Digital Marketing Report: Almarai Company, Saudi Arabia

This report provides a comprehensive overview of digital marketing, focusing on the Almarai Company, a Saudi Arabian multinational dairy company. It begins with an introduction to digital marketing, differentiating it from offline marketing, and explores various online marketing techniques such as SEO, social media marketing, email marketing, and others. The report then analyzes key consumer trends driving the growth of digital marketing, including changing communication channels and the impact of evolving technology. Furthermore, it evaluates the opportunities and challenges within the digital marketing landscape, such as personalization, influencer marketing, and the rapidly changing digital environment. The report emphasizes the importance of understanding customers, effective retargeting solutions, and the role of automation and AI in marketing. It concludes by highlighting the significance of adapting to the digital landscape and leveraging consumer insights for effective marketing strategies. The report uses the resources like Google scholar and Marketing91 to support the content.

LO1 : Digital Marketing
Introduction to Almarai Company
is a Saudi multinational dairy company which is listed on the Tadawul stock
exchange. It specializes in food and beverage manufacturing and distribution.
The company's main offices are located in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
-Present an overview of the digital marketing landscape and compare online
and offline marketing concepts
Digital Marketing :
Digital marketing is the use of the Internet, mobile devices, social media,
search engines, and other channels to reach consumers.
Some marketing experts consider digital marketing to be an entirely new
endeavor that requires a new way of approaching customers and new ways of
understanding how customers behave compared to traditional marketing.
Online Marketing
 Search Engine Optimization(SEO): It is a process to get web
traffic from the organic search results on search engines. It is not
a paid service or it is not an advertisement. We already
mentioned in our previous article about how to do SEO for a new
website
 Social Media Marketing: It is a process of getting traffic from
social media site such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc. You
can reach your target audiences through paid ads or organic
posting.
 Email Marketing
 Search Engine Marketing: This is another form of paid internet
marketing. You may get the visibility of your site on search results
by paying to search engines.
 Affiliate Marketing: You may increase the sales of your website
by sharing a part of income (commission) from the sales
generated by a third website or agency. Bonus in this process is
the traffic driven to your site from the third party’s website is free
of cost.
 Influencers Marketing: This process is nothing but finding the
industry experts to promote your products or services. As you
know word of mouth will work a lot. People believe in the word of
mouth more than self-promotion.

 Content Marketing: Creating content (article) on your products or
services and promoting it to reach potential users.
 Lead Generation: It is a process of capturing the attention in a
product or services to get more sales or leads to your business.
Offline Marketing
Offline Marketing is also a process to create brand awareness, reach targeted
users and generating leads or sales. But there is no internet involved in this
method.
1. Television
2. Radio
3. Newspapers
4. Banners
5. Brochure
6. Flyers
7. Pamphlets
8. Posters
The difference between Digital Marketing Vs Offline Marketing
1.Cost
Companies spend a lot of amounts to promote their brand to increase their
sales or services throughout. When it comes to expenses, online marketing is
affordable than offline marketing. In offline, we should spend a lot of money to
maintain stock, give salaries, pay rents and other bills…etc. but in online,
major expenses are starting an optimized website (website with SEO), giving
ads on social media or search engines which are comparatively very less
expensive than offline promotions such as TV, Radio or Newspaper ads.
2.Exposure
Offline promotions have its own limit. It never guarantees maximum exposure.
But online does not have any barriers. It reaches out globally and gets
maximum exposure. You can sell a product globally without even setting up
local outlets. It is not compulsory to have huge stocks or a big godown to
store all your raw materials.
3.Convenience – 247/7 or 365 Days

There are no time barriers to internet marketing. Customers visit your web
and buy your products or services at any time. Where in offline you can
expect sales or customers only when your outlet is opened.
4.Personalization
Since web traffic and customer’s purchase histories are tracked, it is easy to
give a specific offer to a specific category of customers. It will always help you
to increase your business. Also, you can target a category of people for
specific promotions.
But in large scale, offline outlets, these kind of methods are difficult to apply.
Only small shops can use these methods to retain their customers.
The difference between Digital Marketing and Offline Marketing
Offline Digital Marketing
You’ve encountered offline digital marketing before and didn’t realize that’s what
it was. Radio and TV marketing are categorized as offline digital marketing
because they involve an electronic device, yet the connection to the Internet is
not necessary.
Then there’s enhanced offline marketing; if you’ve ever been in a restaurant and
ordered your meal using an electronic tablet, then you’re no stranger to offline
marketing. It is an enhanced offline marketing experience with a digital
device. Electronic billboards are a great example of enhanced offline digital
marketing.
Lastly, there’s phone marketing otherwise known as cold calling. Many people
believed that cold calling was dead, mainly since people now screen their calls.
However, cold calling and telemarketers still exist and surprisingly, even bring in
sales.
Online Digital Marketing
Online marketing is referred to as online advertising or Internet marketing. The
following seven are the major types of online digital marketing:
1. Search engine optimization (SEO) – SEO is the process of optimizing
your content so that it ranks higher in search engine results pages so that
you drive more traffic to your website.

2. Search engine marketing (SEM) – With SEO, you’re using best practices
to make traffic to your site organically. With SEM, however, you purchase
ad space in paid search platforms such Google AdWords.
3. Content marketing – Content marketing involves content creation and
distribution across all your online channels such as your blog, website, or
social media. The content you create is not meant to be promotional but
instead, stimulate interest and ultimately, improve brand awareness.
4. Social Media Marketing (SMM) – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram,
YouTube, and LinkedIn are some of the most prominent social
media platforms. And social media marketing involves gaining traffic and
attention from these channels.
5. Pay-per-click advertising (PPC) – If you’ve noticed those ads that
appear alongside your search results, then you’ve encountered PPC
ads before. PPC is a model of online marketing where advertisers pay a
fee each time a person clicks their ad.
6. Affiliate marketing – Affiliate marketing is a commission-based
arrangement typically between an online retailer and an external website.
The purpose is to generate traffic and sales through referrals.
7. Email marketing – Email marketing is a type of direct marketing that
uses emails to deliver marketing messages to its audience.
- Determine and analyse the key consumer trends and insights that are
fueling the growth of digital marketing.
Changing channels of communication
With businesses looking for ways to personalize their offerings and make
them more interactive, marketers have been using multiple channels to
communicate with their target audience. This approach leverages the use of
e-mail, social media, blogs, and ads interchangeably, allowing the business
to follow-up on leads better and avoid losing business by putting all their
eggs into one basket, like e-mail marketing. Consumers who browse
through a website and almost sign up before quitting can be brought back
with an SMS or e-mail that asks them if they want to complete the sign-up
process. Further, consumers can find brand mentions on multiple platforms,
helping to create a perception of popularity through influencers and peer
networks.
Changing technology

Before the digital age, traditional advertising and promotional campaigns -
usually run through ads purchased on television or print media, or through
large billboards and hoardings - were expensive and gave poor returns on
investment.
-Evaluate the opportunities and challenges facing the digital
marketing landscape.
Challenges to digital marketing
1.Personalization In Digital Marketing
offering a personalized online experience should be a key part of your marketing strategy.
An increasing number of consumers are beginning to demand more from brands and the
services they provide so when it comes to personalization in marketing, it is essential to
ensure customers are recognized as human beings and are treated in a way that makes them
feel understood. With this in mind, there’s no denying that integrating personalization in
your digital marketing strategy is essential.
Evaluate
Yes, winning a client is a very important process and the control of
appropriate prices.
2.The Rise Of Influencer Marketing
With each New Year comes the opportunity to build a whole new marketing
campaign, and to kick it all off the right way, we strongly suggest investing in
influencer marketing as a part of your digital marketing strategy. For those that are
unaware of what influencer marketing is, it is simply a form of marketing that places
focus on influential people, such as celebrities and YouTube personalities, rather than
the target market as a whole.
Evaluate
I agree with this where you sell products through influencers impact on the
success of your brand, you can earn customers ...
3. The Changing Landscape of Digital
As the digital world is growing rapidly it is difficult for many
agencies to keep their pace with a rapidly growing digital
environment. Digital trends change overnight and among serious
digital marketing challenges. They work a little slow but we may get
clients for our company as time passes. The landscape has changed
over the past 5 years. To compete with digital marketing
competitions your company needs to be multi-tasking.
Evaluate

I agree with this where it works a little slow but we may get customers for our
company over time.
4. Your customers are mobile
Business organizations take more interest in your website than the
customers. Customers may have fast access to
information. Customers have access to the information. Content is king:
failing which poses digital marketing challenges as strong and
relevant information sells. Customers look at organic content.
Evaluate
I agree with this as businesses care more about your website than customers.
Customers may have quick access to information. Customers can access
information because organizations care about the brand
opportunities to digital marketing :
Understanding customers: This is easier said than done, especially when you have
thousands or hundreds of thousands of customers, things become extremely complex, so
how can you understand your Customer cross OMNI Channel (online and offline channels),
Understand where they fall in User Journey, Create Segmentation, predict their needs, and
Build Marketing Materials to meet the user needs at each stage, measure performance and
optimize.
Evaluate
I do not agree with this as the process of understanding the client is very important because
it has a positive impact on the company which leads to an increase in the strength of the
company in terms of employees
Effective Re-Targeting Solution: This is where the Industry becoming better but yet
not even close to fix the gap in Retargeting, Annually hundreds of Millions of Dollars
wasted on wrong re-targeting, Working closely with Large Marketing Companies,
with highly advance systems and extremely smart teams, i don't think they are able
to solve such problems soon.
Evaluate
I don't agree with this where working closely with large marketing companies, with
very advanced systems and very smart teams, I don't think they can solve such
problems soon.
Automation and AI : This is where i will put my bucks if i get to choose, Marketing
Automation, Relationship Automation and Machine Learning AI, that can learn and
optimize the relationship as it learn more.
Evaluate

I agree with this where it's relationship automation and AI machine learning,
which can learn and improve the relationship as it learns more.
References
https://www.marketing91.com/
Google scholar
Material