Digital Marketing

The main objectives of the digital marketing should be to reach the potential decision makers with the information of the products and services in order to drive profitable customer action. And to do that, the basic marketing drive would never change since it is telling brand story to people at large at minimum cost. Therefore, socio-economic weather, demography, psychographic orientation, statistical analysis, etc., are part of digital marketing endeavours.

Therefore, a concise look on the traditional marketing is required. Some relevant questions or points would be cleared in this analytical search-work:

The difference between marketing and communications
Traditional Marketing Mix or 4Ps of marketing
The communications or promotions mix and the corresponding connection of 4Ps and the promotion mix
Integrated view of marketing communications
Relation between inbound (The functions of SEO, social media marketing, content marketing, relevant link generating, and growth hacking) and outbound marketing
So many marketing gurus proclaim “inbound marketing is the future,” “social media is the ultimate work,” and “advertising is dead.” But one must not forget same marketing strategy may not be effective for all circumstances: sometimes, modern inbound marketing is the best, and marketers should think and work more on this tactics, while sometimes it is not that much successful. Then common outbound marketing channels, such as TV, radio, or newspaper, could be used. And those must be the part of promotional mix. For different purposes, product, brand, or industry, different channels are to be utilised. Therefore, a balance must take place while choosing channels.

Marketing communication (MARCOM) workflow

This is basic workflow that every MARCOM specialist usually follows.

All the external audience your company corresponds on a daily basis
The potential customers are from among these external audiences
Be ready with the messages that have been set aside for different customer segmentation on the basis of the customer behaviours and personalities
Get prepared for the right product to delivered to the market
Fix a sound pricing strategy
Determine the ways to set up a specific promotional mix (including direct marketing, personal selling, sales promotion, advertising, and publicity), and distribute the resources
Create an effective strategy to use the online and offline channels in the promotional mix, and work on allocating the resources
Work on the sales promotional content, creative briefs, and marketing collaterals
Pass on the marketing materials over the channels to be used to reach the audience
Make an audit on the results
Review and re-work on the steps described above from 3 to 8 points and capitalize on the sales revenue, sales, ROI (return on investment), or other metrics based on your marketing and business objectives
Marketing vs. Communications

Previously, in every company, marketing and communications had separate departments. While marketing is focused on issues, such as sales, customers, and brands, communications – frequently reckoned as public relations or external relationships – hold all the outside communications, e.g., community, government, media, customers, financial analysts, and internal communications, i.e., employees and internal stakeholders.

And for each of these groups of stakeholders, the communication messages were different. Now many companies bring together marketing and communication under the single banner of “marketing communications” or “MARCOM.” The reason behind putting these two big departments into one single entity is to emit the same messages to everyone, so that there would be no difference of opinions, and a unified message is circulated. In practice, an integrated and combined message is disseminated through all the online and offline channels, such as websites, social networks, advertising and promotional campaigns, online content, blogs, news releases, brochures, and sales catalogues.

Traditional Marketing Mix or 4Ps of marketing

The next step after setting up potential marketing strategies to reach the potential customers is to zero on the marketing mix. Provided the specific marketing objectives and goals, the target segments and market position need to be secured, and tools of different marketing plan have to be built properly. The successful marketers depend on the number of marketing instruments that are known as
marketing mix.

Instruments of marketing or the marketing mix

Product Strategy

In the run of marketing, this is necessary to have a product-market fit, which is called as the extent to which a product or service that is able to satisfy the market demand. And to do this, we need to understand the inherent pictures of core product, tangible product, and augmented product. Basis the unique benefit marketed, the core product features are established. Some qualitative aspects, availability options, design, and packaging are transforming the core product into the tangible products.

The augmented product adds more values, options, and appeals (i.e., timely delivery, installation service, post-sales service, and good administration of complaints) to the customers. It basically adds the ‘service layer’ on the tangible products. In the contemporary inbound marketing, the product strategy is known as the Growth Hacking. The following Growth Hacking Marketing principles have been layered by Ryan Holiday

Pricing Strategy

Price does not cost anything but provides the resources to spend on marketing and production movements. The list price that is known as the official price of a product can be made more attractive if there is a discount. But a brand image does not depend on the regular price-cut or discount or promotional offers. Moreover, the margin or profit needs to be sacrificed if there is a discount. The customers might be habituated to purchase only when there is any offer or price-cut. Therefore, the regular use of price instrument is not good for building the strong position in
the market.

If a company wants to earn $1000 revenue, it can sell a product at $1000 or sell 1000 products at $1 each. Every move demands a detailed marketing strategy. While a high price denotes good quality and secluded attributes, the low prices refer the reasonability and availability.

Some effective factors play decisive roles for any pricing strategy to take shape: Market size, cost of production, competition level, the financial side of the target market, and the quality or value-based marketing. In accordance with all these factors, a digital marketer must effectively use the offline and online channels to reach the potential customers.

Placement and distribution strategy

Place or distribution generally refers to bringing the product from production to the potential customers by using the several distribution channels. And it consists of transportation of product, arranging an inventory, working with the wholesalers and retailers, selection of outlets, and allocation of products in these selected outlets. A thorough co-operation between the company and distribution channels would ultimately infomercials (promotion and selling) and e-commerce.

Promotional Strategy

Known as the most observable instrument, the promotion or marketing communications communicates to the target groups or stakeholders to promote the product or the company. It actually increases the awareness of a product or a brand, breeding sales and building brand loyalty.

It has five important parts: direct marketing, sales promotion, publicity, advertising, and personal selling. As per the industry, marketing goals and objectives, target, and product, each of these facets gets due importance.

Promotional Mix and the corresponding connection of 4Ps and the promotion mix

Let’s focus on the different poles of promotional mix as these would undoubtedly come time after time irrespective of offline or online marketing dynamics.

Direct marketing

Direct marketing is “straight connections with cautiously targeted individual consumers to both attain an instant reaction and develop permanent customer relationships.” Direct marketing includes “direct mailing, telemarketing, catalogues, telephone marketing, kiosks, the Internet, mobile marketing, and personalized brochures and leaflets.”

Advertising

Advertising is non-personal mass communications utilising mass media (e.g., TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, billboards, etc.) the content of which is selected and paid for by an evidently identified sponsor (the company).