Digital marketing is a way of promotion of products or services and brands by using most efficient form of electronic media and differs from traditional marketing in that it involves the use of channels and digital marketing strategy that enable an organization to analyze marketing campaigns and understand what is working and what isn’t – typically in real time (Real- Time Digital Footprints).
Digital media is everywhere and the customer can access information wherever, whenever and however they want it and they are never influenced by “Brand” in fact, they are influenced by what other says about the brand. The reality is people prefer brand they can trust, the company known to them, communication which is personalized in nature and relevant and offer them a tailor-made anticipated need and preference.
But there are challenges in conceptualizing digital marketing strategy.
1. Selection of the right platform: Customers choose different channels and variety of devices for different objectives. It becomes very difficult to keep watch on all channels and build relation with prospect audience at same time.
2. Intensifying competition: As digital channel has two modes of execution (Organic & Paid), it becomes relatively cheaper than traditional medium making them reach every business irrespective of size and popularity, resulting difficult to capture target audience.
3. Digital Data Intelligence: Whenever customer access anything on digital media, they leave a huge trail of data and it becomes very difficult for any “brand” to segment that data and utilize it for business impending and in digital strategy making but that’s too complex to aggregate all digital data and find out some actionable insights.
4. Complexity of Platform and its dynamic nature: Every platform has its own way of prioritizing the content and make available to the user based on some hidden score and they call it as dynamic algorithm like Page Rank, Edge Rank etc. It becomes very difficult to understand and formulate Digital Plan accordingly.
So how to make best digital marketing strategy
1. Omni Channel Digital Strategy
Irrespective of all platforms, brand should focus on customer personification on digital media and select all possible channels customer may browse to explore the product/service you offer and customer can complete his journey irrespective of platforms.
2. Centralized and automated response system
Customers are connected to internet 27X7 and they need solution ASAP. They have fewer spans of engagement and are quick in decision. They are filled with emotions and delay/speedy response can turn their sentiments. So brand response time matters.
3. Data Driven Decision
While making digital plan for brand should set prospective KPIs across platforms irrespective of data points prioritized by platforms. Consolidation of data has to be done to generate preferential digital marketing strategy.
4. Right Platform to Target
Now a days, knowing your customer is not enough, you should know them better than others so that you can communicate effectively with them for where, when and how they are most receptive to your message. To do that you should consolidate your customer preferences across all channels and try to map those preferences to digital platforms, thereby creating the most efficient Digital Marketing Strategy.