Marketing: Multiple options
Digital media options are proliferating. Marketers now talk of paid, owned and earned media. Paid media is the search and display ads that companies run. Owned media is the properties that are created – for example, Facebook pages and mobile apps. Earned media is the multiplier effect from users spreading the word on their own through social media and other mechanisms.
There is mobile marketing with all the various options – SMS, voice, mobile Internet and apps. There is also social media. Email marketing is also growing rapidly in India. What is perhaps lacking is more innovation in how all of these options can be better integrated together. For example, TV advertising could include opt-in options to drive permission marketing to the mobile.
As digital marketing options proliferate and ever greater percentages of the budgets shift, companies will demand even greater accountability of their spends. So, analytics will emerge as a by-product of the process with even sharper targeting of users. There is so much information that we are leaving in trails on the Internet and sharing that the world of microtargeting is now becoming a reality.
