Importance of Digital Marketing and Social Media Marketing for Contemporary Businesses

This report discusses the concept of marketing, digital marketing, social media marketing, and the marketing mix. It explains the importance of digital marketing and social media marketing for contemporary businesses. It also provides examples of effective social media content and justifies why they work. The report concludes by highlighting the benefits of social media content and its effectiveness.

Contents
Introduction 1
Part 1 p-p
Explanation of marketing p
An explanation of what the marketing mix is and where the
communications mix fits p
An explanation digital marketing p
An explanation of social media marketing p
An explanation of why Digital marketing and social media
marketing are important to contemporary businesses p
Part 2 p-p
Two examples of social media content that really work and
justification of why they work p
Screen shots of effective campaigns with reference to established
models and standards for digital marketing p
Why social media content is effective? p
Conclusion p
References p
1

Introduction
Marketing and digital marketing generally includes those activities performed by companies
to promote the buying and selling of products and services. The purpose of undertaking
marketing activities is to capture target market’s attention and persuading them to make
purchase of their offerings (Minculete and Olar, 2018). In this report the concept of
marketing, digital and social media marketing, marketing mix will be discussed.
Part 1
Explanation of marketing
[CIM definition of marketing and one other – Define and explain]
According to CIM, Marketing refers to the managerial process through which the
responsibility of identification, anticipation and customer satisfaction related requirements
are met in the best and profitable way(Mahmoud, 2019).
The product so purchased by customers, the stores visited by customers, the advertising
and other media we come across every day and different alternative choices available in the
market to meet diversified customer needs in the marketplace is nothing but the outcome
of functioning of different marketing forces in the market (Jarek and Mazurek, 2019). The
marketing manager and his team plan for advertising campaign, uses various advertising
media and advertise or promote the company’s products and services accordingly. Thus,
through marketing research and analysis, the potential customers are identified, their needs
and expectations are recognized and then matching products and services are developed,
promoted and provided to target customers, so that their needs can be satisfied in the best
and profitable manner (Pomering, 2017).
An explanation of what the marketing mix is and where the
communications mix fits
[Explain 4Ps marketing Mix. Explain communication mix. Link how communication
mix fits to marketing mix.]
Marketing mix is a business model acts as a tool for conducting marketing activities
efficiently and effectively in order to attain the very objective of marketing in the target
market. Marketing objectives such as offering the right product, at the right price in the
right place and at the most suitable time can be best achieved through the utilization of
marketing mix tool (Hisrich and Ramadani, 2017). The various elements are specifically
designed in accordance with the objectives of marketing which are as follows:
Product: It refers to the tangible and intangible (services) offerings of the company towards
satisfying needs and expectations of particular segment of the market. As all the products
are likely to follow product lifecycle, so it is important for every marketing manager to
understand the challenges related to each stages of this cycle and effectively for the same. It
is necessary to identify and mention the problems that would be satisfied through the
product so offered by the company (Pažėraitė and Gedvilaitė, 2018). Also, benefits and
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unique features of the products and services must be understood and presented accordingly
in the market in order to develop a unique selling proposition for the product. Before
developing product, it is the responsibility of the marketing department to identify and
understand the target customer’s needs.
Price: This element of marketing mix is concerned about how product should be priced. The
role of this element is vital in determining revenue or profitability of the concern. The price
of the product must be set according to the target market’s ability and affordability. If the
price of the product is either high or low from its perceived value, then it would definitely
fail in the market (Mahmoud, 2019). Due to this, it is important to understand and study the
target market’s perception about the company’s product as it helps in applying pricing
strategy for setting price of the product and services. Competitors price must be considered
before pricing own products.
Place: Under this element, the marketing function aims to make available their products at
the right place, in the right quantity and at the right time (Hollebeek and Macky, 2019). The
means of distributing products and the locations at which the products and services are
available should be convenient for the customer.
Promotion: Promotion is the mode of communicating to the customers what the company
is offering or what it is going to offer in the future (Thomas and Housden, 2017). The
various promotional techniques used by the marketing managers are advertising, branding,
social media and sales promotion through offers, discounts and exhibitions.
Communication mix: It refers to the tools and techniques applied or utilized by the
marketer to communicate with their potential or target customers. Communication mix
includes promotion through various tools like advertising, social media, direct marketing,
events and exhibitions and product packaging (Liu and Burns, 2018). The aim of utilizing
these tools is to communicate company’s ideas and product’s concept to the target
audience.
The communication mix and marketing mix element of promotion is highly related to each
other (Hisrich and Ramadani, 2017). The promotional function of the marketing is carried
out through the use of communication mix tools.
An explanation of digital marketing
[Define digital marketing – two definitions and give examples.]
Digital marketing refers to the use of digital tools and platforms for carrying out marketing
activities (Saura, Palos-Sánchez and Cerdá Suárez, 2017). Digital technologies such as
computers, mobile phones and digital media such as websites, social media, etc. when used
for promoting brand and company’s products and services, then it is known as digital
marketing (Kannan, 2017). The various categories of DM are search engine optimization,
social media marketing, pay per click, email marketing, content marketing etc. It allows for
reaching large numbers of at a very low cost in order to build brand image and loyalty.
An explanation of social media marketing
[Define social media– two definitions and give examples.]
Definitions
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“Social media marketing is the use of social platforms as a tool for promoting brand and
growing target customer’s base creating website traffic in order to enhance sales”(Li,
Larimo and Leonidou, 2021).
“SMM refers to the utilization of social networks and social media towards marketing
products and services of the company. SMM provides companies with a way to engage with
their existing and new customers in order to promote their products and create value for
their products”(Felix, Rauschnabel and Hinsch, 2017).
Examples of social media marketing are IPSY’s content marketing, CLUSE marketing on
Instagram and Zappos marketing at Facebook.
An explanation of why Digital marketing and social media
marketing are important to contemporary businesses
[Why social media marketing is important to contemporary business? Why digital
marketing is important to contemporary business?]
Importance of digital marketing for contemporary businesses
 Digital marketing helps in reaching target customers through the channels and
sources at which they can be easily located and where they spend more of their time
(Du Plessis, 2017).
 It helps in targeting potential users and identifying needs, expectations and
problems they are facing effectively and efficiently.
 It helps marketer to monitor their marketing campaign in terms of effectiveness and
accordingly provides for optimizing it in order to obtain excellent results (Peterson
and Park, 2021).
 It is the source of promotion and communication for brand in a cheapest way.
Importance of social media marketing for contemporary businesses
 SMM provides an easiest way to reach huge target audience as it is believed that half
of the world’s population is carrying social media account(Chaffey and Smith, 2017).
 It is considered to be a very useful tool for creating and enhancing brand awareness
as it results in higher discovery of brand with the help of social feeds.
 It provides a platform where communication with the target customers can be done
on daily basis (Du Plessis, 2017).
 Through these social networks businesses can keep an eye on their competitor’s
strategy and offerings.
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Part 2
Two examples of social media contents that really work and
justification of why they work
There are many ways through which companies communicates with their customers what
they are offering through different social networks. The two of which is explained below
along with the justification why they work.
influencer content: An influencing personality having good followings and engagement at
social networks can be selected to promote brand. The posts including these personality
promoting company’s products and services proved to be very useful in reaching new
market and new customers through such influencers. It is advisable to choose influencer
with great consciousness like for promoting children’s clothing, mommy blogger is best
suited for advertising the same (Hanlon, 2018).
The reason behind the success of influencer content as these influencing personality is
helpful in capturing target market due to the trust that can be easily built due to their huge
followings. Also, they help in enhancing the value of the products and services due to the
popularity of the influencer in the market (Vinerean, 2017).
Posting content through blogs and articles: Articles and blog posts through company’s blog
has proved to be very useful in communicating updates, new products and services along
with their use, improvement in the existing products, company’s news, achievements and
milestones (Kannan, 2017). Instagram and Facebook are largely used by companies in
modern time in order to share their updates and expertise to the users and their followers.
Companies by creating meaningful and useful content can target new customers through
their blogging pages on social media .
The reason behind the working of these blogs and articles is that it helps customers in
reviewing new purchase options by discovering new products through company’s blogs and
articles which helps in creating new aspirations (Li, Larimo and Leonidou, 2021).
Screen shot of effective campaign with reference to established
model and standard for digital marketing
In the following screenshot of Desigual, a spain based clothing brand has adopted
an influencer content through a well known actress Miranda Makaroff. Here in the
specimen of their marketing campaign, it is clearly visible how they have undertaken
a social media content strategy through the mode of social media networks, that is
Instagram.
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In this screenshot above, Ipsy, a US based beauty products company who has
adopted content marketing through social media that is Instagram which can be
clearly seen from the above specimen of their marketing
Why social media content is effective?
[Consumer in control, Convenience, Satisfaction, Loyalty, Reduced cost, Builds a
brand, Measurable]
There are many reasons due to which social media content is considered to be much
effective which are as follows:
Consumer control: Social media content helps companies in controlling their customer
turnover by continuously reviewing their views regarding company’s products and services
(Lee and Cho, 2020). Also, company can obtain its customer’s feedback regularly in order to
avoid any chances of losing their customers. This helps companies in retaining and satisfying
their customer’s need by improving their offerings according to the customer’s
requirements.
Convenience: Social media content is the easiest way to promote company’s products and
services to the target customers. The content so created and feed on social media by
companies with their followers and huge networks is a very useful tool for carrying out
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marketing and promotional activities (Vinerean, 2017). The content is considered to be
accessible by the potential customers. It is the best way to promote brand in an effective,
efficient and interactive manner.
Satisfaction: Social media content is the tool through which customers can be best satisfied
by the company by getting their reviews about the company’s posts (Kingsnorth, 2019). The
various experiences are shared by the customers on social media content where a company
can identify and realize what their customers are expecting and where their offering is
lacking.
Loyalty: By responding and rewarding followers on the basis of their content understanding
and feedback, brand loyalty can be best achieved by the companies from their followers
(Felix, Rauschnabel and Hinsch, 2017). Followers can be huge in numbers and by
generating lead through effective content creation and design, these followers can be
converted into potential and loyal customers.
Reduced cost: A marketing campaign brought up by the companies through social media
content is considered to be very efficient where with very minimum amount of cost a very
wide audience can be approached by the brand marketer as against the traditional
technique of initiating marketing campaign where huge costs are required to be incurred for
conducting marketing campaigns in terms of hiring different necessary resources
(Repovienė, 2017).
Builds a brand: In many research and studies, it is found that more than 50% of customers
come to know about the brand existence and its products and services through social media
content. So, such content posted on social media is very helpful in building brand image and
also building appreciable customer base (Tafesse and Wien, 2018).
Measurable: The content or marketing campaign so created and posted on social media is
easily measurable in terms of its success (Heinze and et. al., 2020). The various metrics that
can be easily obtained and identified indicating the success of the content so posted such as
likes and shares for the content, audience growth through the conversion of lead into
potential customers and followers and following ratio indicates the credibility of the social
media content.
Conclusion
From the above report it can be concluded that, marketing is the most important function
among other functions carried out by the companies. Without marketing, companies cannot
make or enhance their sales in the market (Wilson, 2017). Nowadays, as discussed in this
report two new concept are emerging that is, digital marketing and social media marketing.
The two of these concepts are widely used by the modern marketing managers in
promoting and communicating their brand in the target market due to its efficiency in terms
of cost saving and effectiveness in terms of time saving, thus these concepts are gaining
much popularity these days.
References
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Books and Journals
Pomering, A., 2017. Marketing for sustainability: Extending the conceptualisation of the
marketing mix to drive value for individuals and society at large. Australasian Marketing
Journal (AMJ), 25(2), pp.157-165.
Jarek, K. and Mazurek, G., 2019. MARKETING AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. Central
European Business Review, 8(2).
Mahmoud, T. O., 2019. Green Marketing: A Marketing Mix concept. International Journal of
Electrical, Electronics and Computers, 4(1), pp.20-26.
Hisrich, R. D. and Ramadani, V., 2017. Entrepreneurial marketing mix. In Effective
Entrepreneurial Management (pp. 75-99). Springer, Cham.
Vinerean, S., 2017. Content marketing strategy. Definition, objectives and tactics. Expert
Journal of Marketing, 5(2).
Peterson, M. and Park, H., 2021. Hope for a stronger discipline of marketing. Journal of
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Chaffey, D. and Smith, P. R., 2017. Digital marketing excellence: planning, optimizing and
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Kannan, P. K., 2017. Digital marketing: A framework, review and research
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Tafesse, W. and Wien, A., 2018. Implementing social media marketing strategically: An
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