University X - BUS301: The Role of Digital Marketing in Business

This report provides a comprehensive overview of digital marketing and its pivotal role in contemporary businesses. It begins by defining marketing and digital marketing, explaining the marketing mix (product, price, place, and promotion) and the communication mix. The report then delves into social media marketing, highlighting its importance and benefits. Part 1 of the report covers the explanation of marketing, marketing mix, digital marketing and social media marketing. Part 2 of the report provides two compelling examples of successful social media content from Starbucks and Dove, analyzing their strategies and justifications for effectiveness. The report also includes a screenshot of an effective campaign with reference to an established model and standard for digital marketing. Finally, the report concludes by summarizing the effectiveness of social media content, emphasizing its impact on consumer control, convenience, loyalty, cost reduction, brand building, and measurability. Overall, the report underscores the significance of digital marketing and social media marketing in achieving business objectives.

The role of digital
marketing

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................1
Part 1......................................................................................................................................1
Explanation of marketing..............................................................................................1
An explanation of what the marketing mix is and where the communications mix fits1
An explanation of digital marketing.............................................................................3
An explanation of social media marketing...................................................................3
An explanation of why Digital marketing and social media marketing are important to
contemporary businesses...............................................................................................3
Part 2......................................................................................................................................4
Two examples of social media contents that really work and justification of why they work
.......................................................................................................................................4
Screen shot of effective campaign with reference to established model and standard for
digital marketing...........................................................................................................5
Why social media content is effective?.........................................................................7
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................7
References:.......................................................................................................................................8

INTRODUCTION
Marketing is the action a firm takes up to advertise or promote the buying and selling of a
product or service. It generally includes promotion, selling and delivering products or services to
other businesses or consumers. Digital marketing is a part of marketing where products are being
promoted and sold digitally or electronically. In mainly involves electronic devices like
computer system, mobile phones and internet. In today's world, people and business are more
interested in buying and selling digitally rather than traditionally as it saves time in this fast
moving life. The following discussion covers the concept of traditional marketing, marketing
mix, digital marketing and their examples and theories.
MAIN BODY
Part 1
Explanation of marketing
Marketing is defined as a management operation in which recognition, forecasting and
fulfilling customer needs and requirements are done in a profitable manner. This means that
marketing activities are conducted by some business or organization to gain profits by selling
their product or service. Another definition of marketing is, it is defined as a job, set of practices
and procedures for creating, interfacing, conveying and interchanging offerings in which
customer finds values at large. This means marketing consist several parts or stages that are
important to implement for any business because if execution of any is missed out than it can
affect the further process of marketing.
An explanation of what the marketing mix is and where the communications mix fits
Marketing Mix: It is defined as the set of activities and strategies that a firm uses to advertise
it's product or service in a market. It consist 4Ps that are product, price, place and promotion
(Chaffey, 2019). Product: It refers to the goods that are being sold by the firm. It should be designed like
that it must deliver a performance that consumer desires in it's products. Price: It refers to the amount that has to be paid by customers in exchange of a product. It
is decided by calculating it's cost of production, marketing cost and any mediator cost. It
1

gives worth to the product so it is necessary to analyse the pricing strategy according to a
market and demand-supply requirements. Place: It refers to the location that where the product is being sold. Place strategy is
important because choosing the right place where product catches the attraction of the
customers. Some business pay for the premium location to sell their products at good
rates.
 Promotion: It refers to the activities that are undertaken by a business to make awareness
of it's product or service. It mainly includes media, newspapers, advertisement,
incentives, awards to trade and many more.
Communication Mix: It is defined as the usage of various tools to convey message or
communicate to customers through different ways in order to create awareness of products and
selling them. It is also known as promotional mix which is regarded as a part of marketing mix.
It's tools includes (Du Plessis, 2017): Advertising: It covers all approaches through which a firm pays to advertise their product
or service. Some approaches like through television, radio, press, pay-per-click and many
more. It can be successful it it consist creativeness, emotional sense, eye-catching,
musical and attractive to gain attention from the customers. Direct Marketing: It consist direct communication to the customers where direct
response is expected about firm's products. It includes direct mail, telemarketing, emails,
text(SMS) and many more. It has the measurement of direct results. Public Relations: It generally refers to the target customers and media through public
relations. It magnifies news, tactics and operations to create and maintain a positive side
of a company, this is done through partnerships and maintaining good connections with
newspapers, journalist and other organizations (Felix, Rauschnabel and Hinsch, 2017). Personal Selling: It refers to the selling of a product or service to the individual
customers by face to face meeting. It includes representatives, influencers, sales people
and brand ambassadors. Skills required in this job are special knowledge, market
scanning, customer behaviour and convincing communication to encourage consumers to
try or buy their product.
2

 Sales Promotion: It is mainly regarded as the increment of short term sales or of limited
time period. It includes coupons, freebies, product samples, contests, prizes, loyalty
cards, discounts and special offers. It creates brand and customer loyalty.
An explanation of digital marketing
It is defined as the advertising and promotion of product or service through technical
advancements. Another definition is, it is defined as the marketing strategy that is dependent on
the internet and the electronic devices to target the customers globally through various platforms
and channels. For example, in context of Pizza Hut, it developed an app which is allowing the
customers to design their own pizza by choosing the pizza base and toppings accordingly and
can interact with the sellers about delivery and product knowledge. There are different ways to
market products digitally like SEO, SMM, PPC, Emails, Content and Online PR (Heinze,
Fletcher, Rashid and Cruz, 2020).
An explanation of social media marketing
It is defined as a usage of social websites and network connections to promote the brand's
product or service. It enables to target the new or existing customers on a large basis. Another
definition is, it is defined as the increment of sales and building brand through social platforms
via internet and digitalized devices. For example, in context of Netflix, They found a good way
to engage their customers and assist them out during a global pandemic. They conducted
Instagram live stories to connect with people to sort out their issue of mental health and many
others. This can be done through various known apps like Facebook, Whatsapp, linked-in,
Twitter and many more (Ismail, 2017).
An explanation of why Digital marketing and social media marketing are important to
contemporary businesses
Importance of digital marketing:
 Reaching wide range of people globally
 Competitive advantage
 Targeting customers is more easy
 Return on investment is impressive
Importance of Social Media Marketing:
3

 Less expensive
 More engagement of customers
 Improvement of brand loyalty
 Improvement of SEO rankings (Keegan and Rowley, 2017)
Part 2
Two examples of social media contents that really work and justification of why they work
Example 1: Starbucks
Starbucks is well known for it's attractive and out of the box SMM that mostly holds
attention. In June, 2019, they had run the movement to support LGBTQ community. Simply they
have taken the advantage to running or existing trend at that time. They were posting various
pictures of people from that community and were introducing their lifestyle and stories to the
people. Generally they post the highlights or stories on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter social
media accounts, and they mentions the attention gaining image for advertising to encourage
people to click on them. At that time, people were already celebrating the pride month so to
connect with the people's emotions, they started this campaign to post related pictures to get
attention from the people more. Moreover, their hashtag strategy, they used most reputed and
branded hashtags like #ExtraShotOfPride and #Pride for posting stories and highlights. This
encouraged the people to share pictures using hashtags. Hashtag is a very trendy and popular
industry now a days so by making use of it for advertisement, Starbucks has definitely gained
global reach and more visibility to their customers (Liu, Shin and Burns, 2019).
Justification: The social media content works for Starbucks because of their activities on
Instagram and other social media platforms. Firstly, they made a use of time and situation of
pride month celebration and conducting activities related to that. Secondly, their post was
meaningful and attractive and directly connecting to the people. Thirdly, they were using those
platforms that are mostly used by this generation. Fourthly, they used popular hashtags to
encourage people to participate in their campaign.
Example 2: Dove
Dove is a leading brand that mostly aims on social causes in their SMM movement. They
deals with mainly beauty products for women so they focuses on women empowerment. That is
4

why they mostly targets women for their campaign. In it's recent movement, they posted various
pictures on a well known social media platform, highlighting the values and characteristics in
every aspect of a women either she is physically disabled or fully perfect. Their basic idea and
social message to spread was whoever and whatever the person is, accepting them is a humanity
and humanity serves as a worship for humans. No doubt that today's era is for women and their
empowerment so everybody encourages these contents for a women and appreciating whosoever
is initiating this like Dove did it. The beauty of this movement was that it connected people very
deeply and asked women to share their pictures around the world so that they can made them
believe that how different they are from others. This resulted in brand loyalty and gained more
reputation in a traditional as well as online marketing (Salo, 2017).
Justification: Social media marketing has a positive impact on Dove's brand image. Firstly, They
were highlighting the current and going on issue of women empowerment. Secondly, their
attractive post has connected to the people emotionally. Thirdly, they had used the most reputed
social media apps like Facebook and Instagram. Fourthly, they asked women to share their
pictures through which they gained attention from many customers.
5

Screen shot of effective campaign with reference to established model and standard for
digital marketing
6

Why social media content is effective? Consumer in control: SMM leads to the more engagement in customers so that firm
could get the instant feedback of their products, sometimes delayed but fast process then
traditional one. This enhances the controlling power of a business on it's consumer
(Vieira, de Almeida, Agnihotri and Arunachalam, 2019). Convenience: There is a convenience from both the sides business as well as consumer.
Business can reach out their target customers globally around the world in a more
convenient manner. Customers can buy and get the knowledge of products by sitting at
home without walking to the location so this can be convenient for the customers also. Loyalty: This is an important achievement for any business to gain brand as well as
customer loyalty. This can gained by SMM by targeting the global market at the same
time and creating awareness of it's products and services to the large number of people. Reduced cost: This advertisement tool only needs creative content for marketing. As
minimum cost is required for promotion and return on investment is high on this
platform. So it is a cost effective method for any business to expand either in terms of
products or revenue generation. Builds a brand: Search engine optimization is a powerful tool in digital marketing which
increases the rank of the company's website. So activities in the social media marketing
directly affects the SEO rankings which ultimately builds and develops up the brand
image.
 Measurable: This is an advantage which every company can get while marketing their
business digitally because it assist the firm to measure it's performance and competitions
in the virtual or traditional market (Tuten and Solomon, 2017).
CONCLUSION
It is concluded that digital marketing and social media marketing has it's more effective
importance on the brand equivalent to the traditional marketing. Because offline as well as online
marketing has both it's merits and demerits. At some point online marketing works and at some
offline marketing works. So it is important to analyse that which method could be more effective
7

to the concerned business. In this report, it is discussed about digital marketing and SMM, it's
examples and effectiveness.
References:
Books and Journals:
Chaffey, D., 2019. Digital marketing. Pearson UK.
Du Plessis, C., 2017. The role of content marketing in social media content communities. South
African Journal of Information Management. 19(1). pp.1-7.
Felix, R., Rauschnabel, P.A. and Hinsch, C., 2017. Elements of strategic social media marketing:
A holistic framework. Journal of Business Research, 70, pp.118-126.
Heinze, A., Fletcher, G., Rashid, T. and Cruz, A. eds., 2020. Digital and social media
marketing: a results-driven approach. Routledge.
Ismail, A.R., 2017. The influence of perceived social media marketing activities on brand
loyalty: The mediation effect of brand and value consciousness. Asia Pacific Journal of
Marketing and Logistics. 29(1). pp.129-144.
Keegan, B.J. and Rowley, J., 2017. Evaluation and decision making in social media
marketing. Management Decision.
Liu, X., Shin, H. and Burns, A.C., 2019. Examining the impact of luxury brand's social media
marketing on customer engagement: Using big data analytics and natural language
processing. Journal of Business Research.
Salo, J., 2017. Social media research in the industrial marketing field: Review of literature and
future research directions. Industrial Marketing Management, 66, pp.115-129.
Tuten, T.L. and Solomon, M.R., 2017. Social media marketing. Sage.
Vieira, V.A., de Almeida, M.I.S., Agnihotri, R. and Arunachalam, S., 2019. In pursuit of an
effective B2B digital marketing strategy in an emerging market. Journal of the Academy
of Marketing Science. 47(6). pp.1085-1108.
8