Digital Marketing Landscape and Consumer Trends

Digital Marketing
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Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
LO 1.................................................................................................................................................3
P1 Overview of the digital marketing landscape and comparison of online and offline
marketing concepts.................................................................................................................3
P2 Consumer trends and insights that are fuelling the growth of digital marketing.............4
LO 2.................................................................................................................................................6
P3 Key digital tools and hardware available to marketers in contrast to other physical channels
................................................................................................................................................6
P4 Development of e-commerce and digital marketing platforms and channels as compared to
physical channels....................................................................................................................7
LO 3.................................................................................................................................................9
P5 Digital Marketing Plan......................................................................................................9
P6 Evolution of omni-channel marketing.............................................................................11
LO 4...............................................................................................................................................12
P7 Evaluation of measurement techniques and performance metrics in digital marketing. 12
P8 Set of actions to improve performance in digital marketing...........................................13
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................14
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................15
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INTRODUCTION
Digital Marketing, also known as Internet marketing can be defined as a
component of the marketing function that uses internet and its various online
technologies to promote as well as advertise a company's products as well as services
(Alavi, 2016). Besides internet, it involves usage of social media, mobile phones, search
engines etc. It is a useful tool for organisations as it helps in generating profits as well
as revenues. Also, it is more cost as well as time effective as compared to the traditional
ways of marketing. Organisation chosen for this report is Marks and Spencer, which is
an international brand that sells high quality clothing, home and food products to its
customers. The company was founded in 1884 by Michael Marks and Thomas Spencer.
It is headquartered in London, United Kingdom. The report provides an overview of the
digital marketplace and the impact of digital marketing on digital environment. It also
assesses the key digital tools that are available to marketers of the chosen organisation
with a marketing plan in order to build multi- channel capabilities. An evaluation of
different measurement techniques and performance metrics in digital marketing is also
done.
LO 1
P1 Overview of the digital marketing landscape and comparison of online and offline
marketing concepts
Digital marketing has gained popularity in a very short duration of time and has
helped businesses to grow themselves and gain a competitive advantage against others
in the market. As per the view point of Sherman, Digital Marketing is one of the
strongest tools of marketing that has the ability to change the way in which a company
reaches out to its customers in the market (Chaffey and Ellis-Chadwick, 2019). Also,
using it is a very cost and time effective way that helps organisations market their
business in the industry because it is difficult for small businesses to carry out different
activities of marketing on a tight budget to compete with big brands (Top 10 Benefits of
Digital Marketing & Why Digital Marketing is a Must for Every Small Business, 2020). A
digital marketing landscape can be defined as a state of digital advertising and media
that keeps on evolving and includes social media, influencer marketing, SEO,
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podcasting etc. The number of organisations using digital marketing is increasing day
by day which means that it has become important for them to incorporate the same in
their systems. Marks and Spencer uses different offline as well as online concept to
market its products among customers.
Online marketing strategies include marketing through various social media
platforms, advertisements on different online channels etc. Online marketing concepts
can be defined as strategies that make use of internet to carry out various marketing
activities. Marks and Spencer markets its products through both online (promotions,
campaigns etc.) as well as offline concepts. The company uses various marketing tools
that are available online like Google Analytics and AdWords which make the process of
gathering as well as analysing data easy (Chaffey and Smith, 2017). Although, the
company also uses offline concepts for marketing, they are not a very effective way of
measuring the ROI, because it is not possible to measure if the customers were
attracted to make a purchase or not.
It is easier for a company to track progress after the implementation of a new
strategy as compared to offline concepts. For example, by using Google AdWords, an
organisation can easily measure the number of clicks and can then analyse the impact
of the same through Google analytics. This is a great way to measure the efficiency as
well as effectiveness of the strategy. On the other hand, offline concepts that include
brochures, pamphlets, direct mail etc. can only reach out to a limited audience unlike
online marketing strategies and also involve a lot of cost (Chester and Montgomery,
2017). But offline concepts can help in building relationships between customers as well
as the organisation. Thus, when compared, online marketing concepts have a lot of
advantages as compared to traditional ways of marketing.
P2 Consumer trends and insights that are fuelling the growth of digital marketing
Digital marketing in gaining importance by each passing day which is due to a
number of factors like changing customer trends as well as other insights in the market.
Some trends that are fuelling the growth of digital marketing in the industry are
explained below -
 Chatbots – A chatbot can be defined as a software that can start a conversation
with a user through text messages, mobile applications, websites etc.
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