In today’s complex marketing world, defining digital marketing is a bit difficult. On the contrary I will put it like this – in today’s complex digital marketing era defining marketing strategies is no longer a simple job.  Digital marketing is the promotion of products and services using one or more forms of electronic media. Thus, digital marketing is promotion of brands on electronic media. It is different than traditional marketing which involves the use of channels and methods that enable an organization to analyze marketing campaigns and understand what is working and what isn’t.

Digital marketers help in promoting and building awareness, providing research to prospects, and driving qualified prospects to conversions. Their job is not all that easy because there are too many newer platforms emerging and each one comes with its complexities. It involves huge volume of data and streaming process of the data which contains diversified buyers, diversified marketers and a range of marketing channels. Sending the right message to the right buyer at the right time is a big responsibility. And let’s not forget the customer has exposure to more than data he can chew.

Digital media is so invasive that consumers have access to information any time and any place they want it. It is therefore a tricky thing to use segmenting, targeting and positioning. The marketers cannot promote only what they want their customers to know. Digital media is an ever-growing resource of entertainment, news, shopping and social interaction, and consumers are now exposed not just to what the company wants to say about their brand, but what the media, rivals, friends, family, peers, etc., are saying as well. And they are more likely to believe them than the marketer. People want brands they can trust, companies that they know of, communications that are personalized and relevant and which is offered in tailored formats to their needs and preferences.

Using digital marketing without a strategic approach is still customary. Many of the companies use digital media in a good way by using email or social media marketing on their own. But larger organizations need better governance and strategies while using social media; smaller companies can manage on their own.

The larger companies need creation of digital plans in two stages. Initially a separate digital marketing plan needs to be created. This is useful to get conformity and buy-ins by showing the opportunities and problems and map out a path through setting goals and specific strategies for digital including how they would incorporate digital marketing into other business activities. At a later stage, digital becomes integrated into the firm’s marketing strategy which is a core activity – a usual business process that does not warrant separate planning, except for the strategy.

Some companies which use digital marketing very well are:

Nike: This Company used a major sporting event to surround their social media campaign. They skipped the high profile athletes of the 2012 Olympics and instead featured the average Olympic athletes. Nike gained 166,718 Facebook fans during the London Olympics. Nike has been able to evolve its global presence through the careful selection of international sponsorships such as its previous long-standing relationship with Manchester United.  Although sponsorship spending could be fairly unpredictable demand costs surged due to triggers like championships and tournaments. Nike has used such events to capture the attention of a global audience.

Similarly, Heinz primarily, uses Facebook to launch new products, like their 5-bean blend. They created a game where the person answered a series of questions, which was like a personality test. The results were given in types of beans. Personalized beans were sent to five winners every hour. If you shared the app with ten people, you received a goodiieeie bag. Coupons were also offered.

Digital marketers examine things like what is being viewed, how often and for how long, sales conversions, what content works and doesn’t work, etc. While the Internet is, perhaps, the channel most closely associated with digital marketing, others include wireless text messaging, mobile instant messaging, mobile apps, podcasts, electronic billboards, digital television and radio channels, etc.

The thumb rule in digital marketing is that it’s not enough to for a company to just know their customers; they must know them better than anybody else so that they can communicate with them where, when and how they are most amenable to their messages. To have the customer’s profile and what they like and dislike the marketers need a consolidated view of customer preferences and expectations across all channels. These channels are web, social media, mobile, direct mail, point of sale, online sellers etc. Marketers can use this information to create and anticipate constant, coordinated customer experiences that will move customers along in the buying cycle. The deeper the insight into customer behaviour and preferences, the more likely the marketers can engage them in lucrative interactions. It requires hand’s on experience of buyer behaviour.

While keeping its overarching branding consistent, McDonald’s practices ‘glocal’ marketing efforts. It used digital marketing to know the local taste.  McDonald’s brings a local flavour, literally, to different countries with region-specific menu items. In 2003, McDonald’s introduced the McArabia, a flatbread sandwich, to its restaurants in the Middle East. It uses digital marketing to the fullest of its worth. And, Domino’s is not far behind either. It used digital marketing to reach out to customers in China where dairy wasn’t a big part of their diet until lately. Domino’s changed just its toppings to suit the taste buds of Chinese.

Leave aside the business community; the Governments of many nations have started using the digital marketing. Their work isn’t just about delivering a public service. Increasingly, government leaders are determined on giving citizens a more personalized and customer-focused experience. In India, the present Government’s digital experience can meet, and even anticipate, the needs of citizens. The present NaMo government relies on digital tools and strategies that are flexible enough to adapt with rapidly evolving technology. By taking a customer service focus to the work, agencies are building customized services, emphasizing efficiency, engagement and security. A digital-customer facing experience is now built-in to many of the outward-facing services of government. The idea of putting the customer first can really help agencies stand out in the digital sphere.

Same is the case with hospitals, entertainment businesses, services such as electricity; income tax, water supply, municipal corporations, banking etc are slowly adopting digital marketing to woo their clientele. Good for the customers!

Though digital marketing and its associated channels are important exclusion of traditional channels does not work. Also, digital marketing comes with certain challenges:

• Explosion of digital channels: Consumers use multiple digital channels and a variety of devices that use different set of rules, specifications and interfaces and they interact with those devices in different ways and for different purposes. Hence marketers need to be alert and vigilant in keeping up with customer’s choices.
• Digital marketing intensifies competition: Digital channels are relatively cheap, compared with traditional media, making them within reach of practically every business of every size. As a result, it has intensified competition in all business spheres. It is difficult to capture consumers’ attention.
• Exploding data volumes: Consumers leave behind a huge trail of data in digital channels. Hence it’s extremely difficult to lay hands on all that data, as well as to find the right data within exploding data volumes that can help marketers make the right decisions.

Lastly, if your company is going to thrive in the digital marketplace, it will be as a data-driven organization.

There are some people who love to fall ill; they are obsessed with their health. Even after a physician evaluates this health obsessed people doubt the physician’s reassurance that nothing is wrong with their health. They keep collecting information from books, journals, Internet, newspapers on a variety of ailments, and keep tallying their health conditions with those ailments. The online forums are making the matter worst and they are in hundreds and thousands in number and the number keeps rising. People chat on these forums regarding their ailments and symptoms, which encourage them, indulging in self-medication, and also end up arguing with doctors upon being told that their ailment is not even close to the serious diseases they had imagined. In fact a lot of physicians feel these forums are spoiling the medical scene and only giving rise to hypochondriacs.

Some common symptoms to find a hypochondriac are:

• He/she likes to visit many doctors; he/she enjoys doing doctor shopping.
• The person is terribly concerned about some part of body.
• The person keeps searching for a doctor who will agree that he/she is unwell.
• The person is always anxious, nervous or depressed.
• Distrust of medical exams.
• Strained social relationship.

Hypochondriacs are a bunch of complex people and they require multilevel treatment and therapy. It is termed as DSM III, the internationally recognized classification used by psychiatrists. It is defined as “an unrealistic interpretation of one’s bodily sensations as abnormal, leading to the fear and belief that one has a serious disease”. Hypochondriacs get unduly alarmed about most minor symptoms and they convince themselves that they have, or are about to be diagnosed with, a serious illness. For example, a hypochondriac person is sure that his or her headaches are caused by a brain tumor; or somebody with indigestions having burning sensation is sure that he has a heart ailment. The symptoms associated with hypochondrias are not under the person’s intended control. They cause great distress to their family members and friends.

You should watch a lovely comedy named ‘Send me no flowers’ a movie of 1964, starring Rock Hudson and Doris Day. Handsome Rock Hudson has played a lovable hypochondriac George Kimball in the movie.

Also, a 1979 Bollywood comedy ‘Meri Biwi ki Shaadi’ starring Amol Palekar and Rajita Kaur shows discouragingly timid hypochondriac Bhagwant (protagonist played by Amol Palekar) checking into the hospital for a checkup; he overhears his doctor discussing the diagnosis of another terminally ill patient with an associate. The hypochondriac Amol Palekar assumes he is the one scheduled to die, he overreacts so much that he asks his friend to help him find a new husband for his beautiful wife. I don’t know if it is a coincidence that the movie is a ditto copy of ‘Send me no flowers’ both stories are same.

It is very difficult to stay with hypochondriacs. In my opinion, things get even tougher for a person living with hypochondriac because most of the times they are misunderstood as attention seekers and crave for pity. Hypochondriacs are not well-understood by the rest of society. It is a mental illness, but because it is an invisible sickness, it can’t be diagnosed by tests or things that can actually prove a person has it. Only psychologists can counsel and diagnose a person with hypochondria. The fear of death is so deeply ingrained in a person suffering from this illness, that it becomes impossible for them to just tell themselves that each sign is their imagination and nothing serious. They get so overwhelmed of an impending doom, as though they are actually dying.

Do you know that Charles Darwin – the naturalist and Geologist who was fondly called ‘Charlie’ was a adorable neurotic hypochondriac who loved treatments like “water cures” for his perceived ailments, where he would take a cold bath and be wrapped in wet sheets? The famous scientist also kept meticulous records of his own flatulence. It seems Hitler who attempted to wipe out an entire race of people himself suffered from hypochondria. He was throughout his life worried with the state of his health. He was obsessed with his health so much though he was healthy physically. Mentally he was devilish and obsessive. The dictator was prescribed various medicines for all kinds of imagined ailments such as mood swings, Parkinson’s disease, gastro-intestinal issues and skin problems. Often he gave no real reasons at all behind wanting the medication.

It might sound shocking but it’s mentioned in few records that Florence Nightingale who was the reformer of modern nursing was herself a hypochondriac.

A recent survey revealed that doctors have been struggling to deal with patients who use the internet to find out what ails them. The doctors, including specialists and super specialists, say that people’s increasing dependence on the internet to find medical cures and search for symptoms is disturbingly increasing and this is causing strained doctor-patient relationship. People are overloaded with information which causes a lot of stress in them and they are in fact grossly misinformed. A woman in her 30s was convinced she was suffering from lung cancer. She had been coughing persistently, and obviously the internet search said it was the most basic symptom of lung cancer. She assumed the worst, but it turned out to be a very minor infection.

So friends, are you one of those who googles a small lump or a bump on body, slight change in urine color, headache, hair fall, dryness in throat or any small changes. Do you imagine suffering from an ailment only because you have read about it on the internet? Do you indulge in self-medication? Do you get anxious about your health often? Do you like visiting doctors every now and then? Do you keep cribbing about your health when you meet friends? If your answer is ‘yes’ then don’t let yourself be at the mercy of your fears because your work, personal relationships, and other aspects of your life will soon suffer. The effects of hypochondria on your life can be as bad as any serious illness out there. The illness you’re looking for may be in your mind rather than in your body. Deal with your condition head-on, simply confront your fears, and get rid of your hypochondria for good. Don’t hold back your emotions cause your deeper emotions manifest as fear of death; be active by going out often for movies, shopping etc, plan a vacation, visit some of your friends in other cities. And, most importantly believe your doctor because he/she still knows medicine better than you do. Your doctor’s expertise on this area is gained from long years of tough education and practice.

A good blog requires to be planned well in terms of its design, structure and it must be well written by a person who has mastered the art of writing blogs. The world is connected with social media and I strongly feel therefore, a blog can draw attention to something which needs promotion. It has more significance in terms of attention it draws than a press release. A blog can be very effectual in bridging the gap between a product and the consumers. It all depends the way a blog is handled.

First and foremost, the blog needs a good name. The name must be catchy to attract the viewers. A well-written and illustrated blog can add to a reader’s understanding of a staid topic and, at the same time, it can promote a firm’s marketing messages related to related area. A blog is a reflexive marketing tool; it is accessible to anyone visiting a company’s Web site. The firm must use the e-mail, Facebook and Twitter to promote the blog to prospective segment for dispersing the message.  The best blogs in the world are dominated by the technology sector. IBM, Oracle and SAP are superbly made blogs and in India, Infosys, TCS and HCL are the top blogs. The information technology companies have a better and wider scope to gain the best out of the blogs as it’s closely related to their work.

There is a gap between adoption of blogs amid the big companies compared to smaller companies and rest of the world.  It’s certainly not so easy to maintain a blog with timely posts and making them interesting and it is very different than any other corporate communication tool; it’s very different than a press release, a write up in business magazine, advertisements, outdoor publicity etc. Another hindrance is that not all people are internet savvy. But, sooner or later blogging will be the most admired marketing tool because it is very spontaneous. The transition is taking place, though it is slow. Every corporate marketing message is aimed at creating more and more value. I think nothing else can really help in adding more value which blogging offers easily as it derives the search engine benefit. The search engines give priority to websites that have fresh and applicable content. It’s been evident in business world that websites with supporting blogs get more traffic than sites without supporting blogs.

A blog has the magic of standing out in crowd. A firm needs to conquer the style of updating its blog regularly. The content needs to have relevance and it works! May be not immediately, but somewhere in the world somebody is watching, reading your blog. It can reach out to thousands of new customers in nooks and corners of the world giving steady and constant flow of information.

Social media is giving the business world a great platform to capture market far and wide. For example Bill Marriot of the Marriot Group is one of the most famous corporate blogger. Bill is the company chairman himself and does his own posts on weekly basis; do you know friends, the chairman’s existence on the blog has won the company loyal fans since they know they are getting the messages from the executive of the company itself. The company has generated millions of direct sales orders from this blog. Differentiation in handing the positioning plank does matter in marketing.

The blog needs to have its goals and objective sorted out first, and then it becomes easy to aim at them.  Many companies in the world are using blogs to interact with customers solving their problems. Caterpillar has blogs dedicated for their each product lines.

Blogs can clarify doubts and misunderstandings about the company, its reputation and its subsistence. It is an essential channel to explain the facts in situations of chaos. Red Cross blog keeps updating their activities and keeps giving more information on how to donate. Thus this blog gets responses for unexpected corners of the world through mainstream news items and articles. I once again want to stress here my point that blogs need to aim at clearly defined segments; then they do wonders in marketing. The clear identification of segments with   measurability of its effective size matters. Maintaining the blog with effective posts does great wonders. A well designed and updated blog attracts followers.

You must visit eBay’s blog. Though it is most “corporately” designed, it doesn’t give you that impression. Not only is the blog’s design bright and colorful, but the posts are written in an amiable style and the corporate press releases are interspersed with information about charities, interviews with sellers and much more. It’s one of the friendliest blogs.

Blogging is still considered a new medium. Some have made the best out of it while many others are still thinking about it. Whether a corporate blog or a personal blog, the fact remains that it has to be interesting and useful to readers. It needs regular posting. Giving readers what they really want for making them more likely to read a blog. Yes, corporate blogs can give corporate news along with something more. A blog will be read if it has information is worth reading.

Three elements work for the success of a blog: the content, freshness, and illustration.  Google has the best-known corporate blog in the world and for a very good reason. Besides announcing its new products and features, Google offers exciting glimpses behind the scenes at the company and introduces the world to some of its most important employees through its blog. The writing style is informal and the blog allows the world to know what’s going on inside the company.

In India corporate blogging is catching up; though the pace is slower. Indian companies from tech superstars to start-ups are using corporate blogs as a cost-effective method to reach out to their clients and also for brand building. At least 165,745,689 people are accessing the web and while 105,170,327 are surfing away each day. Let me tell you the first blog was developed in 1994.  Today there are 152 billion blogs on Internet. We are currently living in the information age. So, virtually every individual living in this age is looking for information that will help to improve the quality and standard of his/her life. Today, for every problem people tend to go online to look for information to solve their problems.

One recent survey reveals that people prefer reading blogs in the morning. Businesses that update their blogs 20 times a month i.e 4-5 times a week generate 5 times more traffic than those that update their blogs less than 4 times a month. The survey further revels that businesses that own and regularly update their blogs generate 4 times more lead than those that do not own a blog.

Blogs help to influence customers’ buying decisions and purchases. The information on blogs assists customers to make up their mind on the purchase of a product, it helps them to fine tune their choice, provides answers for most of their queries. Blogs are the best media vehicle to introduce new products to the world. Another survey reveals that companies that have more than 51% articles on their blogs experience a 77% increment in median monthly leads.

Lastly, whether the blog belongs to an organization or individual must not worry about the number of readers initially; the writing must continue. Rarely will a blog take off overnight; so one needs to be patient. Social networking has gripped the world today; we don’t know its future. As of today, producing and maintaining a blog has far fetching results for sure. And an important fact is good writing, in any form, will always remain in demand.

I want to add here that in India, Mr. Amit Agarwal has initiated a very useful move by making a directory named ‘Indianbloggers’ which gives useful information of Indian bloggers topic wise. It is very useful especially for researchers to find blogs which can add value to their research. They are a rich source.

The link http://indianbloggers.org is very detailed and lists some of the leading Indian blogs. Do visit the site to get very important information grouped in topics and the information of blogs.

How letter writing was important once upon a time

Letter writing was a basic element of everyday life for most people throughout the 19th Century and also few years of the 20th Century. The afternoons were speared for letter writing by women and older people in the households. Letter writing was the only way one could keep in touch with relatives and friends. During good and bad times people would wait eagerly to receive letters from their near and dear ones. During wars, floods, famines, people kept connected with their families by writing letters. It is indeed an art – I call it an art because it is submission of expression of human creative skill and imagination while writing. Letter writing started declining as early as the middle of the 20th Century. I guess it was because of introduction of good quality in telephone service at cheaper rates. And, then came in the computer, which made us so lazy that we stopped writing and got hooked on to the computer keyboards. We started electronically typed correspondences.

How letter writing helps

When we write with use of paper and pen that is when we hand write, we need to use our brains – we need to concentrate more because we write the script without aid of spell-check and grammar-check which is available on computer. We need to focus on every world that we write. It requires concentration, world power, syntax, and forming sentences from mind. It has a magic. Try it and see how refreshing you feel. We have lost the fine art of letter writing to the musty and stale electronic typing. I think since then we have also become a society of shallow and condensed minds. A handwritten letter shows all the emotion and personality of the person who writes it. Handwritten letters allow us to immerse in the drama of love, hatred, tragedy, anger and loneliness. Most important – they are tangible!!!

It is only because of some preserved letters in historical galleries, attics, closets, and basements throughout the world about millions of men and women who have fought wars, who have served nations as civil servants, freedom fighters, great doctors, lawyers, accountants, scientists and politicians – in short people who brought some kind of revolution, the world is exposed to truth. Many of these letters are extremely significant, offering eyewitness accounts of famous battles, historic events, or encounters between prominent people. These personal letters show us heartfelt expressions of affection, hatred, anguish or words of support and encouragement between some great people which today offer valuable insight into their personalities. They need to be preserved.

Recently, some correspondence by Paul Cezanne, P.G. Wodehouse and Christopher Isherwood add nuance to their influential lives. Few unpublished letters of Isaac Newton have thrown light on his profound research on spectrum of colors. Some letters written by Jawaharlal Nehru, Gandhi and Sardar Patel throw light on their ideologies and the reality of how India’s political landscape was getting shaped up. During the Margret Thatcher years, the special relationship between Britain and America was elevated to heights which were never achieved before or since. She and US president Ronald Reagan came to power at a critical time in world history and united to bring an end to the Cold War and change the face of international politics. Few letters written by them reveal how they helped each other to suit strategies to shape their respective nations.

Did you know about first-hand account of the moments the Titanic sank written in a letter supposedly by a French maid

It seems a tormenting first-hand account of the moments the Titanic sank in April 1912, has been uncovered in a letter supposedly from a French maid who survived the disaster. The hand-written in French is dated 8 August 1955. It was the woman’s maiden voyage. This French woman’s name was Rose Amelie Icard. It describes scenes of “horror” and “inspiring heroism” as passengers tried to escape the sinking vessel. The letter, written in blue ink, is addressed to a woman believed to be called Madame Austin, although the name is slightly unclear and no one of that name appears in the list of survivors.

Tragically, many of these correspondences are being thrown away, lost, or irreparably damaged. Saving these letters is not difficult, and it is an excellent way to learn about national heritage and history. Different letters need to be cared for in different ways. It’s an art of preserving letters with scientific support.

How receiving a letter is important?

There is nothing better than receiving a letter written by some close one in which that someone has put a lot of work into with earnest expressions. Though languages keep changing from time to time, but the way we open and close letters has stayed very much the same. A simple welcome/salutation – such as ‘hello’, ‘hi’, ‘dear’, ‘dearest’ can lead to a million budding and potential associations. And, adieu, such as ‘from yours truly’, ‘yours lovingly’, ‘sincerely’, ‘affectionately’ ‘with best wishes’ and so on, can create magic between the reader and the sender. This is a humble appeal to one and all – let us cherish the art of letter writing. With paper and pens being so readily available to us, there’s no better time – the present, now, this moment to recreate the magic of writing letters. Let’s fall in love with the art of letter writing again.