By Ranjeet Bahadur Singh

ABSTRACT

The fastest e-Commerce approach possible is digital marketing. In this marketing technique, we can purchase or sell quickly. With the aid of digital marketing, you can meet the widest possible audience or client, and you can do it quickly. It is extremely relevant in today’s commerce environment. This technology improves the pace and accuracy of our operations. Orthodox offline marketing strategies are much more expensive than digital marketing. However, one of the most significant advantages of digital marketing is the simplicity with which effects can be measured and controlled. You can easily view consumer reaction rates and calculate the effectiveness of your marketing strategy in real-time, allowing you to prepare more efficiently for the next one, rather than doing costly customer analysis. This paper attempted to emphasise the significance of digital marketing in the modern world.

Keywords: digital marketing, leadership, technology, organization 

INTRODUCTION

The terms “digital marketing” and “internet marketing” are often interchanged. The practise of advertising a company, service, or commodity on the internet is known as digital marketing. Simply put, digital marketing varies from conventional marketing in that it employs online platforms and strategies to enable companies and organisations to track the progress of their marketing efforts, sometimes in real time, in order to better understand what works and what doesn’t. Most businesses also established an online presence in the twenty-first century. E-mail was often used, and technologies allowed citizens to manage it quite quickly.

For a long time, databases were managed using customer relationship management (CRM) systems. Such firms used a similar tactic to press ads by posting posters on websites. Forward-thinking businesses were developing their search engine strategies and also collaborating with affiliates. Much of this was internet marketing, and it was just a matter of time before online marketing departments and experts appeared. 2016 (Kingsnorth). The most popular form of digital marketing is the company’s website, which serves as the hub for all of the company’s online operations. Email marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC) advertisements, and social networking are both used by savvy advertisers to direct eligible traffic to a website or attract return visits and purchases.

Digital marketing is the use of one or more types of social communication to promote goods or brands. ‘Online marketing,’ ‘internet marketing,’ and ‘mobile marketing’ are also terms used to describe digital marketing. The word “internet marketing” has gained in popularity in recent years, particularly in some countries. In the United States, internet marketing is still popular; in Italy, it is known as web marketing; but, in the United Kingdom and across the world, digital marketing has been the most common concept. Digital marketing is a form of marketing that places and sells goods using digital technologies.

Consumers already have access to content at any moment and from any location thanks to the widespread use of digital media. The use of the internet continues to grow across the world, with digital marketing being a more significant source of strategic advantage in both B2C and B2B environments. There has been a lot of emphasis on the enormous opportunity that digital marketing offers, but there has been no focus on the actual obstacles that businesses face as they go digital. Digital marketing refers to the promotion of goods or services through the use of digital media, such as the Internet, smart phones, display ads, and some other digital tool. The Internet is a participatory tool. It facilitates the trade of currencies, but it also facilitates the exchange of money.

On the Internet, a company may obtain value from its customers in the form of time, attention, and activism. Value may be applied to the consumer in the context of fun, enlightenment, and utility; content marketing is one effective way to do so. The concepts of conventional marketing are built on and adapted in a modern marketing approach that takes advantage of the possibilities and challenges presented by the digital medium. A digital media approach can be iterated and evolved on a regular basis. Digital marketers can be actively optimising and refining their web marketing campaigns because the Internet provides for near-instantaneous input and data collection.

CHANNELS OF DIGITAL MARKETING 

The digital marketing industry has developed a number of digital marketing channels to assist advertisers in attracting the appropriate customer to the good or service being promoted. This surge in digital media necessitates a brand’s need to have a strong online presence and project a picture that is consistent with the medium being utilised, as well as their vision and goal. As a result, it’s critical to consider not just what digital marketing can do with your brand or company, but also the variety of different digital marketing platforms and how to use them effectively.

It is critical to understand the digital media platforms in which your company or enterprise has to be sold in order for a digital marketing strategy to be rock strong to deliver as intended. Not every medium or digital marketing network is appropriate for companies and products across sectors and markets. The best digital marketing channel for your brand or industry is often determined by the business priorities of your company. If your aim is to produce leads for your business and you’re a B2B company, it’s more practical to use websites that are focused on business and provide functionality that will assist you in generating leads.

EMAIL MARKETING 

Email marketing, as the term implies, is a digital marketing channel that uses emails to promote products and companies. Although email marketing has the potential of ending up in the Spam archive, it is also an effective way to increase your brand’s or business’s exposure. Not only is email marketing used to raise brand interest, but it’s often used to create leads, showcase product deals, send out emails, and more.

SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING 

SEM, or Search Engine Marketing, occupies the ground that SEO leaves unexplored: paying traffic from search engines. SEM allows you to buy ad space on a user’s search engine results page (SERP). Google AdWords is the most widely used paying search site. And there’s Bing Advertising. The search engine costs a marketer a set fee to position an advertisement in several locations on a SERP based on certain keywords or phrases. Pay-per-click ads, or PPC, is an example of SEM. 

PPC is a form of digital marketing in which a business is charged by search engines each time their ad is clicked. In recent months, social media sites have begun to use PPC ads. These advertisements appear in the news feeds of a company’s target market. This system provides an excellent illustration of how various forms of digital marketing interact to shape a comprehensive digital marketing plan. In this case, SEM and social network ads are intertwined.

AFFILIATE MARKETING 

The method of paying for conversions is referred to as affiliate marketing. Consider it as though you were recruiting a salesperson to promote a goods or service. A commission is paid to the affiliate. For affiliate marketing, you set the rate. Conversions are the one thing you have to budget for. Which ensures the affiliate marketing has no upfront costs. Affiliate marketing is used by many blogs and e-commerce portals. Ensure that all of your terms and boundaries are discussed when you decide to use affiliate marketing. Since the affiliate is a representative of your business, you want them to spread the word about it. Consider what terms you’d like the affiliate to use. You would, of course, make the contract work with the affiliate as well.

INFLUENCER MARKETING 

Influencer marketing is one of the most recent forms of digital advertising. To boost traffic and purchases, influencer marketing employs individuals with a large online following who are deemed specialists by the target market. Influencer marketing is widely used on social networking platforms such as Instagram and Snapchat. Companies pay Instagram users with wide followings to advertise their product by sharing one or more images with it. Companies are also engaging in Instagram or Snap chat “takeovers,” in which a hired influencer takes ownership over the company’s social networking site for a set period of time, usually a day. 

This influencer takeovers bring the influencer’s audience to your social networking platforms, resulting in more potential fans and exclusive views. Before you plan to do business with an influencer, make sure you do your homework on them. You should check their Google analytics to ensure that their audience is genuine and not made up of false accounts.

SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING 

Social media marketing is one of the most common forms of digital marketing. The growth of social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, and others has provided a burgeoning arena for companies to engage with customers. As new channels have emerged and developed, each has its own set of benefits that marketers can leverage to enter new audiences. B2B companies will profit from LinkedIn, whereas B2C businesses have a variety of sites to pick from, based on their target demographic and the types of content they will create.

PPC (PAY PER CLICK) 

The handling of paying advertisements in a search engine’s search results is classified as search, or PPC. These paying advertisements are usually shown above or to the right of the ‘organic’ search results, and they may be very cost efficient. When you pay per view, you only pay when a potential buyer clicks on your advertisement. You will keep the costs under check by having a regular budget of, say, €5.

ONLINE ADVERTISING 

Since you are posting on other people’s blogs, online advertising varies from PPC. For example, you may like to purchase banner space on a particular website and compensate the website owner depending on the amount of impressions or clicks the advertisement gets.

Some specific benefits of digital marketing include: 

1. Low-cost: You can quickly plan a viable internet marketing campaign inside your budget while using digital marketing, which is a low-cost tactic as compared to other promotional platforms such as radio, television, and others. A well-executed digital media strategy will target a wider audience with less money than conventional marketing strategies.

2. Increased exposure: With a modest commitment, turn to a digital media strategy to reach a larger number of prospects. Find yourself where the target customers are looking. When you use digital ads, you can see long-term effects.

3. Save Time: Through digital ads, you will get real-time results in a short amount of time. For both of us, time is valuable, so why waste even a nanosecond? You will see the number of visits to the platform, the conversion rate, the peak trading hour, how many subscribers have added you in a day, and more through digital marketing.

4. Social currency: Using various forms of advertising, digital marketing allows you to build entertaining campaigns. These campaigns have the potential to go viral on social media sites, spreading from one individual to the next and attracting social capital.

5. Identity Building: Any company strives to create a strong brand, and digital media will benefit by spreading it through all channels. The more viral your brand becomes, the better credibility it can gain in the eyes of both search engines and consumers.

Challenges facing digital marketers 

• The growth in new channels. Consumers communicate with a number of interactive platforms and technologies that use a variety of standards, parameters, and interfaces, and they interact with those products in a variety of forms and for a variety of reasons.

• Increasing the level of rivalry As opposed to conventional media, digital platforms are comparatively inexpensive, rendering them accessible to almost any enterprise of any scale. As a consequence, capturing the interest of customers is becoming more difficult.

• Data sizes are exploding. In digital platforms, consumers leave a massive data trail. It’s extraordinarily difficult to keep track of all that data, let alone locate the correct data inside exploding data quantities to aid in decision-making.

ONLINE ADVERTISING: INDIAN PERSPECTIVES 

In India, online advertisement is still in its infancy, although it has already established itself in other parts of the world. India’s online advertisement market share is minuscule in comparison to the rest of the world. However, in developed countries such as India, Internet users are increasingly increasing, and the country has enormous potential. Leading marketers in India are beginning to advertise online, albeit at a sluggish rate. Indian businesses are now taking a keen interest in using the internet to promote their goods and services. Finance is already the most dominant industry of online advertisement, accounting for roughly 40% of overall online advertising in India.

HDFC, Citibank, SBI, and UTI are some of the leading companies in this field. FMCG products have just recently begun to arrive, driven by firms such as Hindustan Lever, Procter and Gamble, and others. India has one of the world’s fastest expanding economies. According to the Economic Survey of India, India’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) will rise at a pace of 6% in fiscal year 2013-14. India’s rapid development after the 1991 implementation of the Industrial Policy, along with the recent economic downturn in industrialised western countries, has rendered it one of the most sought-after investment destinations on the planet. 

In addition, a vast population with steadily growing buying power has culminated in a massive and profitable industry. This bodes well for the Indian advertising industry, which is now looking to leverage the internet’s benefits to boost its development. For the financial year 2009-10, the total online advertising market in India was estimated at INR 785 crores, and it is expected to expand in the coming financial year. This is a significant growth of nearly 26% from the preceding fiscal year.

Display advertisements account for the majority of this revenue generation, accompanied by text advertisements: display advertisements contributed INR 417 crores to overall revenues raised by the industry in 2009-10, while text advertisements contributed INR 368 crores. In the financial year 2013-14, display advertisements are expected to increase by 30%, led by text advertisements, which are expected to grow by 26% over the same time. In comparison to industrialised western countries, India’s internet advertisement industry is also insignificant. Online advertisement is one of the most often discussed topics in the advertising sector. Because of its many benefits over conventional ways of advertisement, online advertising has now become a huge sensation in developed countries, drawing both marketers and customers. “The Internet has been the most fundamental improvement throughout my lifespan and for hundreds of years,” Rupert Murdoch famously said. This argument, coming from one of our time’s most powerful figures, encapsulates the value of connectivity and media. The Internet has altered the laws of contact as a whole.

Advertisers are no exception to the fact that the internet is the only location that the world needs to be. Advertisers’ the preference for is attributed to the many advantages it has over other modes of advertisement, not because of a rat-race. “You can purchase attention,” said David Meerman Scott, a well-known marketing expert and speaker (advertising). You should beg the public to pay heed to you (PR). You should annoy people one by one and gain their focus (sales). You will also gain exposure by making something useful and fascinating and then freely sharing it online.” David Meerman Scott is a well-known marketing expert and speaker. 

While the fact that online advertisement is entirely free could be exaggerated, online advertising’s cost-effectiveness cannot be questioned. Online advertisement strategies are, arguably, contributing to substantial cost savings in merchant-to-consumer purchases. Merchants may use the techniques to bring insights to customers who trust it the most and are most willing to act on it. Online advertisement accounts for almost 9% of all advertising in the United States, according to David Evans’ study paper “The Online Advertising Industry: Economics, Evolution, and Privacy.”

In the United States, online ads began in 1994, when Hot Wired, a web journal, sold a banner ad to AT&T and placed it on their website. The origins of online advertisements are a hotly debated subject among academics. Even though there is a lot of research being done on the subject in industrialised countries like the United States, the amount of advertisement research in India is restricted. There is no evidence available in India on the origins and growth of online ads, and almost no study is currently being conducted on its potential prospects. While there are a few industry-specific reports, there is no genuine empirical study in the field in our region. Except in the global sense, studies in the area of online advertisement did not begin until the late twentieth century.

• Berthon, Pitt, and Watson’s paper in the Journal of Market Science on online advertising is widely regarded as the first genuine research analysis in the area. However, there is a serious scarcity of genuine scientific publications on the subject in India.

Reasons for the growth of online advertising in India 

• Web advertising is comparable to other promotional mediums in terms of reaching a vast range of prospective customers worldwide.

• The web page may be changed at any time, and making updates or corrections is easy. • Internet advertising is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and 365 days a year.

• Particular interest groups or people may be advertised in online advertisements.

• Convergence of text, audio, images, and animation may be used easily in online advertising.

• As compared to conventional advertising, online advertisements are less expensive. There are no printing or mailing charges, for example.

There are three keys to performance in digital marketing.

What would it mean to do successful digital marketing? Here are three guides to performance in digital marketing:

1. Organize and manage diverse client interactions through a combination of digital and conventional platforms.

2. React to complex consumer encounters and initiate them.

3. Allow smart choices quicker by extracting meaning from big data.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Marketing’s primary goal is to maintain client connections. “Marketing is the operation, collection of institutions, and processes for developing, connecting, distributing, and sharing services that have meaning for consumers, companies, associates, and society at large,” according to the American Marketing Association (AMA). Marketing has two goals: to draw new consumers and to retain and expand existing customers while providing satisfaction. It is a method by which businesses generate value for their consumers and establish long-term, strong consumer relationships in order to derive value from them. Armstrong (2012), p. 8.

Differentiation is a critical component of placement. The product or service is distinguished from related goods or services by distinction. The differentiation phase consists of three steps: defining a series of potential consumer benefit gaps, selecting the appropriate strategic advantages, and deciding on a positioning strategy. The line of goods, programmes, photographs, individuals, and platforms will all be used to differentiate. A competitive edge is achieved through delivering superior value to customers, either by cheaper costs or improved incentives than rivals, which warrant higher prices. Kotler (2013), p. 221.

Armstrong et al. (2012: 226) characterise commodity as “something that may be sold to a consumer for attention, purchase, usage, or use that can fulfil a customer’s wants or needs.” The term “product” refers to more than just physical objects. Physical goals, programmes, activities, people, locations, organisations, concepts, or a combination of these considerations may also be considered. Services receive special consideration because they are so important to the global economy. Services are a kind of intangible commodity that comprises of activities and rewards that are sold but are basically intangible and cannot be owned. 226 (Armstrong 2012).

When launching a product or service, channel participants add value by bridging the significant time, location, and processing differences that distinguish products and services from their customers, according to Armstrong et al. (2012: 328). This may be accomplished by the use of a variety of customer and company marketing platforms, or a mixture of them. User! wholesaler! manufacturer! customer or producer! consumer is an example of a pipe. The first choice has a greater number of intermediaries than the second. As a result, the last one is referred to as a direct marketing channel, while the others are referred to as indirect marketing networks since they include more intermediaries. 326–329. (Armstrong 2012: 326–329)

To consider that a business should use a particular channel, one must first identify a trend of how customers often approach the purchasing process. The buying funnel, also known as the marketing funnel, is used to describe this method. 3) (Haven 2007) The AIDA model (Awareness, Intention, Desire, and Action) outlines the actions a buyer takes before making a buying decision. There are many variations of the buy funnel, but they are all focused on the AIDA model (Awareness, Intention, Desire, and Action). According to Kotler et al. (2013: 161), the consumer goes through five phases while introducing a new product, but in more regular transactions, the buyer skips any of the stages. The standard purchasing funnel outlines the steps that lead to a purchase. Forrester’s model was used as an illustration of this analysis since there are many variations of the model.

DATA ANALYSIS

SEX

Responses	Number of respondents
Male	60
Female	40

Data interpretation

The analysis of the data was done with 100 respondents and it was observed that out of all the respondents 60 were male while 40 respondents were female respondents.

AGE GROUP

Responses	Number of respondents
18-30years	40
31-45years	50
Above 45years	10

Data interpretation

The analysis of the data was done with 100 respondents and it was observed that out of all the respondents 40 respondents are of age group between 18- 30 years old and another 50 respondents are of age group between 31-45 years old and the remaining 10 respondents are of age above 45 years.

OCCUPATION

Responses	Number of respondents
Student	10
Working in private firm	25
Working in government firm	50
Retired	15

Data interpretation

The analysis of the data was done with 100 respondents and it was observed that out of all the respondents 10 respondents are students while 25 respondents are working in private firm and the another 50 respondents are working in government firms and the remaining 15 respondents are of retired class.

ANNUAL INCOME

Responses	Number of respondents
>3lacs	20
3.1- 6lacs	60
<6lacs	20

Data interpretation

The analysis of the data was done with 100 respondents and it was observed that out of all the respondents 20 respondents are less than 3lacs while 60 respondents have an annual income between 3.1-6lacs and the remaining 20 respondents have an annual income above 6lacs.

Q5. Organization’s HR executives use digital marketing for fulfilling all the business needs and strategies?

Responses	Number of respondents
Strongly agree	30
Agree	20
neutral	5
Disagree	30
Strongly disagree	15

Data interpretation

The analysis of the data was done with 100 respondents and it was observed that out of all the respondents 30 respondents strongly agree and 20 respondents agree with this point while 5 are neutral about this statement and other 30 respondents disagree with this statement and the remaining 15 respondents strongly disagree with the statement.

Q6. Efforts are required to create awareness amongst the employees about the organization’s financial position, customer needs, quality of product/ services, cost, etc.

Responses	Number of respondents
Strongly agree	40
Agree	15
Neutral	5
Disagree	15
Strongly disagree	25

Data interpretation

`The analysis of the data was done with 100 respondents and it was observed that out of all the respondents 40 respondents strongly agree that the efforts are required to create awareness amongst the employees about the organization while 15 respondents agree with the same thing and other 15 respondents disagree with the statement and the remaining 25 respondents strongly disagree with the above statement.

Q7. Is digital marketing essential for proper functioning of the organization?

Response	Number of respondents
Strongly agree	35
Agree	20
Neutral	10
Disagree	15
Strongly disagree	20

Data interpretation

The analysis of the data was done with 100 respondents and it was observed that out of all the respondents 35 respondents strongly agree with the statement and 20 respondents agree while 10 respondents neutral and 15 respondents disagree with the statement and lastly the remaining 20 respondents strongly disagree with the statement.

Q8. What all are the responsibilities that a HR has to handle?

Responses	Number of respondents
Unity and balance of responsibilities all the employees of the organization	20
Paychecks and salary related queries	20
Employees problems related to work/ worklife balance	15
None of the above	5
All of the above	40

Data interpretation

The analysis of the data was done with 100 respondents and it was observed that out of all the respondents 20 respondents responded that unity and responsibilities of all employees is of HR while 20 says the pay related is the responsibility of HR and majority of 40 responsibilities says all of the above.

Q9. Is proper usage of digital marketing essential for the smooth functionality of any organization?

Responses	Number of respondents
Yes	80
No	20

Data interpretation

The analysis of the data was done with 100 respondents and it was observed that out of all the respondents 80 respondents responded that the digital marketing is important for the smooth functionality of any organization while remaining 20 respondents denied with this justification.

CONCLUSION

The primary goal of the data collection was to investigate the significance of digital marketing in the modern age. What are the different issues that digital marketing faces? It also demonstrated how digital marketing contributed to India’s growth. “Digital marketing plays a critical role in business development. Since it has less resources and money to advertise around the planet. And, if there are any improvements in the product, we will quickly adapt, which creates more exposure than conventional ads. As a result, it plays an important role in product recognition (i.e. especially in New product introducing). We get to use several different kinds of resources in digital marketing, because we have a variety of options.

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