Digital Marketing supports and interacts with all the other Aspects of marketing such as Marketing Strategy, Marketing Research, Corporate Sales, Branding & Advertising, and Retail Marketing. Not understanding Digital Marketing makes it very difficult to manage other marketing activities. Here are some examples:
- Marketing Strategy: Without considering Digital Marketing, it is impossible to come up with a comprehensive Marketing Strategy. Several businesses have the internet at the core of their business model (for example, Google, Facebook, WhatsApp, multiple blogs, and online training websites) – and marketing strategy for such businesses cannot be defined without considering Digital Marketing. Most other businesses use the internet for some aspect of their business, for example, hotels or airlines use aggregators such as Expedia, Hotels.com – Cheap Hotels, Discount Rates & Hotel Deals and Trivago for customer acquisition; and rating websites such as TripAdvisor for understanding customer perception. Not understanding Digital Marketing will make it impossible for any business to define a comprehensive marketing strategy.
- Corporate Sales: A fine-tuned Digital Marketing Strategy can help significantly enhance Corporate Sales performance for most companies. For example, a well-designed company website and mobile app, with high ranking in search engines and positive interaction from customers can enhance the corporate sales efforts for most companies. Moreover, several companies use LinkedIn and other Digital Marketing avenues to connect with relevant contacts for Corporate Sales.
- Branding and Advertising: Unlike older media options where Sales and Marketing communications were primarily uni-directional (i.e., from producers to end-consumers), communications have increasingly become multi-directional (i.e., from producers to consumers, consumers to producers, and consumers to consumers).
- Marketing Research: Traditional Marketing Research primarily involved surveys, interviews, focus group discussions and analysis of the data collected. However, Digital Marketing has significantly changed the way in which Marketing Research is conducted in recent times. Companies get significant information about their products through customer feedback in social media forums (such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.) and customer interaction on company websites and mobile apps. Analysis of such data can be done through web-analytics and big data – and that helps in the Marketing Research efforts of any company.
- Retail Marketing: Typically, producers used to sell to customers through retail stores – but Digital Marketing has enabled business models where producers can sell directly through their own websites and through aggregators such as Amazon, Alibaba, and Flipkart. Understanding Digital Marketing can significantly enhance the Retail Marketing efforts of any company.