notification
• Pin pull ads: Mostly common in Playrix ads

Gaming Advertising

Advertising in video games is the integration of advertising into video games to promote products, organizations, or viewpoints.

There are two major categories of advertising in video games: in-game advertising and advergames. In-game advertising shows the player advertisements while playing the game, whereas advergames are a type of game created to serve as an advertisement for a brand or product.

Other methods of advertising in video games include in-game product placement and sponsorship of commercial games or other game-related content.

In-game advertising is similar to product placement in films and television, where the advertising content exists within the universe of the characters. These forms of product placement are common, which led to the advertisement technique being applied to video games to match evolving media consumption habits. According to the Entertainment Software Association in 2010, 42% of gamers said they play online games one or more hours per week. Game playing is considered active media consumption, which provides a unique opportunity for advertisers. The principal advantages of product placement in gaming are visibility and notoriety. A single in-game advertisement may be encountered by the player multiple times, and advertisers have an opportunity to ally a brand’s image with that of a well-received game.

In flight Advertising

In-flight advertising is advertising that targets potential consumers aboard an airline. It includes commercials during in-flight entertainment programming, advertisements in in-flight magazines or on Boarding Passes, ads on seatback tray tables and overhead storage bins, and sales pitches by flight attendants. Ads can be tailored to the traveler’s destination, or several of the airlines destinations, promoting local restaurants, hotels, businesses and shopping.

Boarding passes advertising

Boarding pass advertising relies on the use of targeted advertising technologies. When the passenger checks on-line he has the possibility to click on the various ads and suggestions suggested on the boarding pass. When travelers print their boarding passes, the ads will automatically be printed, too. Fliers can, however, click a box to prevent the ads from being printed if the company is so compassionate as to allow it.

The ads are used by airlines to increase revenue and for advertisers to target travelers down to their departure city and destination. Sojern was one of the first companies to partner with such airlines as Delta Air Lines to offer boarding pass advertising technology.

Evolution

Inflight advertising began in onboard magazines as a way to increase ancillary revenue for airlines and pay for inflight content. Today, inflight advertising is set to increase as airlines are investing heavily in content and connectivity and utilizing media sales to offset costs.

In Store Advertising

In-store adverting is the act of marketing to customers while they are inside of a brick-and-mortar business or commercial property. It actively promotes products and services at the point-of-purchase when customers are highly interested and engaged.

Usually, when retailers plan their marketing, they focus on how they can use outside messaging to bring customers into a store. But in-store advertising is a strategy that focuses on using on-property messaging to engage customers that are already in the store.

Brands can create custom animations, videos, and interactive in-store advertising content and display it on:

• Digital wait-boards
• Digital menu boards
• Video walls
• Interactive kiosks
• Wayfinding screens
• Personal devices (through the use of WiFi marketing)

In-store advertising effectively:

• Encourages impulse buys by highlighting cross-sells, up-sells, and related products.
• Introduces new products and effectively explains their features and benefits to customers.
• Promotes sales by making it easy for customers to notice current promotions.
• Supports cross-promotions by showcasing similar or related products and services.
• Informs customers by helping them find information they need to guide their purchasing decisions.
• Reminds customers about information and promotions they saw on your digital platforms before they arrived to your store.
• Captures customer contact information by encouraging shoppers to enter their email address or phone number.

Interactive Media

Interactive media normally refers to products and services on digital computer-based systems which respond to the user’s actions by presenting content such as text, moving image, animation, video and audio.

Development

The analogue videodisc developed by NV Philips was the pioneering technology for interactive media. Additionally, there are several elements that encouraged the development of interactive media including the following:

• The laser disc technology was first invented in 1958. It enabled the user to access high-quality analogue images on the computer screen. This increased the ability of interactive video systems.
• The concept of the graphical user interface (GUI), which was developed in the 1970s, popularized by Apple Computer, Inc. was essentially about visual metaphors, intuitive feel and sharing information on the virtual desktop. Additional power was the only thing needed to move into multimedia.
• The sharp fall in hardware costs and the unprecedented rise in the computer speed and memory transformed the personal computer into an affordable machine capable of combining audio and color video in advanced ways.
• Another element is the release of Windows 3.0 in 1990 by Microsoft into the mainstream IBM clone world. It accelerated the acceptance of GUI as the standard mechanism for communicating with small computer systems.
• The development by NV Philips of optical digital technologies built around the compact disk (CD) in 1979 is also another leading element in the interactive media development as it raised the issue of developing interactive media.

All of the prior elements contributed in the development of the main hardware and software systems used in interactive media.

Advantages

Intuitive understanding

Interactive media makes technology more intuitive to use. Interactive products such as smartphones, iPad’s/iPod’s, interactive whiteboards and websites are all easy to use. The easy usage of these products encourages consumers to experiment with their products rather than reading instruction manuals.

Effects on learning

Interactive media is helpful in the four development dimensions in which young children learn; Social and emotional, language development, cognitive and general knowledge, and approaches toward learning. Using computers and educational computer software in a learning environment helps children increase communication skills and their attitudes about learning. Children who use educational computer software are often found using more complex speech patterns and higher levels of verbal communication. A study found that basic interactive books that simply read a story aloud and highlighted words and phrases as they were spoken were beneficial for children with lower reading abilities. Children have different styles of learning, and interactive media helps children with visual, verbal, auditory, and tactile learning styles.

Relationships

Interactive media promotes dialogic communication. This form of communication allows senders and receivers to build long term trust and cooperation. This plays a critical role in building relationships. Organizations also use interactive media to go further than basic marketing and develop more positive behavioral relationships.

Personalized marketing, also known as one-to-one marketing or individual marketing, is a marketing strategy by which companies leverage data analysis and digital technology to deliver individualized messages and product offerings to current or prospective customers. Advancements in data collection methods, analytics, digital electronics, and digital economics, have enabled marketers to deploy more effective real-time and prolonged customer experience personalization tactics.

Strategies

One-to-one marketing refers to marketing strategies applied directly to a specific consumer. Having knowledge of the consumer’s preferences, enables suggesting specific products and promotions to each consumer. One-to-one marketing is based on four main steps in order to fulfil its goals: identify, differentiate, interact, and customize.

• Differentiate: To distinguish the customers in terms of their lifetime value to the company, to know them by their priorities in terms of their needs, and segment them into more restricted groups.
• Identify: In this stage, the major concern is to get to know the customers of a company, to collect reliable data about their preferences and how their needs can best be satisfied.
• Interact: In this phase, one needs to know by which communication channel and by what means, contact with the client is best made. It is necessary to get the customer’s attention by engaging with him/her in ways that are known as being the ones that he/she enjoys the most.
• Customize: One needs to personalize the product or service to the customer individually. The knowledge that a company has about a customer, needs to be put into practice and the information held has to be taken into account in order to be able to give the client exactly what he/she wants.

Future of Personalized Marketing

Personalized marketing is gaining headway and has become a point of popular interest with the emergence of relevant and supportive technologies like DMP, geotargeting, and various forms of social media. Now, many people believe it is the inevitable baseline for the future of marketing strategy and for future business success in competitive markets.

Adapt to technology: For personalized marketing to work the way advocates say it will, companies are going to have to adapt to relevant technologies. They will have to get in touch with the new and popular forms of social media, data-gathering platforms, and other technologies that not all current employees and businesses may be familiar with or can afford. Companies that have been able to afford it, have employed machine learning, big data and AI that make personalization automatic.

Restructuring current business models: Adopting a new marketing system tailored to the most relevant technologies will take time and resources to implement. Organized planning, communication and restructuring within businesses will be required to successfully implement personalized marketing. Some companies will have to accept that their current business and marketing models will change radically, and probably often. They will have to reconsider the ways customer data and information circulate within the company and possibly beyond. Company databases will be flooded with expansive personal information individual’s geographic location, potential buyers’ past purchases, etc., and there may be complications regarding how that information is gathered, circulated internally and externally, and used to increase profits.

Legal liabilities: To address concerns about sensitive information being gathered and utilized without obvious consumer consent, liabilities and legalities have to be set and enforced. Privacy is always an issue, in some countries more than others, so companies have to manage any legal hurdles before personalized marketing can be adopted. Specifically, the EU has passed rigid regulation, known as GDPR, that limits what kind of data marketers can collect on their users, and provide ways in which consumers can suit companies for violation of their privacy. In the US, California has followed suit and passed the CCPA in 2018.

Experiential Marketing

Also called engagement marketing, experiential marketing is a marketing strategy that immerses customers within a product or deeply engages them. In short, experiential marketing enables consumers to not just buy products or services from a brand, but to actually experience the brand. Emotional connections between the brand and the consumer are created through memorable and unique experiences. Experiential marketing not only involves customer engagement, but also often improves it in the process.

Benefits of experiential marketing

• Stronger connection between product and emotion: People want to know what your product does. More importantly, though, the driving force behind why they choose you over your competitor may come down to how your product makes them feel. Your experiential marketing should amplify the feelings that come when they use your product. This is important to them, as customers are 3.7 times more likely to view seamless transitions between channels as important versus unimportant. Strong positive emotions endear customers to brands. Make sure the experience you provide creates a strong positive emotional response.
• Personalized engagement: Customers want to feel a real human connection with your brand. In fact 84% of customers say being treated like a person, not a number, is very important to winning their business. There’s perhaps no better way to treat your customers like people than to immerse them in an exhilarating human experience. Let them see firsthand how your brand elevates them.
• Creation of a positive touchpoint: The more positive touchpoints you can have with your customers, the better. And the more connected those touchpoints, the more powerful and compelling they become. A cohesive experience is key to winning customer loyalty. In fact, 70% of customers say connected processes are very important to winning their business.
• Social shareability: Experiences are compelling and powerful, and it seems people love capturing interesting experiences through video, and then sharing them on social networks. In fact, it’s projected that video traffic will make up 82% of IP traffic by 2022. You may find social media is there to spread the word for you, so long as you have an experience worth sharing. Positioning your brand as the creator of a positive experience is a win when it comes to spreading your brand vision and gaining recognition.

Steps:

1. Observe and gather inspiration

What are other brands doing to foster incredible experiences? In order to create a memorable experience when it comes to experiential marketing, it helps to be observant and understand which current brand experiences are resonating with consumers. Can you remember any particularly insightful experiential campaigns? Keep your eyes open when you’re out in the world. Try to remember a time where you were blown away by something a brand did. Take to social media or check your camera roll.

2. Get to know your customers

What do your customers love most about your brand? What emotions do they associate with you? What products or features do they most enjoy? These are all insights that will help you share the essence of your brand and the emotion behind it. Learn through reviews, social media, and short surveys. Knowing your customers and what they love about you will help you determine how to attract new like-minded ones through emotions and experiences.

3. Know your goal

Why are you carrying out an experiential marketing event? What tangible results do you hope to accomplish? How will you know you’re successful? You’re likely looking to create positive brand sentiment that leads to new customer acquisition and loyalty.

What immediate action do you want people to take as a result of the experience they have with your brand? Do you want them to share a video of their experience on social media? Would you like them to get a free trial of your software or purchase your product? Or do you want them to sign up for emails so you can nurture them and keep them connected with your brand?

Be sure you know what you want to get out of the event and make it clear to participants. Chances are good they’ll be willing to interact with or promote your brand if you provide them with an exceptional and unique experience.

4. Determine the value you’ll provide

What type of value will you give those who are involved in your experiential marketing? Will it be an unforgettable photo or video? Or will it be an amazing experience? Will you give away some of your product? What emotions do you want people to feel? Aim to provide value in as many ways as possible to create memorable experiences worth sharing.

5. Engage as many senses as possible

What do you want people to see, touch, and hear when it comes to your brand experience? What colors will you use? Will you incorporate music? How will you give people a hands-on experience with your brand? Immerse them in a sensory experience that engages more than one of their senses and it’ll likely have more impact.

6. Go to your audience

Your event should take place in a location where your audience already is regularly. If possible, a place in their natural world. Trade shows are great and they provide an easy opportunity to connect and engage, but unexpected experiences in the real world might be even more impactful.

7. Create a unique experience where the spirit of your brand shines

To craft a good experience, you’ll want to take considerable time to really determine what sets your brand apart and how you want it to make people feel and act. A truly impactful experiential marketing event will help others remember your brand and become part of your powerful mission. 

8. Measure, Analyze, and improve

In order to determine how successful your experiential marketing efforts are, you need to have a way to measure effectiveness. Often, social media is a great place to uncover just how far reaching and impactful your experience was. Create some kind of platform where people can easily interact with the experience. Maybe it’s a hashtag, a web page or some other online channel where you can easily measure impact. When you look at the data, you’ll learn a lot about what consumers resonate with and you’ll be able to further delight them in the future and continually deliver incredible experiences.

One to One Marketing

One-to-one marketing is a customer relationship management strategy. It’s centered around personalized interactions with customers. Personalization creates greater customer loyalty. And a better return on marketing efforts. The concept of one-to-one marketing first gained attention in 1994. When Peppers & Roger’s book “The One-to-One Future” was released.

The goal of one-to-one marketing, like all marketing, is to make a sale. One to one marketing communicates directly to the consumer. The person is targeted deliberately. It is a CRM strategy that focuses on personalized interactions.

Personalized marketing and individual marketing are substitute terms for one-to-one marketing. Industry leaders have found that it generates the best return on investment.

Strategies:

Customized CRM Systems

Businesses even in the same industry differ from each other. The size of the company, location, and delivery model varies between businesses. Different styles of operation, products, and needs require unique solutions. Customized CRM software is one of the most sought-after solutions. The right CRM collects accurate and relevant data for businesses. A successful one-to-one marketing campaign starts with a good CRM system.

Customized Live Chat Platforms

It’s no secret that the better customer experiences a company creates, the more loyalty is earned. Live chat software gives businesses a tool to create a better customer experience. Leveraging custom software live chat helps companies decrease operating costs and saves time. When customers can avoid a 15-minute phone call they’re happy.

Customized Websites

A good website is like a showroom to showcase your products and services. A well-designed website with clear messaging benefits both consumers and companies. Find out where your competition is lacking and provide that for your customers. A well-designed and written website makes the customer feel like you’re speaking directly to them.

Customize Your Communication with Customers

Surveys show that email marketing with no personal touch finds its way to the trash folder. Addressing the reader by his/her name, coupled with useful and relevant content, gets attention. When people are getting hundreds of emails every day, the only chance for getting their attention is to make it personal.

Online Advertising

Online advertising, also known as online marketing, Internet advertising, digital advertising or web advertising, is a form of marketing and advertising which uses the Internet to deliver promotional marketing messages to consumers. Many consumers find online advertising disruptive and have increasingly turned to ad blocking for a variety of reasons.

When software is used to do the purchasing, it is known as programmatic advertising.

Online advertising includes email marketing, search engine marketing (SEM), social media marketing, many types of display advertising (including web banner advertising), and mobile advertising. Like other advertising media, online advertising frequently involves a publisher, who integrates advertisements into its online content, and an advertiser, who provides the advertisements to be displayed on the publisher’s content. Other potential participants include advertising agencies who help generate and place the ad copy, an ad server which technologically delivers the ad and tracks statistics, and advertising affiliates who do independent promotional work for the advertiser.

Delivery methods

Display advertising

Display advertising conveys its advertising message visually using text, logos, animations, videos, photographs, or other graphics. Display advertising is commonly used on social media, websites with slots for advertisements, and in real life. In real life, displace advertising can be a sign in front of a building or a billboard alongside a highway. The goal of display advertising is to obtain more traffic, clicks, or popularity for the advertising brand or organization. Display advertisers frequently target users with particular traits to increase the ads’ effect. Online advertisers (typically through their ad servers) often use cookies, which are unique identifiers of specific computers, to decide which ads to serve to a particular consumer. Cookies can track whether a user left a page without buying anything, so the advertiser can later retarget the user with ads from the site the user visited.

Web banner advertising

Web banners or banner ads typically are graphical ads displayed within a web page. Many banner ads are delivered by a central ad server.

Banner ads can use rich media to incorporate video, audio, animations, buttons, forms, or other interactive elements using Java applets, HTML5, Adobe Flash, and other programs.

Frame ad (Traditional banner)

Frame ads were the first form of web banners. The colloquial usage of “banner ads” often refers to traditional frame ads. Website publishers incorporate frame ads by setting aside a particular space on the web page. The Interactive Advertising Bureau’s Ad Unit Guidelines proposes standardized pixel dimensions for ad units.

Pop-ups/pop-unders

A pop-up ad is displayed in a new web browser window that opens above a website visitor’s initial browser window. A pop-under ad opens a new browser window under a website visitor’s initial browser window. Pop-under ads and similar technologies are now advised against by online authorities such as Google, who state that they “do not condone this practice”.

Floating ad

A floating ad, or overlay ad, is a type of rich media advertisement that appears superimposed over the requested website’s content. Floating ads may disappear or become less obtrusive after a pre-set time period.

Expanding ad

An expanding ad is a rich media frame ad that changes dimensions upon a predefined condition, such as a preset amount of time a visitor spends on a webpage, the user’s click on the ad, or the user’s mouse movement over the ad. Expanding ads allow advertisers to fit more information into a restricted ad space.

Trick banners

A trick banner is a banner ad where the ad copy imitates some screen element users commonly encounter, such as an operating system message or popular application message, to induce ad clicks. Trick banners typically do not mention the advertiser in the initial ad, and thus they are a form of bait-and-switch. Trick banners commonly attract a higher-than-average click-through rate, but tricked users may resent the advertiser for deceiving them.

News Feed Ads

“News Feed Ads”, also called “Sponsored Stories”, “Boosted Posts”, typically exist on social media platforms that offer a steady stream of information updates (“news feed”) in regulated formats (i.e. in similar sized small boxes with a uniform style). Those advertisements are intertwined with non-promoted news that the users are reading through. Those advertisements can be of any content, such as promoting a website, a fan page, an app, or a product.

Some examples are: Facebook’s “Sponsored Stories”, LinkedIn’s “Sponsored Updates”, and Twitter’s “Promoted Tweets”.

This display ads format falls into its own category because unlike banner ads which are quite distinguishable, News Feed Ads’ format blends well into non-paid news updates. This format of online advertisement yields much higher click-through rates than traditional display ads.

Online Marketing Research

Online Market Research is a research method in which the data collection process is carried out over the Internet.

Market Research is defined as the process of gathering, analyzing and interpreting information about a market, about a product or service to be offered for sale in that market, and about the past, present and potential customers for the product or service.

This research can evaluate the performance of a product or service and may allow companies to glean insight into consumer purchasing behavior. With the rising use of the Internet, online research has become a popular tool among market research firms.

The purpose of conducting online market research is:

1. Understand customer behavior

Why will the customer buy your product or services? What factors influence buying patterns, and how can you use it to your advantage?

2. Understand target customer

Who will buy your product or services and cater to your strategy aimed towards this target group.

3. Find revenue opportunities

Analyze buying patterns to find out what is the right pricing or positioning strategy to make the odds of success higher.

Advantages in Online Market Research

Conducting online research can be a complex procedure and may require considerable expertise on the part of researchers in obtaining accurate data.  It may be challenging to recruit participants in online research for several reasons.  Recipients may be reluctant to participate in online research because they may be afraid that the privacy and confidentiality of their personal information may be violated.  Since the identity of the researcher cannot be verified completely, people may find it difficult to trust such research methods.  Researchers often present participants with some monetary or non-monetary rewards for their participation.  Participants may be wary of monetary compensation promised online.

Benefits of Online Market Research

Online market research can be a beneficial tool for companies due to its reach and convenience. Online research tools can be used with relative ease and accuracy for both qualitative and quantitative research.

• Cost advantages
• Speed advantages
• Data collection in real-time
• Advanced analytics
• Efficient global and multi-country survey management

Online PR

Online PR (online public relations) is the public relations work of communicators via available online communication channels (and also communication tools). In addition to the online pages of classic media, these channels include social media, blogs and websites.

Based on the measures taken in the print sector, the possibilities and opportunities offered by online media are used and the strategies are adapted accordingly.

Role

• Acquisition and retention of new customers
• Communication of information
• Increase of attention
• Creating a high cost-benefit ratio
• Improving (online-) reputation
• Measuring and controlling success
• Achieving a high degree of actuality

Differences between online and traditional public relations

• The organizations can communicate with its audiences directly through a variety of online platforms instead of depending on the media channels only
• Audiences exposed to the information are linked to the network and then the flow of information is multi-directional among people
• Multiple sources of information provided can be accessible to audiences
• Audiences are entitled to the right to review, comment and assess
• Online PR targets social media, web searches, blogs, and websites in addition to targeting traditional media outlets

Differences between Views of Traditional Public Relations vs. Public Relations used as a Marketing Function

Views on Public Relation as more of Marketing Function

• Public Relations is an integral part of marketing communication mix, where the company promotes its brand and builds relationships with outside parties through its specialized functions, such as seminars and press conferences.
• Public Relations Department reports to the Marketing Department, whose act is to create a larger picture which focuses on the ultimate goal of in organization, which is strong branding and long term relations with its customers.

Views of the Traditional Public Relations Department

• It is a Department which acts as a link between an organization and outside parties (customers). Its work is to determine an evaluate the public approach
• Suggest management to construct guidelines and procedures relating to public interests
• It is a separate Department whose job is to sincerely execute communication program with outside parties and business partners

Many years ago, developing effective marketing strategies was a much simpler task than it is today. With only a small number of television channels, radio stations, newspapers, and relevant magazines pertaining to a given market, advertisers could develop fairly targeted marketing strategies to generate sales. In the emerging digital environment, marketing strategies have become a far more complex task. There are now vast arrays of different marketing channels, tools, and tactics that must be unique in strategy while seamless and integrated in application. Companies also need to connect and engage with customers, and create memorable, lasting experiences.

To develop a successful marketing campaign in today’s digital environment, companies must focus on three strategic components. Marketers must establish clear, strategic, and targeted objectives and ensure that they are tactical in the rollout and implementation of new campaigns. Companies should also focus on the development of a separate team to identify and analyze emerging marketing opportunities. Companies that are able to clearly identify the strengths and weaknesses of each digital medium will likely be more successful in their campaigns.

• Marketing:

Yes, it is a “thing” although you probably won’t find this word in Webster’s Dictionary. It means that you integrate sales and marketing to optimize performance of marketing efforts.

Gone are the days when a consumer peruses an ad in print media then purchases that product later during the appointed shopping day of the week. Digital ads are portals to online sales. Marketing and sales all happen in the same place with the tap of a finger or click of a mouse.

If a potential customer has a question about a product, that, too, happens in the same place in cyber-world through chat window features. If your company is not marketing, it is losing significant sales potential.

• Experience

Have you walked in the shoes of your customers? Have you surfed the web to map the path of discovery to your product’s online ad? Did you click and see where your landed in cyberspace? What about the purchasing process? Was it a secure experience?

If you have not walked a mile in your customer’s shoes, how can you know if the process is efficient? That’s one of the best ways to fine tune your online presence.

Learning a new language requires complete immersion. Otherwise you’ll need an interpreter and in the case of digital marketing, that mean a savvy digital marketing agency.

Playing Field Dynamics: Not every digital marketing challenge is solved by throwing more money at it.

In the olden days the playing field belonged to the company that could afford the biggest print ad or a prime-time television/radio slot for a commercial.

Digital advertising has seriously leveled the playing field. Just look at what happens when a YouTube video goes viral. A company doesn’t always have to outspend a competitor to solve a marketing problem.

• Engagement:

So you have a company blog and a profile with every social media platform under the Sun. Yet you haven’t seen a significant impact on sales. What is going on?

Creating a digital presence is only the first step. Now you have to engage, engage, engage. That means creating content that inspires a reaction. Calls to action, surveys, asking viewers to name the new company cat rescued from the alley are all great ideas to create intrigue and stimulate engagement.

You’ve got to do something with your digital presence: connect with people. offer value and get them communicating with you.

• Decision-making

If data is not behind every decision, then your company is flying blind. The greatest thing about digital marketing is that every single action can be measured.

Did switching background colors result in more traffic? Good decision. But, even if it had been a bad decision, analytics reflecting a noted drop in traffic, or less time spent by visitors on your site, would have alerted you to the need to re-adjust accordingly. Data must captain the ship.

• Value: You must offer education & value.

There is more to value than getting a great product at a great price. Content is the most valuable commodity in the digital age. The information you share needs to have value to viewers.

Cultivate an online reputation for being the premier authority on your particular industry. It’s easy to Google an answer to a question. But believing in the integrity of a source is the value that will bring readers back time and again to your site for reliable information

• Personalized Automation

As of 2014, nearly 70% of businesses were using a marketing automation platform.

Analytics identifies so many unique characteristics of customers and viewers that marketing automation can take on amazing personalization aspects. You can send birthday greetings or religious holiday observances according to each individual. An anniversary of a loyal customer’s first purchase can be noted.

A customer’s purchasing history can generate a suggestions list of other products of interest. Marketing automation can definitely create that personal experience that online customers still crave.

• Get More

In the time of yester-year, sales executives had to get out and mingle in order to bring in more customers. It’s the same in the digital age. Your content needs to get out more.

This is often called a multi-channel digital marketing strategy which means ads are delivered to other online targets. For example, when Google recognizes the potential of a Facebook user to find your brand interesting, it places your ad before their eyes as suggested content. Voila. You just mingled online.

• Digital Agility is a must.

There are all sorts of technical lingo to explain concepts like “agile sales”. All you really need to know is that things can change.

You’ve heard us say before: “your website is not an office building, so don’t treat it like one!” In the ever-changing digital world, you must be ready to change with it and that includes your website.

So that website you built? Is it turning out to be lousy? Don’t despair! Be agile! Change it!  When you build something to be accessed by others through the worldwide web, it’s not set in stone like a brick and mortar store.

If they turn out to be a bomb, tweak it. The digital age means everyone gets do-overs until you get it right.

• Chatter Matters

That old saying, “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas” does not apply to what your company or brand is doing online. Reviews matter. Feedback matters. Social media chatter matters.

If you get a bad review, be responsive and get things resolved. Stay focused on good customers service because all of your digital footsteps are out there for the entire world to see.

Digital Marketing Process

1. Developing Mission Statement:

That is the Organizational Mission Statement to be matched up with Marketing

2. Situational Analysis

• Identify the Problems and work on getting solutions.
• In order to achieve business goals, let me just brief you about the above chart.
• Identify the problem and Research

The marketer can identify the problem and research by asking people?s opinion about what they actually need.

Here surveys come into the picture where you take suggestions from the people and delivered the solutions(product/Services).

3. Marketing Strategy and Marketing Mix

Developing the Alternatives plan, After going through the surveys and analyzing the needs of the customers and then one can develop the alternatives plans. Once you Developed the alternatives plans, The next step is to carefully analyze every alternative and select the best possible alternative plan among them.

Marketing Mix which includes product Development, Pricing, Promotion, Place and Distribution Analyze and selects the Best alternative Plan.

4. Implementation and Control

• Implement the plan: Once you select the best plan you can start implementing the plan.
• Review/Measure: Once you have implemented the plan and now you can start measuring the success/failure.

Likewise, in Digital Marketing Strategy you can add similar methodology, gain some momentum and turn your visitors to the customer.

Steps

1. Research

• In the research stage, all the necessary information related either to the product(s)/service(s) or the target audience/market is collected, and the information collected during the research stage is used for making decisions. This information is very helpful in strategizing the marketing campaign. Following information are collected during this stage:
• About the brand/business/organization.
• About the target audience/target market.
• About the product/service being promoted.
• About the market, a competition to promote product/services and to stand out among the existing brands.

2. Create

• In this stage, the information collected in the research stage is analyzed and strategized to create the marketing campaign. The campaign is created as per the goals and objectives of the organization and the as per the vision of the stakeholders, how they want their product to be advertised on different platforms.
• This step covers the branding strategy, content strategy, etc. The goal is to reach maximum customers and to generate maximum revenue at the same time.

3. Promote

Once the marketing campaign is created and strategized, the marketing team starts working on promoting the product(s)/service(s). There are various digital platforms for promoting a brand, product(s)/service(s) like:

• Search Engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo, Etc.)
• Display Networks
• Social Media
• E-Mail and Affiliate Marketing
• E-Commerce Websites and Other Marketing Portals

4. Analyze

• Now comes the analyzing stage in which the results and outcomes of the marketing campaign are analyzed. The results or the outcome from various promotion channels are collected and analyzed for generating the business reports in terms of sales and revenue. This analysis helps to identify the grey areas and helps the marketing team to improve those areas and to prepare for future marketing. Google Analytics is one of the most popular analytics tools used for the analysis and basically it helps to identify the target audience response, behavior of the consumers and the data collected helps to convert the potential leads into business.
• Digital marketing is thus a very effective marketing channel used by both consumers and marketers to deliver and to purchase the product(s) and service(s). Digital marketing works in integration with the business strategy and it is very important to draft the marketing campaign as per market standards and the requirement of the target audience. The digital marketing processes have been very efficient in bridging the gap between the customers and the companies and promotes bidirectional communication between them.
• The customer can give their opinion and feedback to the marketing companies and the business teams which consequently helps the companies to provide better services to the customers/consumers/buyers. Digital marketing has almost captured half of the available market and there is no way to stop. IT has emerged as one of the promising careers and it is still evolving. The future is digital and digital marketing is going to be the backbone of the digital infrastructure in the coming future.