Subhankar Pattanayak July 21, 2021 
muneebfarman / Pixabay
Digital marketing is often viewed as a separate science and frequently compared vis-à-vis traditional marketing. To me, digital marketing is the evolution of marketing with the advent of new technologies. Social, Cloud, Analytics and Mobility have changed the rules of the game. Still, the basics of marketing remain the same. That is to inform the customers about the product, pricing via promotion and packaging. New technologies like 3D printing, augmented reality, VR, AI helps us in understanding and reaching out to the customer in the most cost-effective way.
Five ways the digitization changes rather enhances the marketing:
Branding: Experience is essential to the customer. Good experiences result in loyalty and advocacy. And a bad experience is bad press. Companies are getting innovative and embedding varied experiences. One such example can be the use of pokemon games by Macdonald. The opportunities are immense to improve the brand perception by technology usage.
Technology has enabled more power to people: Social has provided direct access of brands to people and vice versa. Now the feedback is captured directly. Grievances are registered online. Zero moments of truth entails that people now search everything on the internet before making an informed decision.
Engineering to ensure that Products/Services do the marketing: New-age brands reply on the power of their engineering to do the evangelization for their product.
Being Interesting is now the norm: Interesting and humane stories help in making the brand more relatable. With user-generated content taking precedence, the end customer stories are now directly captured and relayed as marketing content. Interesting stories go viral and enhance the positive image of a brand. Alternatively, bad stories take down the brand.
Community is the way forward: Social has also enabled aficionados clubs. Passionate customers are the best brand ambassadors. Communities give them a voice via communities also helps the brand to solicit valuable feedback about their products. SAP Community is one example. SAP customers, partners and developers share feedback, discuss ideas and access new critical resources. It has 2.8 community users and 287,000 visits per day. Also, users can follow a specific topic based on their interests: Industry Clouds (example)
3c should always complement the 4Ps
Content is the key: Always find customers relevant and interesting things to say about your product and services.
Communication: Telling relevant stories across different channels to reach the right audience.
Community: Building a robust community to share, discuss and improve.
Here is a presentation on this topic. You can watch this video. You can give your comments in the comments sections below.
Digital & Social Articles on Business 2 Community
(159)
