Digital marketing is marketing that utilizes information that can be digitized.
The Internet has permeated people’s lives, and it is now possible to acquire not only consumer behavior data and physical store POS data, but also behavior data on the Web as concrete data. In promoting corporate activities, there is no way not to use these data.
What methods do you use to promote digital marketing? However, the methods are extremely diverse, and you will need to find the optimal digital marketing method by comparing it with your company’s products, market environment, and resources.
In this article, what is digital marketing in the first place? From this basic framework, we will explain specific methods and points to be aware of when implementing digital marketing.
Basics of Digital Marketing
Digital marketing is a marketing method that utilizes “digitalized information (data)” obtained from consumer behavior.
The data utilized includes consumer behavior data on the web, location information data obtained from mobile devices, and offline consumer behavior data such as POS data from physical stores.
By analyzing and verifying these accumulated data, it becomes possible to judge “quantitatively” and “immediately” what kind of effect the implemented marketing measures had. increase.
For example, imagine a newspaper advertisement. Advertisements can be appealed to a large number of readers at once, but it is important to understand the cost-effectiveness in detail, such as how many readers have seen them and how many purchases have resulted. I can not do it.
On the other hand, with “listing ads” and “display ads”, which are representative methods of digital marketing, it is possible to acquire customers based on how much reach was achieved for the posted ads and how many times the ads were clicked. You can measure the results of advertising in real time, such as how much it cost to do it, and rotate the PDCA cycle.
In addition, digital marketing can be used not only to understand behavior on the web, but also to optimize corporate marketing activities by combining it with real consumption behavior data.
For example, by utilizing “POS data” recorded when products are sold at a store’s cash register, it is possible to grasp in real time “when”, “where” and “what” was sold. By using point cards and apps to collect purchase histories as members of the company, it is possible to combine customer age and attribute data for analysis. In addition, by linking with member membership cards such as “T point card” and “Ponta”, it is possible to perform analysis combined with purchasing information at other member stores.
In this way, by analyzing and verifying the accumulated data, it is possible to judge “quantitatively” and “immediately” what kind of effect the implemented marketing measures had. This is the basic concept of digital marketing.
Read Also: What Is Store Marketing? Introducing Basic Knowledge
Background of Digital Marketing
Since around 2009, advertising agencies have shifted from “internet marketing” to “digital marketing,” and as of 2020, many companies have attracted a great deal of interest in digital marketing. It is
Why is digital marketing so popular?
In the past, when it came to marketing, the mainstream was “mass marketing,” which uses advertisements using flyers and catalogs, TV commercials and radio commercials to increase awareness among a wide range of people, and “sales promotion and PR” at actual stores. did.
However, with the rise of the Internet, the recent development of high-speed communication technologies such as 4G and LTE, and the spread of smartphones, consumer purchasing behavior has changed dramatically. This is where the concept of “digital marketing” comes into play.
For example, when a consumer wants to purchase some kind of product or service, he/she checks websites and SNS, grasps information such as product specifications, word of mouth, and reviews, and then visits a physical store. I started taking actions such as going to listen to stories.
In addition, there is an increasing number of “online-only” purchasing behaviors, including purchases on e-commerce sites, Amazon and Rakuten, and other Internet malls.
For this reason, it has become important to deeply understand consumer behavior and to be able to communicate with “companies” and “consumers” both online and offline.
Recently, by disseminating advantageous coupons and campaign information that can be used in stores on the app, there are various distribution channels such as “O2O (Online to Offline)” that guides people to physical stores and eliminates the barriers between physical stores and online. The importance of “omni-channel”, which has contact points with customers from
It can be said that the management strategy of companies in the future will require how to optimize overall marketing measures by linking online and offline, not just measures on websites.
Difference from Web Marketing
A word that is very similar to digital marketing is “web marketing”. Both are often used with the same meaning, but strictly speaking, digital marketing is a superordinate concept of web marketing.
While web marketing is marketing centered on consumer behavior data on the web, such as company websites and e-commerce sites, digital marketing includes various online and offline digital channels, not just on websites. You can call it comprehensive marketing.
Latest Trends in Digital Marketing
There are two major trends that are essential when talking about digital marketing.
One is the impact of the new coronavirus, and the other is the problem of cookie regulations, which is spreading from the perspective of personal information protection.
Digital shift accelerated by the impact of the new coronavirus
Due to the influence of the new coronavirus, the importance of digital marketing is increasing more than ever. In particular, the industry, which has a business model centered on visiting physical stores, is under pressure to undergo major changes.
A notable example is the food and beverage industry. From the perspective of preventing person-to-person contact, some restrictions were imposed on eating and drinking in stores, so the restaurant industry was greatly damaged.
Therefore, we are accelerating the use of delivery services such as “Uber Eats” and “Demae-can”, as well as systems that allow takeout after making reservations and payments in advance from websites (apps).
Since it is no longer possible to attract customers to stores, which used to be the main source of revenue, it is becoming important to find ways to connect with consumers digitally, such as through delivery services and websites.
In addition to the food and beverage industry, the new coronavirus has caused changes in business models in the “retail industry,” which handles food and daily necessities such as supermarkets.
For example, distribution giant Aeon has clearly stated that it will raise its online supermarket sales target (for the fiscal year ending February 2021) by 50% compared to the previous fiscal year.
In this way, due to the influence of the new coronavirus, digital shift is progressing not only in industries that originally focused on attracting customers on the web, but also in many industries with physical stores. It is becoming important to integrate online and offline to optimize marketing activities as a whole.
Communication with targets that change due to cookie usage regulations
In recent years, from the perspective of protecting personal information, the collection and use of web browser login information and “cookies,” which store information about users who have visited websites, have been restricted.
In Europe and the United States, the “GDPR (EU General Data Protection Regulation)” was enacted in 2018, and the “CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act)” was enacted in 2020, and severe penalties will be imposed for violations.
Also in Japan, the trend of cookie regulation is getting stronger, making it more difficult than before to collect cookies without the user’s consent.
In particular, it is expected that restrictions on cookies will have a major impact on retargeting advertising, which increases effectiveness by tracking users’ web behavior.
Some people are concerned that this cookie regulation will make it difficult to achieve results in digital marketing as it has been in the past. It affects all marketing companies.
Of course, it is necessary to pay attention to information on cookie regulations and the actual degree of impact, but it is important to have users who visit the website become members and acquire ” 1st party data” (data owned by the company). There are other ways to continuously communicate with your users, such as getting them to follow you or become your friend.
Instead of thinking that tougher cookie regulations will make digital marketing more difficult , what kind of place should we communicate with the target we want to deliver the message to as industry trends and technologies change? It can be said that it is important to explore.
11 Techniques Used in Digital Marketing
From now on, I will explain how to communicate with consumers in concrete terms, and how to do so.
Even if you put it in one word, digital marketing, the method is very diverse. Each method has advantages and disadvantages, and the results obtained are different.
You will need to find the optimal digital marketing method in light of your company’s products, market environment, and resources.
1. Listing Advertisement
Listing ads (search-linked ads) are a type of “performance-based advertising” that adjusts budgets, bid amounts, creatives, etc. according to desired results. Users who use search engines such as “Google” and “Yahoo!” It is a method of placing advertisements against
Since it is possible to place advertisements for keywords searched by users, it is easy for companies to understand what kind of information users are looking for and what kind of products and services they are interested in, making it easier to design content. There are features.
Unlike SEO, listing ads can display high ranking keywords on the same day depending on the bid amount. Among digital marketing measures, it has an immediate effect, so it is effective in cases where you want to produce results immediately.
2. SNS Advertisement
SNS ads refer to ads placed on SNS platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LINE. Similar to listing ads, it is a type of programmatic advertising.
It tends to be relatively easy for users to accept because it naturally blends into the user’s timeline and news feed, and there are many creative methods.
Also, based on the user’s registered profile information, there is an advantage that it is possible to target by age, gender, place of work, position, educational background, etc., and to deliver advertisements to the target exactly.
Unlike listing advertisements, it can be effectively used to develop new customers by distributing advertisements to users whose needs are not clear or “latent layers (non-recognition layers)” who do not yet know about your company’s products.
3. Display Advertising
Display advertising refers to advertisements distributed to advertising spaces on websites and apps using ad networks such as “GDN (Google Ad Network)” and “YDN (Yahoo! Display Ad Network).”
By posting in a place where users can see it and attracting their interest with visuals including text, it will lead to site induction and conversion. Like listing ads and SNS ads, it is a performance-based ad.
The cost often adopts “pay-per-click (CPC)”, and it tends to be cheaper than listing ads. Therefore, it is effective when you want to distribute advertisements to more users.
In addition, “retargeting (remarketing)” is also possible to distribute advertisements targeting people who have visited the company’s website or LP, or existing customers who are already members. You can expect a high conversion rate because you can track and deliver ads to users who are likely to already be aware of your product or service.
As a demerit, the advertiser (publisher) cannot control which medium it is distributed to, so in some cases it may be distributed to unintended media, which may damage the image of the brand..
4. Pure Advertisement
Pure advertising is a method of placing advertisements by purchasing advertising space on specific sites or apps. A typical example is Yahoo! Brand Panel Ads, which place ads on the top page of Yahoo! JAPAN, which attracts top-class traffic in Japan.
Unlike programmatic ads, which are posted in auctions, pure ads are always posted for a certain period of time, so they are used for campaigns aimed at increasing awareness in a short period of time.
However, since posting itself costs money, it becomes difficult to adjust the CPA even if the expected results are not obtained after distribution. Also, since the effect differs depending on the medium, it is necessary to carefully determine the compatibility between the target user and the medium to be published.
5. Owned Media Marketing
Owned media marketing refers to a method of “solving business issues (or recruitment issues) that a company has” by continuously operating media such as blogs and web magazines.
By creating an inflow route to content created from SEO and SNS, etc., it contributes to increasing awareness of your company’s products and services and acquiring leads such as inquiries and document requests.
There are advantages such as being able to freely transmit what the company wants to convey, and being able to monetize the media itself and make it self-propelled as a marketing tool by utilizing “SSP” and “affiliate” at the stage of gathering traffic. I have.
However, it is necessary to keep in mind the essential know-how of building an organization and keyword design to continuously create high-quality content, and the risk of a decrease in traffic due to updates to Google’s search algorithm..
6. SEO (search engine optimization)
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a term that means search engine optimization. Mainly in the two major search engines, Google and Yahoo!, by displaying the site at the top for each keyword, many users can visit the site. It is a method to attract customers to
Broadly speaking, there are two types of SEO: “internal measures” and “external measures”. Internal measures include content enhancement, site structure optimization, breadcrumbs installation, page loading speed, etc. This applies to measures taken internally.
On the other hand, external measures mainly include backlink measures. It is a measure to improve the evaluation of the website from the search engine by pasting the link of the company’s media on the external site.
In the past, there was a tendency to focus on collecting backlinks, but in today’s SEO, how to enrich content and improve the user experience is becoming more important.
Unlike general web advertising, stocking high-quality content has the advantage of being able to generate ever-increasing traffic. However, there is also the risk that external factors, such as Google’s core updates, can lead to a sudden drop in rankings and less effectiveness.
7. Content SEO
Content SEO refers to content marketing that uses natural search as the point of contact (touchpoint) with users. This is a frequently used technique in owned media marketing introduced above.
The purpose is to encourage the next action by communicating with users who have flowed in from search engines such as “Google” and “Yahoo!” using content.
For example, users who search for “recruitment agent recommended” are likely to have a desire to change jobs and are considering registering with a recruitment agency. By appealing to these users about the appeal of your career change agent service and the differences from other companies’ services, you can take action such as registering as a member or making an inquiry.
8. Email Marketing
Email marketing is a method of communicating with prospective and existing customers using email. Although it is a method that has been used since the dawn of digital marketing, it is still very effective and is used by many companies.
Compared to web advertising and owned media marketing, it has the advantage of being inexpensive and easy to implement.
There is also a method of sending email advertisements using member data held by other companies. For example, the total number of T points used at TSUTAYA and convenience stores has reached 190 million, and the number of members has exceeded 70 million as of 2019.
By collaborating with a company that has such a database, it is possible to utilize not only the leads held by the company, but also advertising measures aimed at new customers.
It is possible to conduct effective digital marketing by tracking the opening rate of delivered emails, the transition rate to the site, the conversion rate, etc.
9. Access Analysis
Access analysis is a method of analyzing user behavior and attributes on the web using an “access analysis tool”, discovering site issues, improving them, and verifying effectiveness.
For example, if you are running a corporate site or owned media, but it is not effective enough, you can visualize what kind of users are visiting the site and what actions they are taking on the site. , it will be possible to implement new measures.
However, if the site traffic and conversions are extremely low, effective access analysis cannot be expected. It can be said that it is an effective digital marketing method in the phase of how to grow a site that has a certain result.
10. Marketing Automation
Marketing automation (commonly known as MA) refers to a system that improves efficiency by automating the vast amount of manual work performed by marketers in corporate marketing activities.
By utilizing marketing automation, we can respond to the series of work from generating leads (lead generation) to cultivating leads (lead nurturing) to selecting leads (lead qualification), can be made more efficient.
In addition, by extracting “hot leads” with a high probability of receiving orders from a large number of leads, it contributes to efficient sales activities.
11. Video Marketing
In the past, content centered on text and images was the mainstream, but with the recent spread of video distribution platforms such as YouTube and Instagram, video marketing that uses video content to appeal to consumers is attracting attention. Collecting.
In addition, “taxi signage advertising”, which distributes advertisements on the in-vehicle displays of taxis, is also doing very well, and there are cases where the advertisements are full (advertisements cannot be placed) for several months ahead.
Compared to text and images, video content is “rich content” that can convey a large amount of information to users, so it is possible to promote understanding of products and services more efficiently.
Things Digital Marketers Should Know
As explained in the previous chapter, there are various methods in digital marketing. Even if you proceed with the measures for some reason such as “It seems easy to do” or “I want to try”, it may not be effective as expected.
In this chapter, we will explain the points that the person in charge should understand when starting digital marketing measures.
Understand Your Target Audience
Digital marketing is being discussed on a methodology basis, such as “I’ll try video marketing because it’s a trend” and “Listing ads are cost-effective”, and there are many cases where they are actually promoted.
However, before embarking on digital marketing, it is important to get back to the essence of marketing and have a solid understanding of your target audience.
For example, if you want to use digital marketing in a new job change service business, you need to design a persona, such as what kind of people are highly motivated to change jobs and how they behave online and offline. I guess.
By gaining a deep understanding of user insights, such as “I bought an apartment, so I want to change jobs to a company with a higher salary”, “I have a child, so I want to work at a company with good welfare programs”, we will be able to develop effective communication measures and , you can find digital marketing methods.
Digital marketing tends to be thought of as a “marketing tool” that is sure to produce results once started, but without a solid communication design, there are no cases of success.
It can be said that the first step to succeed in digital marketing is to organize “who”, “where” and “how” to communicate.
Clarify The Purpose of Utilizing Digital Marketing
The purpose of digital marketing varies depending on the company, such as “I want to increase the number of conversions such as document requests and inquiries”, “I want to improve LTV”, and “I want to acquire new customers”.
By defining this objective, you can judge how effective your digital marketing measures were against the amount you invested.
For example, if you can get 10 CVs with an ad with a CPA of 3,000 yen, or if you can get 50 CVs with an ad with a CPA of 10,000 yen, which one is more effective? The judgment differs depending on the purpose of digital marketing in the first place.
The former is more effective if you want to get conversions while keeping CPA as low as possible, and the latter is more effective if you want to maximize conversions. I guess.
By defining the purpose of digital marketing, you can make appropriate investment decisions and measure the effectiveness of each measure.
