Digital Marketing Expert3y
IMPACT OF DIGITAL MARKETING ON CONSUMER BEHAVIOR
Research about consumers in digital and social media marketing settings. Five themes are identified: (i) consumer digital culture, (ii) responses to digital advertising, (iii) effects of digital environments on consumer behavior, (iv) mobile environments, and (v) online word of mouth (WOM). Collectively these articles shed light from many different angles on how consumers experience, influence, and are influenced by the digital environments in which they are situated as part of their daily lives. Much is still to be understood, and existing knowledge tends to be disproportionately focused on WOM, which is only part of the digital consumer experience. Several directions for future research are advanced to encourage researchers to consider a broader range of phenomena.
Marketing paradigm has undergone a sea change over the past decade. The internet has a profound impact on various industries but very few industries have witnessed a metamorphosis like marketing. Gone are the days when knocking on doors or cold calling was considered the easiest and most effective way of reaching out to consumers. Marketing professional back in 90’s and 00’s would have scoffed at the very idea that a decade or two decades later, companies would be able to run real time marketing campaigns. No one would have harbored such thoughts.
Digital marketing has touched new heights with boom in smart phones and tabs, so much so that the ones who were not even close to this field are now willing to use this for their brand promotion. This era has almost everybody with a social media account and the ones without such an account are literally looked down upon for business purposes. So, the query that arises is of studying the consumer behaviour in digital marketing.
The following are some insights that might be useful for understanding the consumer behaviour in Digital Marketing:
Consumers set their own benchmarks:
With the emergence of digital marketing, it is not an easy task anymore to woo the consumers. What looks good to them is what really convinces them to go ahead with the purchase. They will make comparisons of your brand with your competitors and will go for the one that suits them the best in terms of all the elements. To match the consumer-set standards, every brand has to make sure to be on their toes and everyone has maintained its presence on the social media platforms.
Word of Mouth:
Word of mouth has been considered as one of the most powerful marketing tools, especially in the traditional marketing, where people used to take reviews from other people having knowledge or experience about the particular product or service. In digital marketing, word of mouth is done in terms of reviews of experts and users, ratings, testimonials etc. To make a decision about a particular product or service, they will first do a research on Google, will review the sites and give a read about the brand.
Reduced Consumer Tolerance:
Consumers expect an immediate reaction to their actions. They want a response to their queries clear and fast. It takes just a single viral post or tweet for a consumer to build or destroy a company’s or brand’s rapport. There are many platforms like role of digital and social media marketing in the reflection on consumer behavior Facebook, Twitter etc in digital marketing that consumers use to share their experiences with the brand. According to human psychology, consumers are more attracted towards the negative news/reviews and there are very few consumers who actually share positive reviews/posts. This issue of negative feedback is many times even misused by the competitors. To handle this situation, every brand should follow Online Reputation Management (ORM) Strategy, where you make interactions with the consumers to convert their negative image to the positive.
Consumers Are Always Experimenting:
In the past era, consumers had trust issues before going for any new product or service and would trust only on the feedback provided by the experienced consumers. Era has changed and so the mindset of the consumers. Consumers are now welcoming new products with fresh and good quality features with applause. This experimenting behaviour of the consumers made way for many start-up companies like Uber, Oyo, Ola, UrbanClab, Olx etc. Thanks to digital marketing for creating awareness and having easy access to these services.
Consumers Becoming Switchers:
Consumers in the past era trusted one particular brand in a particular industry. For example, in the mobile industry, Nokia was the only brand consumers always trusted, but now, it is nowhere seen. What make consumers switch for a new product? It is when the product competitors come out with better product features and better marketing strategies. With so many options available in the market, it becomes difficult for the consumers to become loyal and switching becomes easy.
It is the consumers that decide which social media platform the brand must use to expand its business. If the mass consumers are on Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn etc., it becomes mandatory for the brands to have their presence on these platforms if they want to be close to their prospects and a step ahead of their competitors, by interacting with their consumers and creating a buzz of their brand among them.
Ubiquitous online presence
A research done by IAMAI-IMRB reports that nearly 60% of urban India has an online presence in some form. The number of internet users in the country is set to reach 450-465 million users by mid-2017. Further propelled by the Government’s consistent focus through ‘Make In India’ and ‘Digital India’ initiatives, the online revolution has made a remarkable change in the way brands market their products online. As per a recent study by IMRB, India currently spends 12% on digital marketing. Today, Digital plays a critical role in every aspect of marketing – whether it is about creating awareness, customer engagement, customer acquisition, and product development. The mobile screen became the first screen of India in 2016 and it is rapidly changing the way we consume media, interact with others (including brands). Even rural India is not left behind. They have leapfrogged to mobile technology with lower penetration of computers, as a medium to access the Internet. Reaching to the customers through these channels helps to gain traction, resulting in higher ROI’s, and building a recall in the consumer’s mind.
Empowered consumers
Today’s consumers are more enlightened and empowered. They are constantly being flooded with more digital content than ever before. A huge number of brands are available at consumer’s fingertips. Consumers have become more demanding. They know more than ever about what they want, how they want it and from whom they want. Consumers are becoming adapted to immediate accessibility and expect their brand experiences to be personalized and easy to navigate. With so many options just a click away, customers won’t wait around if the brand experience is not a satisfying. While selecting product and services, consumers rely more on advocacy of people they know and trust. Recommendations from known people are now five times more trusted than brand marketing according to the Word of Mouth Marketing Association. Consumers nowadays are spending more time surfing social media sites and the decisions about the purchase, often reflect interactions with friends and other influencers. The digital world has made consumers quite impatient, impulsive and they seek immediate gratification. They want immediate services and real-time virtual dialogue with their brands. Next-day delivery is being overtaken by ever-faster delivery possibilities for the shopper.
Evolving consumer behavior in Digital Age
The biggest change in consumer behavior is that consumers expect a consistent and personalized experience. Consumers desire and expect personalized messaging from brands. Marketers should connect with them at the right places at right times, which involves increased real-time localization. Modern consumers are not loyal customers, they are more variety seekers. This has left previously logo-heavy companies scrambling to assimilate their product to suit modern tastes. Patanjali Baba Ramdev’s initiative is a good example. Patanjali is giving tough time to the MNCs. FMCG major Colgate-Palmolive has acknowledged competition from Patanjali products.
These days consumer put more emphasis on post purchase experience. To satisfy and retain customers, products and services are coming with a type of built-in offer of post-purchase assistance. Emerging definition of convenience is moving from fulfilling customer needs to actually predict them – including the post transaction period. Tools like customer analytics, social intelligence, and machine translation are all crucial components which assist brands in the delivery of the experiences that customers want.
The prime change in consumer behavior is that consumers, increasingly turn away from anything they perceive as marketing. As consumers are becoming tech savvy they are becoming impatient towards intrusive or irrelevant content and messages. More than 25% smartphone users have installed ad blockers and this number is increasing rapidly. Instead, they look towards small groups of people who have a high level of credibility in their specific industry or category to influence their buying decisions. As consumers spend more time on these social media platforms, decisions about what to purchase often reflect interactions with friends and other influencers. In response, leading marketers are adapting their strategies to reach increasingly networked consumers and placing more stress on tactics such as word-of-mouth marketing and storytelling.
Marketers need to start capturing customer intent data so that marketing and experience can become contextually relevant to individual consumers, perhaps for the first time. As a marketer, we can expect marketing to be less about a quick sell and more about building a long-term relationship. Consumers want authenticity in their purchase of products and expect some level of personalisation in mass produced as well in upscale items. These demanding customers have become more outspoken about their choices and preferences. If they are not happy about any product and services they are very upfront about their opinions on various social media platforms. Every purchase decision is researched, evaluated, ranked and even crowd-sourced to ensure that it’s the best decision.
Consumer behavior in the digital age is an ever-changing and ever-expanding. Staying in tune with consumer behaviors, tastes, and impending trends can help brand stay relevant, visible and engaging for customers.
When it comes to the success of your business, internet marketing plays a key role. To market yourself and to promote your products and services, you need the support of internet marketing. If you are planning to start a business or you are on your way and want to improve your business you can hire an online marketing agency which takes care of all activities from designing the website for your business to implementing various marketing techniques including Internet marketing. Internet marketing will help you in improving your business brand visibility, traffic and sales. Below are the top 5 reasons why internet marketing is important for your business.
To increase the visibility of your business
These days everything can be done online from buying movie tickets to buying furniture for home. Internet has brought tremendous changes in our life style. Every business should recognise this and establish their presence on the internet. Internet marketing is beneficial for all the types of businesses. This will allow you to expand your visibility to larger population.
To connect with the customers
Social media marketing allows you to connect with your potential and returning customers. Update your customers with the new or latest features of your business. You can publicise the upcoming products or services and give a small description of these good and services to your customers. By doing this you can attract new customers in the future.
To cope up with the competition
These days people are able to access and purchase a wide range of goods from online with the help of internet. It is very crucial for any business to maintain the competition against the small, local and large online retailers and businesses. This is possible only when the businesses make proper use of the internet marketing platform.
It is good for research and development
You can research good keywords which suits your business. You can make use of these keywords in your business to place your site on the top of the search engine results. Proper keyword usage allows you to drive potential traffic to your site. this is the best way to win new customers.
Legitimate yourself
By establishing and maintaining the presence online, business can show their customers that their business is active, dynamic and working to improve and is trying to grow. The Internet allows local businesses to legitimate themselves as successful companies. By this they will be able to win and retain a large customer base. These days smartphones have become popular so, consider a simple application design which helps to download and keep the business at the forefront of the minds of people.
IMPACT OF DIGITAL MARKETING ON CONSUMER BEHAVIOR
Research about consumers in digital and social media marketing
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-role-of-digital-and-social-media-marketing-in-the-reflection-on-consumer-behavior
