Introduction

Digital marketing is the process of promoting and creating awareness about the products and services of the company through internet or online sources. Digital marketing has become an important source of the companies in order to attain competitive advantage for B2C and B2B marketing strategies. Some of the digital marketing channels that are widely used by the company to maintain close relationship with customers and brand awareness are video promotion, social media platforms, SEO, Ad words, Sponsored content marketing and blogs.  It has transformed the marketing communications used by the company by providing wide range of channels and practices that connects consumers and organisations (Chaffey, 2010).

Impact of digital marketing on performance of the business

As per Lee (2011), Digital marketing has the potential to improve the growth prospects of the company and help it to sustain in the market for a long time.  Many companies are using digital marketing channels such as social media platforms, emails, content marketing, blogs, sponsored  advertisements to communicate with the customers as well as to collect the information regarding customer’s needs and preferences (Leeflang, 2012). This information is used to understand the current market trends and change the services and products provided by the companies as per the market trends. This will not only increase the sales and demand for the products but also enhance the performance of the business. There are many factors that are influence by the digital marketing on the performance of the organisation. The present paper will analyse three main factors that are highly influenced by the namely competitive advantage, customer relation and expansion plans.

Competitive advantage

Competitive advantage is measuring the value that a company can add to the customers. It can be done usually by providing products or services at reasonable rates compare to its competitors.  It can also be provided by creating a unique feature that can differentiate the company products over other companies or by combining both the strategies price and differentiation strategy.

Customer relationship management

Most of the digital marketing is centrally focused on consumers and the entire process is customer centric. Digital marketing allows companies to maintain close relationship with the customer through several modes of communication channels (Ryan, 2016). Social media platforms, blogs and forums play a crucial role in digital marketing for companies to establish close relationship with the customers who provide constant updates and reviews regarding the products that will enable companies to understand the current trends in the market (Roblek, 2013). Companies can product products as pre the customer preferences and needs that can increase demand for the products or services. Social media can also strengthen customer loyalty towards the company by engaging with customers regarding their products or services and obtain feedback from the customers. Collecting feedback provides a sense of belonging and trust among the customers that can increase loyalty towards the company.

Expansion or Growth

In recent years digital marketing is used as an important tool from small to large companies to expand its operations to other markets. Online marketing has seen extensively used by the organisations to tap into unknown markets and benefit from the potential growth of the unexplored market opportunities. Digital marketing provides cost effective ways of expansion in to international market as many companies are operating in the virtual market to expand and physical setting up of operations have become optional (Wymbs, 2016).  For example Amazon has been expanding to other markets through online ecommerce websites and limited physical presence.

Brand Awareness

Branding is important as it shapes the customer perspective and decisions to purchase the products and services. It is the image of the company in the customer’s mind.  Brand image is crucial in pricing strategies and other business decisions as a strong brand can leverage in pricing the products higher compared to weaker brands (Setia, 2015).  Brand strategy is the process of determining the channels that are used to communicate and build brand image. Consistent brand building can lead to brand equity and value of the company.  In the contemporary market branding differentiates one producer from another and represents quality and trust among the customers (Holliman and Rowley, 2014). Therefore it has become imperative for the companies to invest in brand awareness of the company.  In recent years many companies are implementing digital marketing tools in order to create brand awareness among the customers. It has become a major part of their marketing strategies.

References

Armstrong, G., Kotler, P., Buchwitz, L.A., Trifts, V. and Gaudet, D., 2015. Marketing: an introduction.

Chaffey, D., 2010. Applying organisational capability models to assess the maturity of digital-marketing governance. Journal of Marketing Management, 26(3-4), pp.187-196.

Consoli, D., 2012. Literature analysis on determinant factors and the impact of ICT in SMEs. Procedia-social and behavioral sciences, 62, pp.93-97.

Fahy, J. and Jobber, D., 2015. Foundations of marketing.

Holliman, G. and Rowley, J., 2014. Business to business digital content marketing: marketers’ perceptions of best practice. Journal of research in interactive marketing, 8(4), pp.269-293.