Internet Marketing Also Known As Digital Marketing

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Chapter 1 - Introduction

Chapter 1: Introduction

Internet marketing:

Internet marketing, also known as digital marketing, web marketing, online marketing, search marketing or e-marketing, is the marketing (generally promotion) of products or services over the Internet.

Internet marketing is considered to be broad in scope because it not only refers to marketing on the Internet, but also marketing done via e-mail and wireless media. Digital customer data and electronic customer relationship management (ECRM) systems are also often grouped together under internet marketing.

Internet marketing ties together the creative and technical aspects of the Internet, with development, ad, and sales. Internet marketing also refers to the placement of media along many different stages of the customer engagement cycle through search engine marketing (SEM),search engine optimization (SEO), poster advertisements on specific websites, email marketing, and Web 2.0 strategies.

In 2008, The New York Times, working with comScore, released an initial estimate to quantify the user data collected by large Internet-based companies. Counting 4 types of interactions with company websites in addition to the hits from advertisements served from ad networks, the authors found that the potential for collecting data was up to 2500 times per user per month.

Business Models:

Internet marketing is associated with several business models:

E-commerce: a model where goods are sold to consumers directly(B2C), businesses (B2B), or from consumer to consumer (C2C).

Lead-based websites: a approach whereby an organization generate value by acquiring sales leads from its site. Comparable to walk-in customers in retail world. These projection are often known to as organic leads.

Affiliate Marketing: a process in which a product or service developed by one body is sold by other active sellers for a share of profits. The individual that owns the product may provide some marketing material (e.g., sales letters, affiliate links, tracking facilities, etc.); though, the vast majority of associate marketing relationships come from e-commerce businesses that offer associate programs.

Local Internet marketing: a strategy through which a small company utilizes the Internet to find and to raise relationships that can be used for real-world advantages. Local Internet marketing uses gears such as social media marketing, local directory listing, and targeted online sales promotions.

One-to-one approach

In a one-to-one approach, marketers ambition a user browsing the Internet abandoned and so that the marketers' letters ability the user personally. This access is acclimated in seek marketing, for which the advertisements are based on seek engine keywords entered by the users. This access usually works beneath the pay per bang (PPC) method.

Appeal to specific interests:

When ambrosial to specific interests, marketers abode an accent on ambrosial to a specific behavior or interest, rather than extensive out to a broadly authentic demographic. These marketers about articulation their markets according to age group, gender, geography, and added accepted factors.

Niche Marketing:

Niche and hyper-niche internet business put added accent on creating destinations for web users and consumers on specific capacity and products. Alcove marketers alter from acceptable Internet marketers as they accept a added specialized affair knowledge. For example, admitting in acceptable Internet business a website would be created and answer on a high-level affair such as kitchen appliances, alcove business would focus on added specific capacity such as 4-slice toasters.

Geo-targeting:

In Internet marketing, geo targeting and geo business are the methods of free the geolocation of a website company with geolocation software, and carrying altered agreeable to that company based on his or her location, such as breadth and longitude, country, arena or state, city, busline cipher or zip code, organization, Internet Protocol (IP) address, ISP, and added criteria..

Advantages and limitations of internet marketing:

Advantages:

Internet marketing is inexpensive when examining the ratio of cost to the reach of the goal audience. Companies can reach a broad audience for a small fraction of conventional advertising budgets. The nature of the medium allows customers to research and to purchase products and services suitably. Therefore, businesses have the benefit of appealing to consumers in a medium that can bring results fast. The strategy and on the whole effectiveness of marketing campaigns depend on business goals and cost-volume-profit (CVP) analysis.

Internet marketers also have the advantage of measuring statistics easily and inexpensively; almost all aspects of an Internet marketing campaign can be traced, calculated, and tested. The advertisers can use a variety of methods, such as pay per impression pay per click, pay per play, and pay per action. Therefore, marketers can decide which messages or contributions are more appealing to the audience. The outcome of campaigns can be measured and tracked immediately because online marketing initiatives usually require users to click on an advertisement, to visit a website, and to perform a targeted action.

Limitations:

However, from the buyer's perspective, the inability of shoppers to touch, to smell, to taste, and "to try on" tangible goods before making an online purchase can be limiting. However, there is an industry standard for e-commerce vendors to reassure customers by having liberal return policies as well as providing in-store pick-up services.

Security Concern:

Information security is important both to companies and customers that take part in online business. Many consumers are cautious to buy items over the Internet because they do not believe that their personal information will remain confidential. Some companies that purchase client information present the option for individuals to have their information removed from the database, also known as opting out. Though, many customers are uninformed if and when their information is being shared, and are powerless to stop the transfer of their information between companies if such activity occurs.

Another major security concern that consumers have with e-commerce sellers is whether or not they will receive exactly what they purchase. Online sellers have attempted to address this concern by investing in and building strong customer brands (e.g., Amazon.com, eBay, and Overstock.com), and by leveraging seller and advice rating systems and e-commerce bonding solutions.

All these solutions attempt to assure consumers that their transactions will be free of problems because the merchants can be trusted to provide reliable products and services. Additionally, several major online payment mechanisms (credit cards, PayPal, Google Checkout, etc.) have provided back-end buyer protection systems to address problems if they occur.

The internet and marketing concept:

The marketing concept, and its association to more recent concepts such as Internet marketing, e-commerce and e-business.

It describes the range of expert marketing functions carried out within many organizations. Such functions include market research, brand/product management, public relations and customer service

The modern marketing concept (Houston, 1986) unites these two meanings and stresses that marketing encompasses the range of organizational functions and processes that seek to determine the needs of target markets and deliver products and services to customers and other key stakeholders such as employees and financial institutions. Ever more the importance of marketing is being recognized both as a vital function and as a guiding management philosophy within organizations.

Marketing has to be seen as the essential focus of all activities within an organization. The marketing concept should lie at the heart of the organization, and the proceedings of directors, managers and employees should be guided by its philosophy.

Modern marketing requires organizations to be committed to a market/customer orientation. All parts of the organization should co-ordinate activities to ensure that customer needs are met efficiently, effectively and profitably.

Marketing encompasses activities traditionally seen as the sole domain of accountants, production, human resources management (HRM) and information technology (IT). Many of these functions had little regard for customer consideration. Ever more such functions are being re-orientated, evidenced by the importance of initiatives such as Total Quality Management, Business Process Reengineering, Just in Time (JIT) and supply chain management. Individuals’ functional roles are undergo change, from being solely purposeful to having a greater emphasis on process. Individuals are therefore being expectant to become part-time marketers. Processes have a important impact on an organization’s ability to service its customers’ needs.

The Internet can be applied by companies as an essential part of the modern marketing concept since:

It can be used to support the full variety of organizational functions and processes that bring products and services to clientele and other key stakeholders.

It is an influential communications medium that can act as ‘corporate glue’ that integrates the diverse functional parts of the organization.

It facilitates information management, which is now increasingly known as a critical marketing support tool to strategy formulation and execution.

The future role of the Internet should form part of the vision of a company since its future impact will be important to most businesses.

Without sufficient information, organizations are at a shortcoming with respect to competitors and the external environment. Up-to-date, timely and available information about the industry, markets, new technology, competitors and customers is a grave factor in an organization’s ability to plan and fight in an increasingly competitive marketplace.

Avoiding Internet marketing myopia:

Theodore Levitt, writing in the Harvard Business Review, outlined the factors that underlie the demise of many organizations and at best badly weaken their longer-term competitiveness. These factors still offer a timely cue of traps that should be avoided when embarking on Internet marketing.

Wrongly defining of which business they are in

Focusing on

Products (many web sites are still product-centric rather than customer-centric);

Production;

Technology (technology is only an enabler, not an objective);

Selling (the culture on the Internet is based on customers seeking information to make informed buying decisions rather than strong exhortations to buy);

Rather than:

Customer needs (the need for market orientation is a critical aspect of web site design and Internet marketing strategy); and

Market opportunities (the Internet should not just be used as another channel, but new opportunities for adding value should be explored).

Unwillingness to innovate and ‘creatively destruct’ existing product/service lines.

Thoughtlessness in terms of strategic thoughts

The lack of a strong and visionary CEO (Baker (1998) found that this was important to companies’ using the Internet effectively).

Giving marketing only ‘stepchild status’ , behind finance, production and technology

Any organization that sees and hence defines its business in whatever thing other than customer benefit stipulations has not taken the first step in achieving a market orientation. Any organization that defines its business by what it manufactures is said to be suffering from ‘marketing myopia’. Such myopia outcomes from a company having a shortsighted and narrow view of the business that it is in.

If Internet marketing is to become included and fully reputable as a strategic marketing management tool, then the focus of concentration needs to move towards thoughtful its broader applications within the total marketing process rather than just using it as a communication and selling tool. This is not to detract from the capability of the Internet to commune and sell, but recognizes that this is only one important aspect of the marketing process to which the Internet can contribute. The danger for those currently bearing in mind developing Internet technology is that the focus of such participation will be too narrow and the true power of the Internet and its potential input to the marketing process will be missed.

One of the fundamentals of developing an Internet marketing strategy is deciding which marketing functions can be assisted by the Internet. There is a propensity amongst companies first using the Internet to restrict applications to promotion and selling rather than a relationship building and service delivery tool.

Viral Marketing:

Viral marketing, viral advertising, or marketing buzz are buzzwords referring to marketing technique that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives (such as product sales) through self-replicating viral processes, equivalent to the spreading of viruses or computer viruses. It can be delivered by word of mouth or improved by the network effects of the Internet. Viral marketing may take the form of video clips, interactive Flash games, advergames, ebooks, brandable software, images, or text messages.

The goal of marketers concerned in creating successful viral marketing programs is to create viral messages that appeal to individuals with high social networking potential (SNP) and that have a high probability of being accessible and spread by these individuals and their competitors in their communications with others in a short period of time.

The term "viral marketing" has also been used negatively to refer to stealth marketing campaigns—the dishonest use of astroturfing online combined with under market advertising in shopping centers to create the impression of spontaneous word of mouth enthusiasm.

History:

There is debate on the beginning and the popularization of the term viral marketing, though some of the initial uses of the current term are credited to the Harvard Business School graduate Tim Draper and faculty member Jeffrey Rayport. The term was later popularized by Rayport in a 1996 Fast Company article "The Virus of Marketing", and Tim Draper and Steve Jurvetson of the venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson in 1997 to describe Hotmail's e-mail practice of appending advertising to outgoing mail from their users. Among the first to write about viral marketing on the Internet was the media critic Douglas Rushkoff.

The hypothesis is that if such an advertisement reaches a "susceptible" user, that user becomes "infected" (i.e., accepts the idea) and shares the idea with others "infecting them," in the viral analogy's terms. As long as each contaminated user shares the idea with more than one vulnerable user on average (i.e., the basic reproductive rate is greater than one—the standard in epidemiology for qualifying something as an epidemic), the number of contaminated users grows according to an exponential curve. Of course, the marketing campaign may be successful even if the message spreads more slowly, if this user-to-user sharing is continued by other forms of marketing communications, such as public relations or advertising. Bob Gerstley was among the first to write about algorithms designed to identify people with high Social Networking Potential. Gerstley employed SNP algorithms in quantitative marketing research. In 2004, the concept of the alpha user was coined to indicate that it had now become possible to identify the focal members of any viral campaign, the "hubs" who were most influential. Alpha users could be targeted for advertising purposes most accurately in mobile phone networks, as mobile phones are so personal.

Functioning:

According to marketing professors Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein, to make viral marketing work, three basic criteria must be met, i.e., giving the right message to the right messengers in the right environment:

1. Messenger: Three specific types of messengers are required to ensure the alteration of an ordinary message into a viral one: market mavens, social hubs, and salespeople. Market mavens are those who are continuously ‘on the pulse’ of things (information specialists); they are usually among the first to get exposed to the message and who send out it to their immediate social network. Social hubs are people with an remarkably large number of social connections; they often know hundreds of different people and have the ability to serve as bridges between different subcultures. Salespeople might be needed who receive the message from the market maven, intensify it by making it more relevant and convincing, and then transmit it to the social hub for further distribution. Market mavens may not be particularly convincing in transmitting the information.

2. Message: Only messages that are both brilliant and sufficiently interesting to be passed on to others have the potential to spur a viral marketing phenomenon. Making a message more memorable and interesting or simply more infectious, is often not a matter of major changes but minor adjustments.

3. Environment: The environment is vital in the rise of triumphant viral marketing – small changes in the environment lead to huge results, and people are much more sensitive to environment. The timing and background of the campaign launch must be right.

Online advertising:

Online advertising is a form of promotion that uses the Internet and World Wide Web for the expressed purpose of delivering marketing messages to draw customers. Examples of online hype include contextual ads on search engine outcome pages, banner ads, Rich Media Ads, Social network ad, interstitial ads, online classified ad, ad networks and e-mail marketing, including e-mail spam.

Competitive advantage over traditional advertising:

One major advantage of online advertising is the immediate publishing of information and content that is not limited by natural features or time. To that end, the up-and-coming area of interactive advertising presents fresh challenges for advertisers who have hitherto adopted an interruptive strategy.

Another benefit is the efficiency of advertiser's venture. Online advertising allows for the customization of advertisements, as well as content and posted websites. For example, AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing and Google AdSense enable ads to be shown on relevant web pages or alongside search result

Notable Examples:

The Ponzi scheme and related investment pyramid schemes are early examples of viral marketing. In each round, investors are paid interest from the principal deposits of later investors. Early investors enthusiastically recruit their friends, generating exponential growth until the pool of available investors is tapped out and the scheme collapses.

Launched in 2002, BMW Films was among the earliest viral marketing campaigns. It attracted nearly 55 million viewers and helped to elevate the career of Clive Owen.

Cadbury's Dairy Milk 2007 Gorilla advertising campaign was heavily popularised on YouTube and Facebook.

The 2007 concept album Year Zero by Nine Inch Nails employed a viral marketing campaign, including the band leaving USB drives at concerts during NIN's 2007 European Tour. This was followed up with a series of interlinked websites revealing clues and information about the dystopian future in which the album is set.

In 2007, World Wrestling Entertainment promoted the return of Chris Jericho with a viral marketing campaign using 15-second cryptic binary code videos. The videos contained hidden messages and biblical links related to Jericho, although speculation existed throughout WWE fans over whom the campaign targeted. The text "Save Us" and "2nd Coming" were most prominent in the videos. The campaign spread throughout the internet with numerous websites, though no longer operational, featuring hidden messages and biblical links to further hint at Jericho's return.

In 2007 BigFix ran a business-to-business viral campaign, showing that viral advertising has application in areas outside of consumer marketing.

In 2007, Portuguese football club Sporting Portugal integrated a viral feature in their campaign for season seats. In their website, a video required the user to input his name and phone number before playback started, which then featured the coach Paulo Bento and the players waiting at the locker room while he makes a phone call to the user telling him that they just can't start the season until the user buys his season ticket. Flawless video and phone call synchronization and the fact that it was a totally new experience for the user led to nearly 200,000 pageviews and phone calls in less than 24 hours.

The marketing campaign for the 2008 film The Dark Knight combined both online and real-life elements to make it resemble an alternate reality game.

Techniques included

Mass gatherings of Joker fans,

Scavenger hunts around the world,

Detailed and intricate websites that let fans actually participate in "voting" for political offices in Gotham City,

Hidden phone numbers and websites in the queue lines of The Dark Knight roller coasters at Six Flags Great America and Six Flags Great Adventure, and even a Gotham News Network that has links to other Gotham pages such as Gotham Rail, a Gotham travel agency, and political candidate's pages.

The movie also markets heavily off of word-of-mouth from the thousands of Batman fans.

Both the second and third games in the Halo series were preceded with viral marketing in the form of an Alternate Reality Game (ARG) called I Love Bees for the second game. I Love Bees was created and developed by 42 Entertainment. And Iris for the third game.

In December 2009, podcasters of The Mike O'Meara Show launched a viral marketing campaign on Facebook to encourage others to download the show.

Between December 2009 and March 2010 a series of seven videos were posted to YouTube under the name "iamamiwhoami" leading to speculation that they were a marketing campaign for a musician. In March 2010, an anonymous package was sent to an MTV journalist (James Montgomery) claiming to contain a code which if cracked would give the identity of the artist. The seventh video, entitled 'y', appears to feature the Swedish singer Jonna Lee.

On July 14, 2010, Old Spice launched the fastest growing online viral video campaign ever, garnering 6.7 million views after 24 hours, ballooning over 23 million views after 36 hours. Old Spice's agency Wieden + Kennedy created a bathroom set in Portland, OR and had their TV commercial star, Isaiah Mustafa, reply to 186 online comments and questions from websites like Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Digg, Youtube and others. The campaign ran for 3 days and added negligibly to the companies budget.

In April 2010, Pixar posted 2 videos to YouTube under the names MrCrazycommercials and GaikokujinJoe1' as a promotion for the release of Toy Story 3. They were made to look like 1980s toy commercials to have grown-up appeal, credits to playing on the feelings of nostalgia

The Hero Movie did a viral campaign about their film. A web based viral application that allows you to upload a picture of yourself or someone you know and then have said picture rendered in a movie. In the movie you or your friend will then see the entire world celebrate you as a hero because you are paying your TV broadcasting fee (and by doing this you help safeguarding the free word in Swedish public service). After the movie has played you are given the option to apply for starting to pay your broadcasting fee and/or send your movie as a link to someone you know.

Heineken organized an event in Italy combining classical music and poetry during the UEFA Champions League final; Real Madrid vs. AC Milan.

Some Indian firms who succeeded in making advertisements that went viral starting from early 1990’s Maruti Suzuki’s advertisement of its Maruti 800 showing a child playing with a miniature Maruti 800 and saying "Ki Kara Papa Petrol Khatam hi Nai Hounda Hai" went viral.

Vodafone with its famous Zoo Zoo advertisement campaign succeeded with viral marketing reaching millions of customers. Along with its campaign to promote Blackberry with "Blackberry Boys" campaign which was a huge success.

Also, Airtel using its ongoing campaign "hare ke dost zaruri hota hai" has managed to reach millions of people may it be youth or older people.

Dairy Milk with its various campaigns like "Pappu Pass Ho Gaya", "Kuch Meetha Ho Jae"made it huge sales increase and reached out to customers.

Nestle with Kit Kat has many advertisements like one featuring Squirrels and the most recent follow up of it the Dancing Babies featuring the taglines "Kit Kat Break Banta Hai" got the company a lot of new customers.

Pepsi with its "Youngistan" campaign, Tata Tea with "Jagoo Re", Thumbs Up with "Aaj Kuch Tufani Karte Hai" are some more examples.

Type of Advertising:

Virtually any medium can be used for advertising. Commercial advertising media can include

Wall paintings, billboards, street furniture components, printed flyers and rack cards,

Radio, cinema and television adverts,

Web banners, mobile telephone screens, shopping carts, web popups,

Skywriting, bus stop benches, human billboards,

Magazines, newspapers, town criers,

Sides of buses, banners attached to or sides of airplanes ("logojets"),

In-flight advertisements on seatback tray tables or overhead storage bins,

Taxicab doors, roof mounts and passenger screens,

Musical stage shows, subway platforms and trains,

Elastic bands on disposable diapers, doors of bathroom stalls,

Stickers on apples in supermarkets, shopping cart handles (grabertising),

The opening section of streaming audio and video, posters, and the backs of event tickets and supermarket receipts.

Any place an "identified" sponsor pays to deliver their message through a medium is advertising.

Television:

The TV commercial is generally considered the most efficient mass-market advertising set-up, as is reflected by the high prices TV networks charge for commercial airtime during popular TV events. The average cost of a single thirty-second TV spot during this game has reached US$3 million. The majorities of television commercials feature a song or jingle that listeners soon relate to the product. Virtual advertisements may be inserted into regular television programming through computer graphics. It is normally inserted into otherwise blank backdrops or used to replace local billboards that are not relevant to the remote broadcast spectators. More controversially, virtual billboards may be inserted into the background where none exist in real -life. This technique is especially used in televised sporting events Virtual product placement is also possible.

Radio Advertising:

Radio advertising is a form of advertising via the medium of radio. Radio advertisements are broadcast as radio waves to the air from a source to an antenna and a thus to a receiving device. Airtime is purchased from a station or network in exchange for airing the commercials. While radio has the obvious constraint of being restricted to sound, proponents of radio advertising often cite this as an advantage.

Press Advertising:

Press advertising describes advertising in a printed medium such as a newspaper, magazine, or trade journal. This encompass the whole thing from media with a very broad readership base, such as a major national newspaper or magazine, to more barely targeted media such as local newspapers and trade journals on very dedicated topics. A form of press advertising is classified advertising, which allows private individuals or companies to buy a small, narrowly targeted ad for a low fee advertising a product or service. There are quite a few tips on making a print ad stand out more.

Online Advertising:

Online advertising is a form of promotion that uses the Internet and World Wide Web for the articulated purpose of delivering marketing messages to draw customers. Examples of online advertising include contextual ads that appear on search engine results pages, banner ads, in text ads, Rich Media Ads, Social network advertising, online classified advertising, advertising networks and e-mail marketing, including e-mail spam.

Billboard Advertising:

Billboards are large structures situated in public places which display advertisement to passing pedestrians and motorists. Most often, they are positioned on main roads with a large amount of passing motor and pedestrian traffic; though, they can be placed in any location with large amount of viewers, such as on mass transit vehicles and in stations, in shopping malls or office buildings, and in stadiums.

Mobile Billboard Advertising:

Mobile billboards are usually vehicle mounted billboards or digital screens. These can be on devoted vehicles built exclusively for carrying advertisements along routes selected by clients, they can also be particularly equipped cargo trucks or, in some cases, large banners sprinkled from planes. The billboards are often lighted; some being backlit, and others employing spotlights. Some billboard displays are static, while others change; for example, continuously or occasionally rotating among a set of advertisements. Mobile displays are used for various situations in metropolitan areas throughout the world, including:

Target advertising

One-day, and long-term campaigns

Conventions

Sporting events

Store openings and similar promotional events

Big advertisements from smaller companies

Others

In-store Advertising:

In-store advertising is any ad placed in a retail store. It include situation of a product in visible locations in a store, such as at eye level, at the ends of aisle and near depart counters, eye- catching displays promoting a specific product, and advertisements in such places as shopping carts and in-store video displays.

Covert Advertising:

Covert advertising, also known as guerrilla advertising, is when a product or brand is entrenched in entertainment and media. For example, in a film, the main personality can use an item or other of a definite brand, as in the movie Minority Report, where Tom Cruise's character John Anderton owns a phone with the Nokia logo clearly written in the top corner, or his watch engraved with the Bulgari logo.

Another example of advertising in film is in I, Robot, where main character played by Will Smith mentions his Converse shoes several times, calling them "classics," because the film is set far in the future. I, Robot and Spaceballs also showcase futuristic cars with the Audi and Mercedes-Benz logos clearly displayed on the front of the vehicles.

Cadillac chose to advertise in the movie The Matrix Reloaded, which as a result contained many scenes in which Cadillac cars were used.

Similarly, product placement for Omega Watches, Ford, VAIO, BMW and Aston Martin cars are featured in recent James Bond films, most notably Casino Royale.

In "Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer", the main transport vehicle shows a large Dodge logo on the front.

Celebrities Advertising:

This type of advertising focuses upon using celebrity power, fame, money, popularity to gain acknowledgment for their products and promote specific stores or products. Advertisers often promote their products, for example, when celebrities share their favorite products or wear clothes by specific brands or designers. Celebrities are often drawn in in advertising campaigns such as television or print adverts to advertise specific or general products.

The use of celebrities to support a brand can have its downsides, however. One mistake by a celebrity can be harmful to the public relations of a brand.

For example, following his performance of eight gold medals at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, China, swimmer Michael Phelps' contract with Kellogg's was terminated, as Kellogg's did not want to associate with him after he was photographed smoking marijuana.

Effectiveness of advertising:

The advertising industry, as a whole, has the poorest quality-assurance systems and turns out the most inconsistent product (their ads and commercials) of any industry in the world. This might seem like an excessively harsh evaluation, but it is based on testing thousands of ads over several decades. Only about half of all commercials really work; that is, have any positive effects on consumers’ buying behavior or brand choice. Furthermore, a small share of ads actually appear to have negative effects on sales.

Unlike most of the business world, which is governed by numerous reaction loops, the advertising industry receives little purpose, reliable feedback on its advertising. First, few ads and commercials are ever tested among consumers (less than one percent, according to some estimates). So, no one—not agency or client—knows if the advertising is any good. If no one knows when a commercial is good or bad, or why, how can the next commercial be any better? Second, once the advertising goes on air, sales comeback (a potential feedback loop) is a scandalously poor indicator of advertising efficacy because there is always so much "noise" in sales data (aggressive activity, out-of-stocks, weather, economic trends, promotional influences, pricing variation, etc.). Third, some of the feedback is puzzling and deceptive: agency and client preference and biases, the opinions of the client’s wife, feedback from dealers and franchisees, complaints from the lunatic fringe, and so on

Advertising testing could offer a reliable feedback loop and lead to much enhanced advertising, but many obstacles stand in the way. The first great barrier to better advertising is self-hallucination. Most of us believe, in our heart-of-hearts, that we know what good advertising is and that there is no need for any kind of independent, objective assessment. Agencies and clients alike often think that they know how to create and moderator good advertising. Besides, once agencies and clients start to fall in love with the new creative, they quickly lose interest in any objective assessment.

A second barrier to better advertising is the belief that sales presentation will tell if the advertising is working. Unless the sales response to the advertising is immediate and overpowering, it is almost impossible to use sales data to judge the success of the advertising. So many variables are further than our control, as noted, that it’s unfeasible to isolate the effects of media advertising alone. Moreover, some advertising works in a few weeks, while other advertising might take many months to show encouraging effects, and this delayed response can stun our efforts to read the sales data. Also, advertising often has short-term effects that sales data might reflect, and long-term (years later) effects that are easily miss in subsequent sales data. Because of these confines, sales data tends to be confusing and untrustworthy as an indicator of advertising effectiveness.

complicated marketing mix modeling is one way to measure these advertising effects on sales, but it often takes millions of dollars and years of endeavor, and require the building of pristine databases of sales information along with all of the marketing input variables. Few companies have the budget, the endurance, the accurate databases, and the technical knowledge necessary to succeed at marketing mix modeling. Even so, marketing mix modeling does not help us evaluate the contribution of a single commercial but rather the cumulative effects of many different commercials over a long period of time. Also, marketing mix modeling does not tell us why the advertising worked, or failed to work. Was it message, or media weight, or media mix that made the advertising effective? Generally, marketing mix modeling cannot answer these types of questions. So, again, sales data is of limited value when one makes critical decisions about advertising.

A third barrier to better advertising is a pervasive tendency of many (but not all) advertising agencies to delay, undermine, and thwart efforts to objectively test their creative "babies." Who wants a report card on the quality of their work? It’s very threatening. The results can upset the creative folks. The results can upset clients. The agency can lose control. Agencies can be quite creative in coming up with reasons to avoid copy testing.

Effectiveness of sale promotion:

A sales promotion is a tool used to get customers to buy a product or seek a service. Sales promotions can come in the variety of coupons, rebates, sweepstakes, contests, discounted pricing, point-of-purchase displays, trade shows, demonstrations, premiums and sampling. Usually, before a sales promotion is put into action, a company evaluate its market. If a sale promotion is acceptable, the company comes up with a clear, quantifiable objective they'd like to achieve through the promotion.

A sales promotion constructed to inform customers about a new product might include an advertisement in a local paper explaining the product and inviting customers to visit a Web site. An activity like this can be measured by tracking the number of people who get the paper, the amount of people who visit the Web site, the number of people who download the coupon and the number of people who actually use the coupon.

Reminding customers about a product or service is just as important as an initial product beginning. Something as simple as setting up an in-store display with coupons or having customers complete a survey to indicate how often they use the product keeps brands fresh in consumers' minds.

Information gathered from the survey can expose how often customers use a product, how well-known they are with a product and if they plan to use it more in the future. Couple this with a discount coupon and we can even track the number of people who make a purchase after carrying out the survey. A follow-up survey can assess things like customer satisfaction and likelihood for a repeat purchase.

Impact of advertising on consumer behaviour:

Advertiser’s primary mission is to reach prospective customers and influence their awareness, attitudes and buying behaviour. They spend a lot of money to keep individuals (markets) interested in their products.

To succeed, they need to understand what makes potential customers behave the way they do. The advertisers goals is to get enough relevant market data to develop accurate profiles of buyers-to-find the common group (and symbols) for communications this involves the study of consumers behaviour: the mental and emotional processes and the physical activities of people who purchase and use goods and services to satisfy particular needs and wants.

The principal aim of consumer behaviour analysis is to explain why consumers act in particular ways under certain circumstances. It tries to determine the factors that influence consumer behaviour, especially the economic, social and psychological aspects which can indicate the most favored marketing mix that management should select. Consumer behaviour analysis helps to determine the direction that consumer behaviour is likely to make and to give preferred trends in product development, attributes of the alternative communication method etc. consumer behaviors analysis views the consumer as another variable in the marketing sequence, a variable that cannot be controlled and that will interpret the product or service not only in terms of the physical characteristics, but in the context of this image according to the social and psychological makeup of that individual consumer (or group of consumers).

Economic theory has sought to establish relationships between selling prices, sales achieved and consumer’s income; similarly, advertising expenditure is frequently compared with sales. The consumer is assumed to be "rational" that is, to react in the direction that would be suggested by economic theory and financial principles.

However, it is often apparent that consumer behaviors do not fall neatly into these expected patterns. It is for this reason that consumer behaviour analysis is conducted as yet another tool to assess the complexities of marketing operations. The proliferation of assorted brands of food drinks in the country has led to the cut-throat competition for increased market share being witnessed currently among the operations in the food drink industry.

Today, in Nigeria, there exists more than twenty brands of food drink both local and foreign, out of which two, namely Cadbury Nigeria Plc’s Bournvita and Nestle Nigeria Plc’s Milo keenly compete for market leadership. There are quite a host of up-coming and low-price localized brands in small sachets with "Vita" suffixes springing up in every nook and cranny of the country. Existing and popular brands, therefore, face intense competition with the "affordable" localized" "Vitas" with high sugar content targeted at the low-income groups. It is, therefore, imperative for the more established brands like Bournvita to employ brilliant advertising and branding strategies to influence consumers’ behaviors in order to continue to enjoy and maintain market leadership.

Different approaches to digital marketing – options & opportunities 

Internet Marketing:

Internet marketing, also referred to as i-marketing, web marketing, online marketing, or eMarketing, is the marketing of products, or, services over the Internet. The Internet has brought many unique benefits to marketing, one being the lower costs and greater capabilities for the distribution of information and media to a global audience. The interactive nature of Internet marketing, both, in terms of providing instant response and eliciting responses, is a unique quality of the medium. Internet marketing is sometimes considered to have a broader scope because it not only refers to digital media, such as, the Internet, e-mail, and wireless media, but also it includes management of digital customer data and electronic customer relationship management (ECRM) systems. Internet marketing ties together creative and technical aspects of the Internet including, design, development, advertising, and sales. Internet marketing also refers to the placement of media along different stages of the customer engagement cycle through search engine marketing (SEM), search engine optimization (SEO), banner ads on specific websites, e-mail marketing, and Web 2.0 strategies.

Advantages of Internet Marketing:

Internet marketing is relatively inexpensive when compared to the ratio of cost against the reach of the target audience. Companies can reach a wide audience for a small fraction of traditional advertising budgets. The nature of the medium allows consumers to research and purchase products and services at their own convenience. Therefore, businesses have the advantage of appealing to consumers in a medium that can bring results quickly. The strategy and overall effectiveness of marketing campaigns depend on business goals and cost-volume-profit (CVP) analysis.

Internet marketers also have the advantage of measuring statistics easily and inexpensively. Nearly all aspects of an Internet marketing campaign can be traced, measured, and tested. The advertisers can use a variety of methods: pay per impression, pay per click, pay per play, or pay per action. Therefore, marketers can determine which messages or offerings are more appealing to the audience. The results of campaigns can be measured and tracked immediately because online marketing initiatives usually require users to click on an advertisement, visit a website, and perform a targeted action. Such measurement cannot be achieved through billboard advertising, where an individual will at best be interested, then decide to obtain more information at a later time.

Internet marketing as of 2007 is growing faster than other types of media. Because exposure, response, and overall efficiency of Internet media are easier to track than traditional off-line media—through the use of web analytics for instance—Internet marketing can offer a greater sense of accountability for advertisers. Marketers and their clients are becoming aware of the need to measure the collaborative effects of marketing (i.e., how the Internet affects in-store sales) rather than siloing each advertising medium. The effects of multichannel marketing can be difficult to determine, but are an important part of ascertaining the value of media campaigns.

Interactive Marketing:

Interactive Marketing refers to the evolving trend in marketing whereby marketing has moved from a transaction-based effort to a conversation. The definition of interactive marketing comes from John Deighton at Harvard, who says interactive marketing is the ability to address the customer, remember what the customer says and address the customer again in a way that illustrates that we remember what the customer has told us (Deighton 1996). Interactive marketing is not synonymous with online marketing, although interactive marketing processes are facilitated by internet technology. The ability to remember what the customer has said is made easier when we can collect customer information online and we can communicate with our customer more easily using the speed of the internet. Amazon.com is an excellent example of the use of interactive marketing, as customers record their preferences and are shown book selections that match not only their preferences but recent purchases.

Mobile Marketing:

Mobile marketing can refer to one of two categories of marketing. First, and relatively new, is meant to describe marketing on or with a mobile device, such as a mobile phone (this is an example of horizontal telecommunication convergence). Second, and a more traditional definition, is meant to describe marketing in a moving fashion - for example - technology road shows or moving billboards.

Marketing on a mobile phone has become increasingly popular ever since the rise of SMS (Short Message Service) in the early 2000s in Europe and some parts of Asia when businesses started to collect mobile phone numbers and send off wanted (or unwanted) content. Over the past few years SMS has become a legitimate advertising channel in some parts of the world. This is because unlike email over the public internet, the carriers who police their own networks have set guidelines and best practices for the mobile media industry (including mobile advertising). The IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) and the Mobile Marketing Association, as well, have established guidelines and are evangelizing the use of the mobile channel for marketers.

While this has been fruitful in developed regions such as North America, Western Europe and some other countries, mobile SPAM messages (SMS sent to mobile subscribers without a legitimate and explicit opt-in by the subscriber) remain an issue in many other parts or the world, partly due to the carriers selling their member databases to third parties. Mobile marketing via SMS has expanded rapidly in Europe and Asia as a new channel to reach the consumer. SMS initially received negative media coverage in many parts of Europe for being a new form of spam as some advertisers purchased lists and sent unsolicited content to consumer's phones; however, as guidelines are put in place by the mobile operators, SMS has become the most popular branch of the Mobile Marketing industry with several 100 million advertising SMS sent out every month in Europe alone.

Users of Mobile Marketing

Formulation of Digital Marketing Strategies in the hotel Industry as they are among the best users of these technology to get to the targeted customers by using GPS, mobile operator tracking, SMS etc.

Location-based services:

These services are based on the unique ability of the mobile Internet device to determine its exact location by using GPS and then use that knowledge to perform functions based on the concrete geographical information. For example, a traveler approaching New York City can obtain from the CVB's wireless directory information on the city's main tourist attractions, Broadway shows, ticket availability, unscheduled events, hotel information and availability, and make reservations by pushing a button on his handset or auto PC.

Or while in the Village can search for the nearest Italian restaurants, review Zagat's ratings and then select a place from a list of 5-10 restaurants in the vicinity, and make an instant reservation. DoCoMo already provides this service in Japan in partnership with Zagat Survey, LLC. Wireless recommendation engines focused on local services, on the "last mile", on "what to do while already there" will be one of the hot applications. Location-based services will become a great marketing tool in the hands of pro-active DMOs (Destination Marketing Organizations), resorts, hotel and restaurant chains, and tourist vendors.

Presence-based Services:

These services will allow the traveler to perform functions only relevant to the location he or she is in. Good examples are large hotels, beach resorts, airports, and theme parks. While on the beach, a hotel guest may be notified of a new unscheduled performance, cancellation of an event, or of a special promotion (2-for-1 seafood buffet). A passenger at an airport may be alerted of a flight delay, a gate change, etc. In a theme park visitors can check wait times for the rides. These services will not only provide useful information to their guests, passengers and customers but will allow good marketers to sell auxiliary services and do ad-hoc promotions.

Subsets of this category, the proximity-based services are most often wireless solutions that enhance customer service. These services rely primarily on short-range wireless technology such as Bluetooth. Good examples are airport applications for curbside check-in, rental car returns tracking devices and hospitality check-in/check out kiosks during peak hours.

Custom-tailored travel services and offerings, based on knowing your customers, matching customer preferences (correlation techniques), predictive behavioral techniques (collaborative filtering) are only part of personalization. Data security, privacy concerns, non-invasive applications, opt-in/opt-out functionality, etc go hand in hand with personalization and are very important issues. Due to the mobile devices' limited functionality for data input, service providers are required to store accurate customer profiles on their servers that are accessible by a click of a button or to subscribe to specialized m-Commerce digital wallet services. For example, the hotel frequent guest ID number (which can be stored on the handset) should be sufficient to pull up all customer data and preferences needed for a hotel booking. The location dates and number of rooms, all selected from easy to use drop-down lists and monthly calendars should be the only missing parameters. Action Engine Corp., WA already offers its version of intelligent technology that eliminates the "browsing and searching" associated with the Web, which has great potential for wireless booking engines and travel transaction applications.

Instant Access and Impulse-driven Demand:

Instant access to wireless services is a very important characteristic of the mobile Internet. The benefits of "anytime, anywhere" access to the wireless Web greatly outweighs some of the disadvantages of the mobile devices, such as small displays, limited browsing capability, etc. Their mobile device is always with them, always on. They don't need to dial-up. But that's not all. Their mobile device allows you to do things spontaneously, i.e. to access info the second they decide they need one, to check available flights or hotels the moment they decide to go someplace. This capability can be exploited by smart travel marketers who understand that impulse buying requires their services to be always on, always available by pushing as few buttons as possible.

Time Sensitive Applications:

Their mobile device allows them to receive immediately and 24/7 any important, time-sensitive information. These so-called "push" notifications include flight delays, meeting schedule changes, weather alerts, etc. In the same time they are able to send time-sensitive messages to their employer, to alert that they are running late, etc.

In an ideal "hyper-connectivity" scenario, an airline alert about their one-hour flight delay should automatically trigger a series of previously disconnected events: an instant notification is sent to their client to reschedule the meeting; to their employer; to the limo service to pick them up an hour later; to the car Rental Company and hotel in their arrival destination. Delta Airlines, for example, is investing close to $1 billion in its DNS (Delta Nervous System) project to be able to deliver timely and consistent data to customers, employees and partners, including via wireless applications.

Current Trends:

The rise of new media:

With the dawn of the Internet came many new advertising opportunities. Popup, Flash, banner, popular, advertising, and email advertisements (the last often being a form of spam) are now commonplace. Particularly since the rise of "entertaining" advertising, some people may like an advertisement enough to wish to watch it later or show a friend. In general, the advertising community has not yet made this easy, although some have used the Internet to widely distribute their ads to anyone willing to see or hear them. In the last three quarters of 2009 mobile and internet advertising grew by 18.1% and 9.2% respectively. Older media advertising saw declines: −10.1% (TV), −11.7% (radio), −14.8% (magazines) and −18.7% (newspapers).

Niche Marketing:

Another significant trend regarding future of advertising is the growing importance of the niche market using niche or targeted ads. Also brought about by the Internet and the theory of The Long Tail, advertisers have an increasing ability to reach specific audiences. In the past, the most efficient way to deliver a message was to blanket the largest mass market audience possible. However, usage tracking, customer profiles and the growing popularity of niche content brought about by everything from blogs to social networking sites, provide advertisers with audiences that are smaller but much better defined, leading to ads that are more relevant to viewers and more effective for companies' marketing products.

Crowdsourcing:

The concept of crowd sourcing has given way to the trend of user-generated advertisements. User- generated ads are created by consumers as opposed to an advertising agency or the company themselves, most often they are a result of brand sponsored advertising competitions.

For Example:

For the 2007 Super Bowl, the Frito-Lays division of PepsiCo held the Crash the Super Bowl contest, allowing consumers to create their own Doritos commercial. Due to the success of the Doritos user-generated ads in the 2007 Super Bowl, Frito-Lays re-launched the competition for the 2009 and 2010 Super Bowl. The resulting ads were among the most-watched and most-liked Super Bowl ads. In fact, the winning ad that aired in the 2009 Super Bowl was ranked by the USA Today Super Bowl Ad Meter as the top ad for the year while the winning ads that aired in the 2010 Super Bowl were found by Nielsen's BuzzMetrics to be the "most buzzed-about".

Chevrolet held a similar competition for their Tahoe line of SUVs.

This trend has given rise to several online platforms that host user-generated advertising competitions on behalf of a company. Founded in 2007, Zooppa has launched ad competitions for brands such as Google, Nike, Hershey ’ s, General Mills, Microsoft, NBC Universal , Zinio, and Mini Cooper.

Crowdsourced advertisements have gained popularity in part to its cost effective nature, high consumer engagement, and ability to generate word-of-mouth. However, it remains controversial, as the long-term impact on the advertising industry is still unclear.

Criticism of advertising:

While advertising can be seen as necessary for economic growth, it is not without social costs. Unsolicited Commercial Email and other forms of spam have become so prevalent as to have become a major nuisance to users of these services, as well as being a financial burden on internet service providers. Advertising is increasingly invading public spaces, such as schools, which some critics argue is a form of child exploitation. In addition, advertising frequently uses psychological pressure (for example, appealing to feelings of inadequacy) on the intended consumer, which may be harmful.

Hyper-commercialism and the commercial tidal wave:

Criticism of advertising is closely linked with criticism of media and often interchangeable. They can refer to its audio-visual aspects (e. g. cluttering of public spaces and airwaves), environmental aspects (e. g. pollution, oversize packaging, increasing consumption), political aspects (e. g. media dependency, free speech, censorship), financial aspects (costs), ethical/moral/social aspects (e. g. sub-conscious influencing, invasion of privacy, increasing consumption and waste, target groups, certain products, honesty) and, of course, a mix thereof.

Some aspects can be subdivided further and some can cover more than one category. As advertising has become increasingly prevalent in modern Western societies, it is also increasingly being criticized. A person can hardly move in the public sphere or use a medium without being subject to advertising. Advertising occupies public space and more and more invades the private sphere of people, many of which consider it a nuisance.

"It is becoming harder to escape from advertising and the media. Public space is increasingly turning into a gigantic billboard for products of all kind. The aesthetical and political consequences cannot yet be foreseen." Hanno Rauterberg in the German newspaper ‘Die Zeit’ calls advertising a new kind of dictatorship that cannot be escaped. There are ads in schools, airport lounges, doctor’s offices, movie theaters, hospitals, gas stations, elevators, convenience stores, on the Internet, on fruit, on ATMs, on garbage cans and countless other places. There are ads on beach sand and restroom walls.

The irony of advertising right now is that commercialism increases, it makes it that much more difficult for any particular advertiser to succeed, hence pushing the advertiser to even greater efforts. The internet is flooded with them, a market growing in leaps and bounds.

Other growing markets are ‘’ product placements ’’ in entertainment programming and in movies where it has become standard practice and ‘’ virtual advertising ’’ where products get placed retroactively into rerun shows. Product billboards are virtually inserted into Major League Baseball broadcasts and in the same manner, virtual street banners or logos are projected on an entry canopy or sidewalks, for example during the arrival of celebrities at the 2001 Grammy Awards.

Advertising precedes the showing of films at cinemas including lavish ‘film shorts’ produced by companies such as Microsoft or DaimlerChrysler. "The largest advertising agencies have begun working aggressively to co-produce programming in conjunction with the largest media firms" creating Infomercials resembling entertainment programming. Opponents equate the growing amount of advertising with a "tidal wave" and restrictions with "damming" the flood.

Every day an estimated twelve billion display ads, 3 million radio commercials and more than 200,000 television commercials are dumped into North America ’ s collective unconscious ".

More recent developments are video games incorporating products into their content, special commercial patient channels in hospitals and public figures sporting temporary tattoos. A method unrecognizable as advertising is so-called‘’ guerrilla marketing’’ which is spreading ‘buzz’ about a new product in target audiences.

A trend, especially in Germany, is companies buying the names of sports stadiums. The Hamburg soccer Volkspark stadium first became the AOL Arena and then the HSH Nordbank Arena. The Stuttgart Neckarstadion became the Mercedes-Benz Arena, the Dortmund Westfalenstadion now is the Signal Iduna Park. The former SkyDome in Toronto was renamed Rogers Centre.

Other recent developments are, for example,

That whole subway stations in Berlin are redesigned into product halls and exclusively leased to a company.

Düsseldorf even has ‘ multi-sensorial ’ adventure transit stops equipped with loudspeakers and systems that spread the smell of a detergent.

Swatch used beamers to project messages on the Berlin TV-tower and Victory column, which was fined because it was done without a permit. The illegality was part of the scheme and added promotion.

It’s standard business management knowledge that advertising is a pillar, if not "the" pillar of the growth-orientated free capitalist economy. "Advertising is part of the bone marrow of corporate capitalism. Advertising isn’t just simply a ‘necessary evil’ but a ‘necessary elixir of life’ for the media business, the economy and capitalism as a whole. Advertising and mass media economic interests create ideology.

Advertising for products and brands are the producer’s weapons in the competition for customers’ and trade advertising, e. g. by the automotive industry, as a means to collectively represent their interests against other groups, such as the train companies.

E-mail marketing:

E-mail marketing is a form of direct marketing which uses electronic mail as a means of communicating commercial or fundraising messages to an audience. In its broadest sense, every e-mail sent to a potential or current customer could be considered e-mail marketing. However, the term is usually used to refer to:

sending e-mails with the purpose of enhancing the relationship of a merchant with its current or previous customers and to encourage customer loyalty and repeat business,

sending e-mails with the purpose of acquiring new customers or convincing current customers to purchase something immediately,

adding advertisement to e-mails sent by other companies to their customers, and

Sending e-mails over the Internet, as e-mail did and does exist outside the Internet (e.g., network e-mail and FIDO).

Researchers estimate that United States firms alone spent US$400 million on e-mail marketing in 2006.

Social Networking:

A social network is a social structure made of individuals (or organizations) called "nodes," which are tied (connected) by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as friendship, kinship, financial exchange, dislike, sexual relationships, or relationships of beliefs, knowledg