The pie share for digital spends in India is increasing day by day! Its speed, agility and audience engagement give it edge over rival conventional media vehicles. Each of the brand manager is working in their brain storming rooms to work out a digital strategy to gain the market share. The companies are spending in huge numbers to increase their digital presence. In fact everyone is looking to maximize the brand equity through online presence via Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram or Pinterest.
In one of the recent interview a senior official from coca cola mentioned that the ROI on digital media is quite less as compared to the conventional media. However still they are transforming themselves to be a digitally communicating brand.
So what does it make companies to work on digital strategies? When out of 132 core population only 34% use internet then why do companies are intending to spend so heavily on the digital marketing. Why do a smart phone is exclusively launched through a website?
Why there are so many digital start ups? The answer is the speed with which people are converting to digital mode and it's engagement capabilities with customers.
As per an estimate in 2010 there were around 92 Mn people were connected to internet and at the end of Year 2015 around 350 Mn people were connected to internet. It is expected that by 2020 , 730 mn people will be connected via internet. Hence the companies are preparing themselves to be at right place at right time.
No doubt digital is fast, things get viral in friction of a minute, and it has a wide engaging effect on audiences.
With conventional media it is a one way traffic. The brand communicate it's side of story and rely on word of mouth to move on. Or else it has to keep spending in huge amounts to gain the recognition in customer mind.
On the other hand the digital platforms tends to engage the audience by story telling. The companies encourage audience to like,share and talk about the brands. The companies like RedMi or Xiaomi used digital platforms extensively to sell their smart phones. Companies have specialised teams to create posts and then using strategies to engage audiences. And no doubt the phones, sold exclusively in digital platforms were out of stock within the hours of it's launch.
Besides being fast and it's engaging features, the digital platforms also ride on young Indian population. Today India is one of the youngest country and its youth are not scared of exploring new opportunities and adopting new technologies.
The digital marketing has definitely given an opportunity to marketer to reach to millions in one go and in a quantitative way. It helps in easy classification and segmentation of market and thus in making focused efforts. The consumers can be segmented and classified as per the requirements and then can be targeted. The effect can also be measured by quantifying the impression , clicks and post share.
The digital marketing helps in creating a fast effect on audiences by giving an opportunity to marketer to repeat their messages at relatively low cost. The low cost helps marketer to fix their budgeting problems.
Although conventional means also helps in limiting your messages to a targeted geography but digital efforts can be ultra-geo targeted. Today you have possibilities to monitor the movement of your target and accordingly modify your message geography. By using beacons one can actually deliver a discount or mega sales message to customers when they are inside a market compound and can significantly influence their buying behavior.
No doubt digital marketing has edge over the conventional media and hence it is going to be future marketing. It would be an important vehicle to carry the brand stories and would be used by companies more as compared to their conventional media vehicles.
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REFERENCES:
http://www.internetlivestats.com/internet-users/india/
