Digital Marketing: Opportunities and Challenges to Organisations

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Literature review
Digital marketing plan and implementation
Digital marketing of Apple and Google
Comparison and contrast between Apple and Google
Conclusion
Reference List

Introduction

Digital marketing is the use of various communication avenues such as Web, e-mails, print media, and other electronic medium to convey marketing information to organisation’s customers and potential customers (Klososky). In the modern times, digital media are influencing the marketing activities of many organisations across the world.

This has had an impact on purchases of business organisation’s goods. Organisations have embraced digital marketing to support their marketing activities (Klososky). The major aim of digital marketing is to acquire new customers and retain the existing ones. Digital marketing involves multichannel processes through online mediums that are designed to reach as many customers as possible (Klososky).

Literature review

Marketing trends have been subject to various changes over the past decades. Many organisations have resorted to the use of digital marketing in reducing marketing costs and reaching out to as many clients as possible (Rowley). The evolution of the internet and other electronic commerce forums has made exchange of information simpler and faster.

These events present a virtual market for many companies in the modern world. Today, companies have continuously used technological breakthroughs to adopt digital platforms as marketing avenues of goods and services.

Digital marketing offers different opportunities to marketers. According to Rowley, digital marketing helps organisations increase the number of hours that are allocated for business. The company can use the digital marketing platform to enable clients have unlimited access to business marketing information instead of being restricted to the normal business working hours.

Additionally, digital marketing presents the company with an opportunity to establish cost saving strategies (Rowley). Digital marketing helps eliminate the costs that the company would have otherwise incurred on other marketing activities.

Digital marketing presents organisations with opportunities to learn about the customer needs in a quick way and deliver specialised services to clients. Globally, digital marketing also offers companies opportunity to reach out to customers worldwide by avoiding regulations and restrictions that come with physical marketing. It also enables an organisation to reach many customers at once through print media, TV, and radio.

However, organisations wishing to use digital marketing techniques are faced with various challenges. The challenges range from recruitment of the staff and retention (Chaffey). The organisation has to consider whether the present staff members are well versed with digital operations. Organisations are faced with the challenge of finding skilled individuals with the relevant digital experience.

It is often hard for organisations to get employees who possess certain skills that are required to implement digital platform. Furthermore, organisations are challenged by the expenses that are incurred during the entire process of recruiting the staff, and other costs such as employee training (McDonald).

Acquiring relevant information technology resources and the technical support is another challenge that organisations face when considering the adoption of digital marketing techniques.

Furthermore, marketing managers are faced with a challenge of having senior management acceptance to transfer resources from the existing marketing functions to new digital marketing functions. Most organisations are also challenged by the need to strike a balance on various aspects such as acquisition, development, and retention of new and existing customers (Chaffey, 2005).

Digital marketing plan and implementation

Firms planning for digital marketing should follow a number of steps. The organisation should first establish how it is going to deliver its voice. The organisation should consider the various platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, video blogs, or print media such as newspaper and magazines (Klososky).

Organisations should properly plan and implement digital marketing that will fit in their marketing plans. Improper plan and implementation may result to poor integration of digital marketing plan within the organisation’s marketing plan (Klososky). Therefore, a well structured plan and implementation of digital marketing is essential for successful digital marketing.

Organisations can take six steps to plan and implement digital marketing tools in its marketing activities. These steps are crucial for the organisation to integrate the digital marketing platform in organisation marketing activities (Stewart). Firstly, managers need to describe the value of digital marketing to the organisation.

This can be done by determining the goals that the organisation wants to achieve through the digital media. This could also involve understanding and evaluating different digital media that the organisation considers important (Stewart).

The organisation should identify the opportunities and challenges that are likely to be encountered when digital marketing is finally implemented. At this stage, the manager should consider the necessary changes that are required to implement the plan. It also involves the determination of digital marketing team and clients who are targeted by the strategy.

The third step is the selection of digital media that are deemed best for the organisation. This includes social media portals such as Facebook or Twitter, print media, blogs, and TV among others. Staff training is also carried out at this stage. Additionally, the digital media are integrated into the organisation marketing plan.

The fourth step in planning and implementation of digital marketing is the development of the digital marketing content (Tehrani). The digital content is the content that clients would want to read. The content should be posted frequently, and action responses developed to get clients’ opinions, advice, and questions. In addition, digital content is distributed to different media.

At this stage, digital marketing is integrated with other traditional marketing tools such as advertising and online solutions. Lastly, feedbacks are utilised from the digital platform to monitor, evaluate, and make adjustments to the plan where necessary (Tehrani).

Digital marketing of Apple and Google

Apple introduced mail marketing for iPad by sending emails to customers. The launch of iPhone by Apple gave the company an opportunity to develop is own digital marketing platforms (Rijnders, 2011). The Apple Company used images posted to various email as screen grab to reach out and advertise Apple products to millions of internet users.

Recently, the company acquired Quattro Wireless, which is a digital marketing company. Apple also utilised digital marketing through Operating System called Lion. The OS was released to millions of people using MacBook Pro, Mac Mini, MacBook Air, and Mac Pro in the world. The company has continued to update its website as an e-marketing tool (Rijnders).

Google Company is known to be a world leading search engine. The company has continuously developed digital marketing platform for different companies in the world. Furthermore, Google launched the Nexus, which is a pure digital marketing platform for the company. Google also sells phones via their websites. Just like Apple, Google has also used Android phone Operating System as a digital marketing tool for its phones (Qudos Digital).

Comparison and contrast between Apple and Google

The two companies share a lot of similarities in their approach to digital marketing. Both companies utilise mobile phones as digital marketing mediums. Additionally, Apple and Google offer digital marketing consultancy through advertisement mediums. Thus, the two firms are experienced in digital marketing. Furthermore, both companies use websites to sell their phones. Both companies also utilise digital marketing podcast iTunes and Operating System as digital marketing platform (Rowles, & Rogers).

In contrast, Google is a digital company and thus its digital marketing is different from the Apple. Google develops digital marketing platforms to be used by other companies. However, Apple, in its bid to enter into digital marketing, has acquired a digital marketing company (Qudos Digital).

Digital marketing is driven by technology. With the advancement of technology, organisations are presented with opportunities to integrate digital marketing into the overall marketing plan. There has been an increase in the number of social media such as Facebook and Twitter, as well as other digital platforms such as televisions, radio, newspapers, magazines, and blogs.

Organisation can take advantage of these technological breakthroughs to reach out to millions of potential clients. Digital marketing offers organisation with opportunities to increase sales via digital media. In designing of digital marketing platforms the companies need to consider the challenges that they are likely to experience during the implementation of the digital marketing platforms.

Therefore, to effectively design good digital marketing, the whole process should be approached on a step by step basis. This will ensure that the digital market integrates effectively with the overall organisation marketing plan.

Conclusion

Digital marketing should be carefully created by the departments concerned to ensure that the marketing goals of the organisation are met appropriately. In doing so, the company will finally achieve the desired marketing targets. A proper digital marketing plan will increase the sales registered by the company. In addition, it will help retain the company’s customers and acquisition of new ones.

Reference List

Chaffey, D. 2005, Managing an E-commerce Team: Integrating digital marketing into your organization. Web.

Klososky, S. 2012, Social Technology: The next frontier. Web.

McDonald, M. 2011, Marketing plans: How to prepare them, how to use them, Wiley, Chichester.

Qudos Digital 2010, The field of digital marketing-Google Vs Apple. Web.

Rijnders, P. 2011, How Apple OS X Lion Lets Email Marketers Jump the Subject Line. Web.

Rowles, D. & Rogers, C. 2012, iTunes is the world’s easiest way to organise and add to your digital media collection. Web.

Rowley, J. 2004, “Just another channel? Marketing communications in e-business”, Marketing Intelligence & Planning, vol. 22, no. 1, pp. 24 – 41.

Stewart, P. 2010, Entwine Digital. Web.

Tehrani, N. 2008, Contemporary marketing mix for the digital era, AuthorHouse, Bloomington.

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