Digital Marketing: Transformation in Business and Consumer Behavior

This report provides a comprehensive introduction to digital marketing, emphasizing its significance in today's business environment. It defines digital marketing, highlighting its use of digital channels like websites, social media, and search engines to connect with consumers. The report discusses the shift from traditional marketing, presenting statistics on internet users and online sales to demonstrate the growth of digital marketing. It explains key concepts such as the RACE framework (Reach, Act, Convert, Engage) and various digital marketing disciplines including content, SEO, social media, and email marketing. The report further explores the reasons behind the importance of digital marketing, including efficient customer reach, marketing intelligence, and cost-effectiveness, particularly for small and medium-sized businesses. It also provides comparisons between traditional and digital marketing spend, and emphasizes the importance of online presence and competitor analysis. The report references multiple research papers and studies to support its claims and provide further reading materials for the reader.

Module 1: Introduction to Digital Marketing
This module introduces the role of digital marketing in business
environment today. We will discuss the how digital technologies
have transformed the way people make purchase decisions. You will
also learn how organizations have responded to changing
consumer needs by adopting modern digital technologies to connect
with and market their goods and services.
By end of this module, you will be able to:
1. Understand the importance of digital marketing in
organizations
2. Differentiate between traditional marketing and digital
marketing
3. Identify the critical success factors in digital marketing
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Page 1: Introduction to Digital Marketing
Digital technologies have fundamentally changed the
way firms' market and sell their products. According to Yasmin et
al (2015, p. 69), digital marketing refers to “the type of marketing
widely used by the firms to promote products and services and to
reach consumers using digital channels”. These digital channels
include websites, mobile phones, emails, social media networks,
display advertising, search engine marketing and many other forms
of digital media. In other words, digital marketing is the process of
marketing your company online to prospective leads and high-value
consumers.
As of 2020, there are 4.3 billion internet users out there
today and two billion of them are online shoppers. In
2019, online sales worldwide surpassed 3.5 trillion US
dollars worldwide and accounted for 22% of the global retail sales.
These statistics evidence the volume of opportunities to reach
people who are interested in your business.
As technology is integrated into consumers everyday lives, from
smart phones and smart watches to laptops and tablets, people are
always connected. And therefore, digital marketing becomes an
essential investment for those businesses who want to connect
with customers. Today, digital technologies including
social media, websites, and email help businesses to
directly reach their customers and market their products and
services without any intermediaries. Figure 1 shows the most
popular digital marketing channels used by businesses.

Figure 1: Top 6 Digital Marketing Channels for businesses
What is Digital Marketing?
Digital marketing is defined as the process involved in
identifying, anticipating, and satisfying customer needs and
demands utilising digital technologies and channels (Refer Figure
1). In other words, digital marketing encompasses all forms of
marketing that use electronic technologies and devices. Click
here for the video demonstrating the foundations of digital
marketing concepts. We can broadly classify digital marketing
practises into six disciplines. These include 1) content marketing, 2)
native advertising, 3) Search engine marketing (Pay per Click), 4)
Search Engine Optimisation, 5) Social media marketing, 6) Email
marketing and 7) Mobile marketing. We will discuss all these digital
marketing concepts in the coming sections.
Today, Internet applications alone provide far more opportunities for
brands to attract, engage and delight their customers. The RACE
framework (Figure 2) outlines the key objectives of digital
marketing. The framework identifies four key digital marketing
objectives, Reach, Act, Convert and Engage across all digital
platforms.

Figure 2: RACE Framework. Adapted from Smart Insights
Reach refers to the number of people who have seen your digital
content at least once. At this stage, priority would be to promote the
brand through paid, owned or earned media channels. Paid media
refer to any digital marketing you pay for. In other words, paid
media is media where businesses are required to pay for any
visitors, reach and engagement in marketing. Traditional media like
TV, radio and print media are examples of paid media. In digital
marketing arena, advertisements and promotions through search
engines and display ad networks are all regarded as paid media. On
the other hand, owned media refers to the media channels platforms
owned by the brand. Businesses market their products and services
through various media they own including company websites, blogs,
mobile applications, and social networking channels. Finally, earned
media refers to the publicity and exposure a brand is earning
without paid advertisements such as positive word of mouth and
public relations a brand gains through social media like Facebook.
After reaching the audience or potential customers online, the next
major objective in digital marketing is to interact with
them. According to Smart Insights , Act refers to the initiatives taken
by brands to encourage interactions with their audience on various
digital platforms such as websites and social media

networks. Research suggests that five content marketing
strategies in social media including
entertainment, customization, interaction, electronic word of mouth,
and trendiness are directly affecting online audience’s brand
engagement and repurchase intention. (Cheung et al.,
2020). Read the blog from Hootsuite for learning more about
creative strategies that may stimulate online customer
engagement in a social media context.
The third step involved in digital marketing is to convert the online
audience to actual customers. The conversion from an
individual visiting a website to purchase a product may
occur either online or offline and involves many stages and
challenges. For example, consumers may combine both online and
offline channels while searching for product information. This is
followed by the verification of product information via physical
inspection at stores (if applicable) and finally complete the
transaction by paying for products either online or offline. According
to a recent study by Aw et al. (2021), webrooming is a common
practice among shoppers today, where they search for various items
online and finally ended up buying them online. Digital marketers
need to understand the role of various factors affecting consumer’s
purchase intention and develop strategies for conversion
accordingly. These include channel- (e.g. website quality),
consumer- (computer literacy, need for convenience, need for touch
etc.), or product related factors (tangible and intangible product
attributes). Various digital marketing strategies including email
marketing, personalisation, online product reviews, multichannel
and omni channel retailing help the brands to facilitate the
conversion and decision-making process for consumers.
The final step involved in RACE framework refers to post purchase
engagement. This is where brands focus on building long term
relationships with current customers in order to enhance loyalty. The
steps taken by businesses at this stage leads to repeat purchases
and advocacy by satisfied customers. To summarise, the RACE
framework mentioned above provides a simple, yet powerful
approach that can be used across various levels of the digital
marketing process. The RACE framework (Figure 3) also helps
to outline the online customer journey across all touch points
showing the scale of digital marketing opportunities exist today.

Figure 3: Digital Consumer Journey.
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Page 2: Why digital marketing?
As we discussed earlier, digital marketing refers to all forms of
marketing activities that use an electronic or digital platform. While
traditional marketing media like TV, print ads, telephones still exists,
there is a tremendous growth in the adoption and use of electronic
marketing platforms. For the year 2020, digital advertisement
spending in the United States is expected to be $129 billion dollars
(USD). According to Statista, marketers spent approximately $55
billion dollars for search advertising in the US market. It is to be
noted that marketers have spent billions of dollars for other digital
marketing practices including banner advertising ( $23 billion USD),
social media promotions ( $37 billion USD), video advertising($10
billion) and other digital promotions ( $2 billion). Figure 4 compares
the traditional advertisement spending and digital marketing
spending in the United States.

Figure 4: Comparison of digital marketing spending and traditional
media advertisement spending. Source: Statista
The prime question is why digital marketing is so important for
businesses today? To start with, we could say, digital marketing
offers enormous benefits to both marketers and customers alike. If
we look around, most businesses today have a fully functional
website and are active in at least one social media channel. Firm’s
online presence and digital marketing are new normality for
consumers as they expect and rely on it through out the consumer
decision making stages. Following section outlines the key reasons
why you need a digital marketing strategy for your business
growth.
1. Reaching your customers efficiently
Yes, your current and prospective customers are already
online. Right now, they might be looking for a new product in
Amazon or reading a product review in Facebook or watching a
demonstration video in YouTube or shopping a product through their
mobile application. There is a good chance that customers might be
looking for a business like yours and if you are not online, or if
they can’t find you online, they might be choosing one of your
competitors. As discussed in the beginning of our session, there

are 1.92 billion online shoppers out there purchasing goods and
services online. Value of e-commerce sales surpassed 3.5 trillion
U.S. dollars worldwide during the year 2020.
The rise in online shopping is a result of many factors such as
increased use of smart phones and mobile shopping, proliferation of
online market places, increasing social media and social
commerce. Read Shankar and Jain (2020 ) for learning more
about the factors affecting luxury consumers webrooming
intentions. Research ( Lim et al.(2016); Wu et al. (2020) suggest
that factors including perceived usefulness, perceived value,
transaction cost etc. are found to be significant in influencing
customers online shopping intentions
This is how business is conducted today. When people are interested
in your brand or its products or services, the first thing they will be
doing is search online and see what they can find about you. If a
prospective customer can’t find you online during their information
search phase, there is a high probability that they wont be back
looking for you again. The point is there is a larger group of potential
customers online looking for businesses like yours. Using digital
marketing efficiently, you can reach these enormous markets in a
way that is cost effective and profitable.
2. Knowing your competitors online
Another key benefit of digital marketing is marketing
intelligence. Marketing intelligence help firms to measure where
their brands stand against competitors, identifies digital program
strengths, informs digital strategy and investments for brands to
grow and manage competition. To be successful in business, it is
very essential to pay attention to what your competitors are doing
and learn from their strategic actions in the competitive market.
Digital marketing provides plenty of opportunities for brands to learn
from their competitors. By following your competitors’ websites,
blogs, social media platforms, you will be getting a picture of what is
working and what is not.
If you are planning to enhance your website features and attract
more traffic, probably you should start from observing your market
leader’s and other competitors’ website. What kind of content they
are using in their websites, blogs, and social media? Are they mostly
blogging or using social media for online customer interactions? Are
they using mostly texts or videos or images and graphics? How do
they communicate their brand to their customers? What are the
areas you think you are better and what are the areas you need
improvement?
Knowing more about the digital presence your competitors may help
you to refine your digital marketing strategies including content

marketing and search marketing strategies. For example,
your search marketing strategies will help your current and
potential customers to contact you prior to reaching your
competitors.
3. More return with less investment
One of the most important reasons for businesses to adopt
digital marketing is that it is cost-effective. This is particularly
significant for small and medium scale businesses whose marketing
budget is often limited. For small and medium businesses around
the world, marketing over digital channels including websites and
social media offers an affordable alternative to the traditional forms
of marketing. For example, in the United States, it would cost
between $2000 and $150,000 to run a print ad for the McDonalds
advertisement shown below. Whereas, the same banner can be
promoted multiple times over brand’s social media pages with little
or no investment at all.

Figure 5: McDonalds print ad. Source: Campaigns of the world
As of December 2020, McDonalds has got 80 million followers in
their Facebook and nearly 4 million followers in Instagram. These
numbers would suggest the reach and impact of social media
advertisements. Check this links to understand more about how
much it would cost to advertise over social media giant Facebook.
Considering other online advertisement costs, pay per click (PPC)
allows you to choose and control your budget for your digital

advertisements on a daily, monthly and life time basis. You can
decide whether you want to spend $500 or $5000 for your digital
advertisements displayed over google display network.
4. Efficient target marketing
To be successful in marketing, your advertisements and
promotions should reach the right segments of the market. We call
them target market in business. In other words, you have to reach
people who are interested in your products and services. They may
be your current customers or those people who are wanting to hear
from you. Digital marketing channels provide excellent opportunities
for firms to target people specifically. For example, what do you
think about the target market for the Go pro advertisement shown
as Figure 6?

Figure 6: GoPro Facebook advertisement. Source: GoPro
Of course, the answer would be individuals who are interested in
travelling, outings, photography etc. We might also target
photographers, tourists, and others who have visited GoPro websites
before, but didn’t complete the purchase yet. Anyone who are
following GoPro social media pages might be another pick as they
have clearly expressed their interest in firms’ products and services.
Today, almost all digital platforms including search engines like

google and social media sites support advertisers with excellent
target marketing options and tools.
Following picture (Figure 7) demonstrates how Facebook helps
advertisers to target their market for social media
advertisements. Read the white paper from Facebook for
learning more about Facebook target marketing options.
Figure 7: Facebook targeting options. Source: Digital marketer
5. Opportunities for personalisation
Another significant difference between traditional marketing and
digital marketing is that the latter provides excellent opportunities
for personalised marketing. Digital marketing channels help the
brands and advertisers to remember the needs and preferences of
their target market and subsequently market the right products and
services to the right person at the right time.
You might not have forgotten Coca cola’s famous Share a
coke campaign in 2014. As part of the campaign, Coca Cola replaced
its brand name with one of the 250 most popular American names
on the labels of their 20-ounce bottles (Refer Figure 8). Instant
success of the campaign showed us that personalisation is not just a
fad, but a new way of life. The campaign helped the company to
connect with its consumers on a personal level and consumers
responded to the campaign by sharing online media contents. With
more than 500,000 photos shared via #shareacoke from consumers,
Coca Cola gained more than 25 million new followers on its
Facebook in its first year alone. Nearly six years after their first

launch, Coca cola has got more than 105 million followers and is still
growing.
Figure 8: Coca cola’s share a cock campaign. Source: Le Book
Today, personalised marketing messages are much more advanced,
allowing deeper and more meaningful customer relationships that
encourages conversions and sales.
According to McKinsey $ Company, personalisation will
be the primary driver of marketing success in the nearby
future. Read the blog from McKinsey Digital to know more about the
steps involved in successful digital personalisation.
6. Measuring and controlling marketing performance
Compared to traditional marketing, another significant advantage of
digital marketing is its ability to measure and monitor the marketing
performance almost instantly. You may have to wait weeks
or months to measure the veracity of a print advertisement or a
television ad. Whereas you can immediately know how a digital
advertisement is performing on a specific platform. In fact, no other
marketing strategy offers as many tracking tools as digital
marketing to measure and control marketing performance.
For example, for consider developing a marketing campaign over
social media networks, what are the various metrics that are
available for you to track its performance? To start with, you could
check how many people have seen your ad, quality of reactions you
have received (likes, dislikes, comments, shares etc.), how many
new followers, how many page views, types of comments received,

how many photo views, video views, demographic facts of your
audience including age, gender, and location can be used for your
evaluation. These metrics provide valuable consumer insights and if
properly used, these can help you make profits.
The same way, you have plenty of tools are available to track your
email promotions, website performance or online advertisements.
For example, email marketing platforms such
as sendinblue, mailchimp, constant contact etc. will help you to
track the performance of your emails that you have sent to your
customer base. They will inform you how many emails were
delivered, how many were read your email, when did they read your
email and what the conversion rate is. Google Analytics is an
amazing tool for measuring your website traffic and online
marketing goals and objectives.
We will learn more about digital marketing metrics in the coming
weeks. Just remember that a good digital marketing campaign can
get more visitors to your websites, more leads on your landing
pages and bigger conversion rates overnight, but it will bring the
best results in the long run as you feed your pages with content
relevant to your target market. In short, digital marketing platforms
provide an incredible environment for experimentation,
improvement and that differentiates the strategy from conventional
marketing platforms.
How do firms engage in digital
marketing?
Businesses can implement digital marketing practises within their
firms by planning, managing, and optimising their digital media
channels and customer’s experiences. But what are those digital
media channels and how do consumers interact with brands? Dave
Chaffey of Smart Insights named 5Ds that help firms to reach and
learn from their customers. The 5Ds are shown below:
1. Digital devices: Customers use a combination of digital
devices today to learn about and interact with various brands.
These include smart phones, laptops, desktops, tablets, TVs, and
many others. Customers get diverse user experience as they
interact with brand’s websites, social media channels and mobile
applications through these devices. Think about the virtual reality
experience brands are providing to its consumers through digital
devices such as desktops and mobile phones. Augmented

reality provides a fake, but realistic and immersive
user experience to its consumers and is less expensive. See
Figure 9 for example of virtual reality experience offered by
makeup company Sephora. Read the article written by Sung
(2021) who recently examined the effects of augmented reality
applications on consumer’s purchase intention and social
experience in mobile phones.
Figure 9: Virtual artist mobile application from Sephora
2. Digital Platforms: Digital platforms enable consumers and
firms the ability to interact together. Most of these digital
interactions are occurring today through digital platforms such as
websites, blogs, mobile apps, and social media channels such as
Facebook and Twitter. For example, blogs are one of the most
popular and efficient platforms for brands to communicate
with its current and potential customers. See
how Microsoft is interacting with its huge online audience through
their blogs. Read the article from Corey Wainwright for learning
more about the usefulness of blogs in marketing
applications. Social media is another important virtual platform
that should not be missed in digital marketing. In fact, social
media has become the most influential digital marketing platform
for brands to advertise their products and services. As shown in
the Figure 10, marketers are expected to spend nearly $98
billion (USD) in the advertisements over social media
channels. Read the blog from Christina Newberry to examine why
social media is no longer an option, but a necessity for digital
marketers in order to reach their customers and grow
brand awareness. The article outlines the key benefits of social
media in digital marketing. Figure 11 shows a Facebook post
from Nike. The post so far reached more than 35 million people
and received nearly 40,000 likes, 6000 comments and 2600
shares. Not a bad response, isn’t it?

Figure 10: Estimated social media advertisement spending.
Source: Statista

Figure 11: Nike Facebook advertisement. Source: Nike
3. Digital media: As discussed in the earlier sections, there are
three types of digital media exist today in order to engage with
current and potential customers. These include paid, owned, and
earned media channels.
Paid media channels refer to those channels where investment
(payment) is needed for digital communication. In
general, advertisers have to pay for specific contents or ads

that are to be posted or published on digital media
channels. This can be a paid search ad, social media ad
or other display ads. Refer Figure 12 for an example of a
search ad from Google. Click here to learn more about
advertising options over search engines. Paying your
influencers to promote your brands and products over social
media channels is another example of a paid media
promotion. Today, Influencer marketing is a very popular form
of paid promotions. Figure 13 presents a social
media advertisement posted by famous soccer player Cristiano
Ronaldo. The advertisement has reached more than 124
million people around the world and generated an impressive
1.2 million likes and 36,000 online comments.
Figure 12: Search advertisement from Google

Figure 13: Paid social media advertisement. Source: Facebook
Earned media refers to the online word of mouth and publicity
generated through successful digital relationships with public.
Positive sentiments and word of mouth a business earned
through customer’s social media channels is an example of
earned media. For example, refer Figure 14 for the 5-star
rating and customer reviews received for Auckland’s Park
Hyatt hotel.

Figure 14: Online review for Park Hyatt hotel Auckland.
Source: TripAdvisor
Finally, owned media refers to the media channels and
platforms owned and controlled by the brand. Firms use
their own digital media channels such as websites, blogs,

social media channels, mobile applications for digital
marketing communication. Unlike other media types, firms
have full control over the contents posted over their own
media outlets. Another significant advantage for owned media
promotion is its cost effectiveness. You are not required to pay
for any digital marketing at your own channels compared to
search engine marketing or other paid advertising strategies.
4. Digital Data: Digital data refers to all form of insights
businesses collect about their customers including consumer
profile, interaction history, contact information which could be
used for future business interactions<Examples>
5. Digital Technology: Refers to the collection of tools and
technologies firms use today in order to develop interactive
consumer experience. Website interaction and user experience
tools, search engine optimisation technologies, content
management systems, social media monitoring tools, digital
analytical tools etc. are some examples. <Examples>
Digital Marketing: Critical steps
According to the Smart Insights, 46% of the businesses do not have
a solid digital marketing strategy, while another 16% do have some
forms of digital strategies, but they have not integrated it
into their marketing plans. Unfortunately, for most businesses,
digital marketing is simply their “website” or “Facebook” channels.
This feeling limits the scope and opportunity of digital
marketing. The following sections outlines the critical steps of digital
marketing, showing the scale and opportunity of all the digital
channels businesses can use, which are more than just a “website”
or “social media”.
Step 1: Set your objectives and Key Performance Indicators
Famous management consultant and organisational theorist Kenichi
Ohmae said "Rowing harder doesn’t help if the boat is headed in the
wrong direction.”
Those words are very much relevant in today’s digital marketing
arena. Unless you know what you need to achieve, and where do
you want to reach with your digital marketing initiatives, you will
probably struggle to measure your success. Digital marketing
objectives underpin all your marketing strategy. These marketing
objectives must be time bound. For example, you should have a
short, medium- or long-term goals and objectives. While your short-

term goal might be to increase traffic to your YouTube channel and
to increase the number of subscriptions, your long-term digital
marketing goal might be to be to increase the sales revenue or
achieve a better position in organic search results. See Figure 15 for
some of the important digital marketing objectives.
Figure 15: Important digital marketing objectives. Source: Smart
Insights
SMART objectives (Refer Figure 16) is a very useful framework for
businesses to adapt while designing digital marketing goals and
objectives. Following SMART framework may help firms to set up a
clear, actionable, measurable, relevant and timebound objectives for
your digital business.

Figure 16: SMART marketing objectives. Source: Smart Insights
Having a clearly defined objective is not enough to be successful in
digital marketing. Firms need to make sure that they
have adequate key performance indicators (KPIs) to track the digital
marketing performance. KPIs are marketing metrics that can be
used to measure various aspects of your business performance.
Read the blog here to learn more about digital marketing KPIs and
metrics. In short, it is essential to find out which metrics and KPIs
matter most to your firm. Today, we have plenty of digital resources
(both paid and free) available to help you measure each of your
KPIs. For example, Google Analytics is a free platform available
today in order to measure your online acquisition, conversions,
engagement, retention, online audience demographics on
your website. While social media analytics tools like Facebook
Insights help you to track your social media performance, digital
platforms like SEMrush, Sprout Social, Hootsuite, BuzzSumo would
be very useful to measure the success of content marketing
strategies.
Step 2: Set your target market (Remember who you are
talking to)

As we know already at this stage, digital marketing is all
about reaching the right audience at the right time. Delivering the
contents that match with your audience requirements is the key.
Therefore, it is essential to identify your right target market. Target
market refers to those group of individual customers who are
interested in your products or services. Don’t let the digital
marketing preparations like setting objectives, KPIs, budgeting etc.
take away the people you are trying to engage. Read the article
from Newberry (2020) to know more about how to find and target
your online audience, particularly via social media. There are many
factors to consider while identifying your target market in an online
marketspace. These include demographic characteristics of the
audience, psychographics, online behaviour, prior purchase history,
recency, frequency and monetary value of prior shopping, repeat
purchases (if any), and loyalty. You will be able to dip deeper into
the Audience reports from Google Analytics to identify the
demographic characteristics of your online audience.
The data required for target marketing might be coming from
different data sources such as point of sales, social media, website
traffic analysis and so on. Those who are successful in digital
marketing would be able to consolidate these data around
individuals and be able to develop target market
profiles or audience personas. Listen to the video that explains the
concept of buyer persona in 5 minutes. Refer Figure 17 for an
example.

Figure 17: Example of a buyer persona. Source: Smart Bug
Search engines like Google provide plenty of options and tools to
target the right audience for advertising in google networks (See
Figure 18). Listen to the video explaining the steps involved in
audience targeting while setting up advertisements for the google
display networks.
Figure 18. Google’s audience targeting options. Source: Google
Step 3: Identify your resources
This is the time to identify the resources that are required for the
proposed digital marketing campaign. Three things are important at

this stage. First, identify and define your digital marketing budget.
Second, identify the digital channels that are needed for your project
and finally, identify the right team or people who are capable of
achieving your project goals.
 Define your digital marketing budget
Digital marketing is very complex and involves numerous strategies,
all extremely important. For example, email marketing, social
media, content marketing, search engine optimisation, mobile
marketing are all essential for business success. As consumers
increasingly expect omnichannel experiences and want to be able to
reach brands on all their preferred channels, marketers have the big
challenge of stretching out that budget for countless channels and
strategies. Research suggest that nine out of ten marketers expect
to increase their digital marketing budgets in the coming
years. However, the key question is how much is enough? Read the
article from Digital Marketing Institute.
Many facts and figures need to be considered before setting up a
digital marketing budget. So where do we start? First of all, have a
look at the historical data (your past results) and see what has
worked before and what hasn’t. Some of the things you may need
to look into:
 Compare and contrast the spending and return of
your investment for each of your channels and campaigns ran on
these channels.
 The channels that drive the best results. Which
channels gave you maximum traffic? Which advertisements or
promotions gave you most leads? Which channels gave you most
return on your investment? Have you any particular
channels brought you quality leads at a lower cost? These are the
channels you may need to continue investing and increase
spending.
 The channels that are not performing well. If you
got any channels that are not performing well or not producing
any satisfactory results, you can either cut down their budget or
remove them completely from your overall strategy.
 Decide how many paid promotions you are planning
this year? Paid promotions include advertisements over social
media, Google Ads, Search Engine Marketing etc. Allocate
appropriate budget for each digital channel you are planning to
use for paid promotions.
 Don’t forget about your IT investments needed for
marketing. For example, you might have many marketing
analytics, customer relationship management software that
needs investments. Allocate appropriate portion of your

budget for your social media, project management, email
marketing, video creation/ design software.
 Identify your channels
Having the right medium for marketing is essential for successful
business. Over the last two decades, digital marketing has grown
into a vast arena, with diverse channels, techniques and strategies.
Some of these channels include emails, social media (organic and
paid), search engine optimisation, Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising,
Display advertisements, Blogs, whitepapers, Native advertisements,
and Content marketing. Which channel or channels should you use
for your business? Not all online marketing activities might profit
your business. If you want to start digital marketing for your
business, it’s essential that you know the different channels that are
available and how each will benefit your business. Up to an extent,
this depends on who your target customers are, where they are,
how much time you have available, what do you want to achieve
through your particular digital marketing activity. For example, if
your digital marketing objective is to build a strong brand image in
your industry, you may consider social media marketing, and online
advertisement platforms like Google Ads, PPC (Pay Per Click), and
SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). On the other hand, if you are
planning to strengthen your position in your current market,
or entering into a new market, more active digital marketing
participation is required. Content marketing tools like blogs,
whitepapers, podcasts, eBooks, along with a strong social media
presence might be helpful.
 People
Having the right person for the right job is essential for any project
success and digital marketing is no exception. You may need to look
at your current marketing team and evaluate their strengths and
weakness in executing your proposed marketing campaigns for the
time period. Assess the potential of your team and identify whether
you have the sufficient human resources for your needs. Also
identify whether all your digital marketing campaigns can be made
in house or you need to outsource some of them to any marketing
agencies. The following infographic compares in house vs
outsourced digital marketing
Step 4: Create a marketing plan
Last, but not least, every business planning to implement digital
marketing activities should have a solid digital marketing plan. A
digital marketing plan is a document sharing the details for all the

planning for your digital marketing campaigns or actions. It details,
among other things (Please read each of the links given below):
- Short, medium- and long-term business goals.
- The strategies to achieve the goals at the digital level.
- The channels to use.
- Action and development plans.
- Investment and budget.
- The timing and roadmap.
Figure 20: Digital marketing plan. Source: Ascendbusinessgrowth
References
Aw, E. C. X., Basha, N. K., Ng, S. I., & Ho, J. A. (2021). Searching online and buying offline:
Understanding the role of channel-, consumer-, and product-related factors in determining
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