INTRODUCTION:

An online marketer now needs to find where people are congregating online and needs to engage them in a meaningful way. Be it in matching with what they are looking for, watching how they interact and understand what they like or listening to their natural opinions on your company or market and reacting to that.

DEFINATION:

"Marketing has changed. A  Traditional advertising does not work, brochure-like websites do not work, the web has given people ultimate freedom of choice and of goods. When there are no monopolies and constrictions, interrupting people's lives is not effective marketing anymore. “A   Damien Mulley A  

WHAT IS E-MARKETING?

E-Marketing stands for electronic marketing. In contrast to traditional marketing, E-Marketing takes marketing techniques and concepts, and applies them through the electronic medium of the internet. Essentially, E-marketing threads the technical and graphical aspects of online tools together, allowing for design, advertising, brand development, promotion and sales .Internet marketing offer the possibility to tracking almost every action a visitor or potential customer takes in response to marketing messages and how they navigate through their buying cycle .One of the most desirable aspects of Internet marketing is low barrier to entry.

FEATURES AND FUNCTIONS OF E-MARKETING:

E-marketing modules allow organizations to deliver highly personalized Web offers and dynamic Web surveys that are fully synchronized with marketing efforts in traditional channels.

Efficiently set up and manage campaigns and support tasks

Budget, organize, and schedule detailed marketing campaigns down to the task level

Measure and qualify the effectiveness of a marketing campaign

Segment the customer base accurately

Proactively manage and merge direct mail, e-mail, and fax lists

Eliminate costly duplication with advanced phonetic matching

Capture and analyze return on investment of marketing activities

Automatically transfer qualified leads to your sales organization

OLAP capability

Send web offers

Send phone offers

Send e-mail offers

Send newsletter offers

Portal organized around marketing

4 Ps of E-Marketing:

Components of marketing mix are known as 4 Ps. According to station, Marketing is a combination of four elements products. Pricing structure, Distribution system and promotional activities used to satisfy the needs of an organization's target markets and at the same time, achieve his market objectives. The elements are known as 4 Ps :

1. Product 2. Price 3. Place 4. Promotion

Product:A product is a benefit of service which a business provides to its customers. A business cannot progress until it's provide a quality products or services which satisfied the needs of consumers and such there are ready o pay for that it involves planning, developing and producing. Ii essentially deals with the production of right type of products and services to be marketed by the firm. If the product and services are not to right type then the first step of marketing mix is a failure. The P deals with the products durability, product range, product branding, and product color, product packing and other essential features. If a firm wants to enhance the efficiency of its product, it should share information relating to the product with its partners, traders and consumers. There should be a automated flow of information between the producer and customer.

Price:The second important P is price. It is one of the important elements of e marketing. When product is launched, the next important task is to decide its price. The price of the

product should be as such which is reasonable for the both the producers and the customers. The price of the products depends on its type, number of its competitors and its goodwill in the market. Some companies provides after sale services free of cost, some takes nominal charger while some other charges in such a way that it depends on the consumer and the product.The marketing manager determines the price of the product through e-marketing successfully. Pricing decision is a very crucial decision in the process of marketing mix. If the pricing decision is not appropriate, the marketing mix will not be successful the policies regarding credit and discount also fall under pricing.The decision of pricing is influenced by the following factors:Demand of the product. Cost of the product. Actual competition in the market. Future competition to be faced. Government policies. Law and land.

Place:The P of marketing mix is related with physical distribution of goods should be displayed and made available to the potential buyers. This P is also related with the decision regards warehousing, transportation etc. Wholesalers and retailers are the important channels of this P. This P is highly concerned with the activates so that the products are available to the customer at right time and at right place. The law of land is very important in connection with e-marketing. It is to be decided where the product will be delivered if the customers are from other country.

Promotion:Promotion is the activities which are taken up in e-marketing to sell product and services. In the promotion of any product, the information related to the product should reach the costumer well in time. The promotion is of prime importance, when a company is to be launching a new product, fix its price and decide the area where it is to be sold. If the promotion is taken up rightly, it attracts more and more customers. It increases the sale of goods which eventually results in higher profits. Internet is a very effective and efficient means of promotion. To promote a product. A company provides pictures, demonstration and other related information on its website free of cost.

ADVANTAGES OF E-MARKETING:

Following are some of the advantages of e-Marketing:

1. Global reach: No matter where you are or whom you need to reach, targeted emails pave the way. Borders are no obstacles in email marketing.

2. Lower cost: Costs incurred in designing, executing, testing, sending and receiving an email is up to 78% less for a run of 5000 over paper-based direct mail version. When you add e-mail to your marketing mix, you spend less time, money and resources than with traditional marketing vehicles like direct mail or print advertising.

3. Interactive: You can innovatively initiate campaigns using graphics, videos, music, quiz, game or whatever that will be of interest to your prospect, to grab his attention and interest immediately.

4. Highly personalized: Email enables you to personalize and greet every person you target. This helps in creating a special bond with the prospects.

5. Faster response: Time to receive responses through e-mail is one to three days, where you will get maximum responses on day one itself, while a direct mail campaign would take minimum 7 to 12 days to generate any responses. Further, responding to a direct mail is more cumbersome, while a person can respond to an email immediately.

6. Simplest: Executing an email campaign is simple and you can do it sitting at home without any extensive resources.

7. Targeted marketing: Since prepackaged and custom-built lists are available, you could reach only those who might require your services, solutions or products without bothering those who do not. You can select each one of your targets based on geography, age, income, spends, and many other parameters.

8. Measurable results: Special tools are available that accurately measure click-through rate, conversion rate, how a person one arrived at your website, and more, to enable you to assess the success of different email campaigns.

 

TRADITIONAL MARKETING VS E-MARKETING:

1. Internet Marketing is More Measureable – Branding is important and traditional marketing does have benefits when it comes to branding. However, marketers today are smarter and more sophisticated. They see the value of measuring results and brand awareness is more difficult to measure then real visitors to your website and real conversions. Marketers want to make sure every penny is spent wisely. Internet marketing allows you to see exactly what you are paying for. Traditional marketing takes a little more trust that the impact of your efforts is helping your bottom line. With Internet marketing you can see real facts and every detail that leads to reaching your goals and determine your ROI.

2. Internet Marketing Makes Strategic Decisions Based on Facts – Internet marketing can make decisions based on detailed analytics. You can have the smartest and most talented traditional agency with great ideas and plenty of experience, but they will have a difficult time showing real data that leads to achieving your goals. They will also build out a campaign and not be able to adjust it on the fly based on the public’s response.  The best way to really know how effective your marketing approach is to see exactly what the audience is responding positively too. Internet marketing allows you to study every detail about your audience in real time. You can study data from every phase in your conversion funnel that includes: how people found your website; what they do once they are on your site; and what led to your conversations. You can make adjustments to your campaign at any point to increase the effectiveness of your campaign.

3. Internet Marketing Is Better at Reaching Your Target Audience – Traditional marketing is known for its reach to a mass audience. There are ways that traditional marketing can target certain demographics depending on a television channel or show, radio station genre or industry magazine. However, traditional marketing will never be able to target as precisely as Internet marketing. With Internet marketing you can target even the smallest audience based on a variety of things. Internet marketing also does a great job of targeting your advertising spend so that you know all of your money is being spent in the most effective way.

4. Internet Marketing is a Constant Source – When you hear or see a television or radio ad it is there one minute and then it is gone.  If you catch an ad in passing and you missed some information you cannot go back and review it. Print is a little better for this but newspapers and magazines do get thrown out after a week or month. Internet marketing provides you a permanent address online that people can visit anytime they want. Even if someone does not know about your company they can do searches based on what you offer and find you in the search engines.

5. Internet Marketing Provides Better Word-of-Mouth – Word-of-mouth is still the most effective marketing for producing conversions. Social Media is an aspect of Internet marketing that allows people to build a community and let others spread positive feedback about your product or service. When you develop evangelists quickly because more people are speaking for you. People will normally trust word-of-mouth much more than traditional ads that try to convince you about the benefits of a product or service.

6. Internet Marketing Can Increase Conversions More – No matter what your goal, Internet marketing can increase your conversions month after month. The reason Internet marketing is more effective at delivering conversions is that you can study every detail of what is working and what might not be working. It takes the guessing game out of it. You can continue to place more emphasis on the tactics that are working and eliminate anything that is not effective. Internet marketing also provides an environment where you can safely test new ideas so that you are always pushing to improve your campaign's performance. Traditional marketing develops a campaign and then hopes that it will work. This makes it difficult for traditional agencies to test new ideas or even look into all of the details to determine the effectiveness of a campaign.

FUTURE OF E-MARKETING:

With the advancement of internet technologies the concept of online marketing has now been spiraling almost at a break-neck speed. E commerce is no more a new idea as a matter of fact in the mid 90’s when internet popularized amongst common people, online marketing since then started molding from its ‘ boyhood’ with the growth of circulation of newsletters through e-mails, and through adding links of one site to other various websites. However, in the 20th century with the addition of latest technology the whole concept of online marketing has gained a definite dimension with the added techniques like Pay Per Click, Search Engine Optimization, Press Releases, Web Banners, Link Campaign, Viral Marketing, Blogs etc. These started working as a curtain opener in the field of marketing whilst using the Internet.

And in the 21st century, the rapid advancement in web technology has ultimately resulted in social media becoming the most fluid market with many types of ebb and flows. The demand for a hot tool on the market which people will gravitate towards was always there and the new age social media marketing with web 2.0 platform steadily filled the gap.

Nowadays the online media marketing is somewhat based on the simple concept. As they say, “They’ll tell two people, and they’ll tell two people.” Simple concept isn’t it? And this type of viral marketing just cannot be bought with any of the traditional advertising means. Like the companies, the audience is also looking forward to take advantage of the demographic advantages and also of the ‘VIRALITY’ of the social media.

As it appears the future of online marketing is indeed affirmative and there is hardly any doubt about the fact. Blessed with the new baby, known as social media marketing, the online marketing now stays as one of the cost effective and feasible techniques to target a large audience without any substantial hike in the budget. Last but not the least, the most beneficial part of online marketing is perhaps the easy accessibility and interoperability. Face this, now just a single click link will fetch the results within a few seconds. Needless to say, with all these avenues and much more, the future of online advertising truly beckons more opportunities and even more advancements.