A whole or a part?

Digital advertising is an extension of traditional advertising. It has less to do with technology and more to do with the mindset of consumers. It basically provides a two-way platform for interaction where brands not only speak to their consumers but also get a chance to listen to them. In a form, it provides instantaneous feedback for your campaigns, whether you have done an effective job or abysmally bad work.

People generally get confused between digital marketing and social media marketing. It is important to know that social media marketing is just another sub-set of digital marketing. With the help of social media, an earlier focus of digital marketing was to increase the brand visibility but it didn’t result in sales. Then community building started when brands asked people to write reviews. And now hyper-local targeting is the focus where brands are targeting specific customers and promoting engaging activities.

How to digitally advertise?

To go digital, companies need a corporate strategy, skilled manpower, and system in place. It’s a high involvement mode of advertising where you must remain 24×7 on your toes. In spite of the challenges involved, digital advertising has still been successful in attracting all fortune 500 companies.

In the past one year, a company like Unilever has increased its spending on digital advertising by 40% which amounts to 35% of its total advertising budget. Similarly, P&G is spending 33.3% of its advertising budget on digital advertising. The industry has witnessed one of the best digital marketing campaigns from these companies.

The most recent and successful digital advertising campaign by HUL at the top of my mind is ‘Kan khajura’.

With the help of this campaign, HUL reached out to the rural consumers, who were untouched by any media. As a part of this campaign, HUL provided consumers with an ‘always-on mobile’ media channel, which offered content like Bollywood, jokes, and music. Interspersing the Advertisements of HUL brands across the content. Within 10 months of the launch, HUL reached to 12 million subscribers.

3 Mantras for a successful digital advertising campaign 

1. You have to get found and stand out based on your content. This can be achieved with the help of SEO, SEM, social media, blogs, influencer and affiliate marketing)
2. You do not have to capture customers but also have to spend resources on managing and nurturing the customers which can be done with the help of email marketing
3. You have to make smart marketing investments in Web analytics, social analytics, and blog analytics.

A successful digital marketing campaign makes use of all the social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Linkedin etc. The important is to publish user specific content on all the platforms.  Each platform has a different set of users. For example, users on Instagram have an interest more towards travel, food etc. whereas users on Linkedin are more professional and career oriented. But companies should ensure that message of communication should remain same across the platforms.

Since a number of social platforms are available for companies to communicate to consumers. It becomes very difficult to figure out which is the best platform which will give maximum ROI (Return on investments).

The answer to this question is also very simple. First, figure out what is your corporate objective. 80% of the marketing communication objectives fall into one of the following three buckets:

1. Brand building
2. Lead generation
3. Customer experience which involves customer engagement activities like reviews, feedback to find out key consumer insights.

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A brand should choose a platform on the basis of its corporate strategy. Ensuring to not imitate a strategy which is being used by the competitor. It’s possible that a platform which works for your competitor may not work for you.

As per a study conducted by Nielsen in collaboration with 80 companies and more than 300 consumers of packaged goods brands –  A brand can achieve three times return on his investments.

Due to the high ROI, most brands have increased the share of digital advertising in their overall advertising budget. As per Accenture’s report “The Future of Advertising”, the budget allocated to mobile and digital advertising is almost equal to allocation to TV advertisements and far ahead of allocation to print media. In a survey of 30 families, conducted in Andheri West it was discovered that only 2 of them subscribed to a daily newspaper. The low interest in print media is a reason of decrease in allocation of advertisement budgets towards print media.

So we agree that worldwide companies have changed their spending on digital media. Let’s go a little deeper and see the score card of our country ‘India’.

How is India doing on this front?

Indian market is at a very interesting juncture. People have started ordering grocery, apparels, books and consumer packaged goods online. When it comes to transport, people have started using car rental service via ride-hailing apps like Uber and Ola. Digital has become a part of life for many Indians. I don’t think there will be anytime in future better than this for companies to focus on digital advertisements.

The digital advertising industry report says that Digital media is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 37% to reach Rs23,795 crore by 2020. The reason behind this growth is fall in data prices, increase in penetration of smartphones and better internet connectivity. Analysts are expecting that by 2020, mobile internet users will increase by 33% from the current customer base of 337 million users. As the NaMo government acts as a catalyst for promotion and adoption of digital media, there will be an incremental growth.

But the interest towards the adoption of digital media is not same across the sectors. Also, E-commerce and Telecom sector have the highest spending on digital media and it is followed by BFSI.

In the Hindsight

The entire discussion leads to the fact that digital media is going to be the best medium to reach out to a target audience. With the added advantage of a more cost efficient way in comparison to the cost of traditional media. There is no doubt, a brand’s advertisement budget will increase for Digital media. Especially in the sectors like e-commerce, telecom, and BFSI where customers interact with digital content in the decision making process. However, what will be interesting is to see how industry sectors, which are not digital media centric will harness the potential of digital media. A brand by following the 3 mantras of success and choosing the right digital media based on its corporate strategy, making three times the money which it invests.

References:

https://www.vserv.com/4-trends-spell-bright-future-digital-advertising-india/

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