You've got to be living under a rock to not have Facebooked or heard about the portal that has a billion users. This is a recent buzz word that has taken a world by a stride with more than 500 million active users out of which more than 50% log on to the website every day. This is one of the many examples of the widespread reach and far reaching impact of the digital medium and the social networking sites on people, especially the youth. This is the reason that has made the study of digital medium as a marketing tool a prerequisite for any media and communication professional. A well planned digital marketing strategy is very necessary for a successful IMC plan for a brand.
Being media and communication professionals we are expected to know about the digital medium and use it in our future endeavors. We had sessions on the subject where we were taught about the origin, evolution, scope and future of digital medium in terms of marketing and branding. The discussions ranged from the use of social networking sites for contextual advertising to mobile and SMS marketing, from YouTube and its source of revenue generation to a discussion about the future where billboards could be digitalized. Not just that, we also had practical sessions on how to create advertisements on Google and social networking sites which was not just informative but also interesting and out of the ordinary. There were a lot of interactive discussions which satiated the needs of the young minds inquisitive about digital marketing and its various facets.
The role of Social networking sites as an emerging destination for effective advertising was also discussed. Not just the advertisements posted on these sites but also the fan pages and the message spread through word of mouth are important and have to be managed well.
One thing that these sessions have surely taught us is the growing importance and scope of digital medium. Digital Marketing is not just limited to the Internet; it goes much beyond than that. As digital media marketing tools Short Message Service, voice access, mobile phone, websites, blogs, RSS, podcasts, digital outdoor screens, etc are of equal importance. Thanks to this medium, the data can now be stored and shared in digital format and can be released to the target audience anywhere and anytime with ease.
Digital medium has come a long way since the days where its usage was restricted only to the army. Today internet is the most open medium of communication and is used for a variety of other purposes like entertainment, networking and researching. Information is now available at the finger tips and this has decreased the shelf life of news. As a result of this the information needs to be precise and well targeted towards the target audience. Consumer profiling is minutely done before conducting the marketing endeavor.
Amongst the many inventions and advancements that the digital medium has seen is Google Analytics. It is free service offered by Google that can generate statistics about the visitors of a particular website. This service is of great importance to marketers who can track visitors from all referrers, including search engines, pay-per-click networks, e-mail marketing, display advertising and digital collateral like links within documents. This helps in tracking the performance of a brand in terms of user interface and popularity.
The trends clearly predict that digital marketing is here to stay and there is a lot more to come in terms of innovation and reach specially in Indian context where the internet penetration is as low as 3%. This is a clear indication that we as future marketers have a lot of scope in this domain. But the study of digital medium cannot be completed in closed class rooms until we ourselves experiment and use the digital marketing tools in real life but they help to provide a strong base for sure.
