Question:
Critically evaluate the proposition that Digital Marketing has replaced traditional Marketing in Strategy Management.
With the advancement of technology, contemporary business organizations are more inclined towards adopting digital marketing tools towards promoting their products and services. Traditional marketing tools are mostly related to make customers aware regarding the products and service (Tiago and Veríssimo 2014). Digital marketing tools have gone far beyond just customer awareness and focus more on customer interaction for gaining increasing customer insights (Lamberton and Stephen 2016). Therefore, digital marketing tools are more effective in providing customized value to the customers than those of traditional marketing tools. This study will critically evaluate the proposition that digital marketing has replaced traditional marketing in strategy management. The study will evaluate this proposition from various aspects of strategy development in organizations. Moreover, the study will also provide some examples for demonstrating the effectiveness of digital marketing tools over the traditional marketing tools.
With the advancement in the technology, digital marketing and social media have significant influence on the life of people. Digitalization and social media are at every sphere of people’s life. With the popularity of digitalization, digital marketing has gradually replaced traditional marketing in terms of strategy development in an organization (Taiminen and Karjaluoto 2015). Marketing and strategy development in today’s contemporary organizations are not easy job. It needs huge market research, information about changing customer needs, promotion of products and services with shortest period, fostering unique product information through unique channels and lots more. Any strategy formulation needs enough interaction with the customers for identifying their core needs.
According to Stone and Woodcock (2014), in traditional marketing, there was very little interaction between the medium used and the customers. Moreover, the intension of traditional marketing was just to provide information to the customers regarding the existence of the brand. However, it was quite difficult for the organization towards understanding the perspectives of the customers regarding the brands. On the other hand, Karjaluoto, Mustonen and Ulkuniemi (2015) digital marketing is extremely beneficial for increased interaction with the customers and understanding the insights of the customers. Apart from just making the customers aware about the products and service, digital marketing can also help the organization towards getting the feedback of the customers regarding the product experience. In this way, digital marketing has actually increased the customer value, as it provide scope to the customers in sharing their experience with the customers.
Franco et al. (2014) pointed out that unlike the traditional marketing, in digital marketing, the customers can also share their suggestion over the product improvement. In this way, contemporary organizations can better modify their products and service offerings as per customized needs. It facilitates the organizations towards gaining competitive edge over the rival organizations through formulating customized product strategy. While considering the example of Four Star Pizza, it can be seen that the organization uses digital media marketing for gaining deep insights about the customers regarding their foods. Based on the feedback of the customers, the organization constantly modifies their foods as per customized and preferred tastes of the customers. Such unique customer value facilitates the organization towards gaining competitive advantage over its rivals (Tomše and Snoj 2014). Therefore, recently, this organization is much more concentrated on their digital marketing effusiveness rather than focusing on traditional marketing. Therefore, digital marketing has gradually replaced traditional marketing in regards to strategy development.
From the global study, it can be seen more than half of the world use digital media tools for accessing information. In such situation, digital media is the best tool for marketing the products and services with increased exposure of brands to the customers. People all around the world are quite busy in their work life. Wedel and Kannan (2016) stated that people in today’s world do not have much time to watch or listen to product or service advertisement over radio, television or any print media. Therefore, traditional marketing is less effective in effective brand exposure to today’s customers. However, Vásquez and Escamilla (2014) opined that people are always engaged with digital media either for the purpose of their work or anything else. Moreover, with high level of digitalization, today’s customers are more inclined to search for product and service information through digital media tools like social media, emails, websites, video hosting, mobile SMS and others. Moreover, digital marketing also direct the customers directly to the company websites, where they can access detailed information regarding the products and services. In this way, contemporary organizations can also access the customer visit rate of the websites and understand the popularity of the brand for strategy formulation.
Unlike the traditional marketing, in digital marketing, organizations can see their business or product status in real time. According to Järvinen and Karjaluoto (2015), digital marketing allows the contemporary organizations to oversee the factors, which is not working properly and need quick improvement for better business result. Moreover, modern business organizations can measure the popularity of their brand through measuring the traffic of their websites. As per Levy and Gvili (2015), contemporary organizations can easily measure the traffic of their websites using Google Analytics for measuring specific goals of the websites, blogs and other packaged e-mail marketing solution. The organization can also measure the amount the people opening, reading and converting from the e-mails.
Ström, Vendel and Bredican (2014) stated that digital marketing is the best tool for simply measuring the success of the business and making any improvement over the strategy for gaining sustained competitive advantage. In this way, after measuring the brand popularity over the digital media, the organizations can quickly adopt improvement strategy for modifying their brand features for providing unique customer value. In this way, digital marketing has gradually replaced traditional marketing for making more customized business strategies. While considering example of Butlers Chocolates Company in Ireland, the organization uses digital media for getting more interaction with the customers. Moreover, with the help of digital media marketing tools, the organization simply measures the popularity of the chocolate products and makes immediate modification after getting any significant suggestions from the customers (Taneja and Toombs 2014). Such customer concerns through digital media tools have built the foundation of the business success of this organization.
Traditional marketing tools were limited within their era. According to Rani and Rani (2017), in traditional marketing tools, customers were nowhere provided with the scope to refer their preferred brand to mass of their friends and close circles. Therefore, promotional strategies were limited mostly to the individual level of the individual customers. However, Killian and McManus (2015) opined that digital marketing tools always facilitate the contemporary organizations in making their brand promotional messages viral. Moreover, the social media tools like Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and others provide options to the customers towards sharing the information of their preferred products and services to their closed friends. In this way, unlike the traditional marketing tools, digital marketing tools go beyond the individual levels of the customers and make the brand promotional message viral (Stone et al. 2016). In this way, contemporary business organization can perfect manage their promotional strategies through digital marketing tools by replacing the traditional marketing tools.
With the globalized nature of businesses, it is almost impossible for the organizations and its marketers to walk around world personally and collect insights about the customers. Furthermore, Abashidze (2017) pointed out that traditional print media marketing and radio, television and billboard advertising was quite ineffective to communicate important information about the products and services to the global customers in real time. In such situation, digital marketing tools are quite effective to reach information product and service information to the customers in real time. Bianchi and Andrews (2015) opined that organization can communicate their important information to the global customers with a fraction of time. Such real time communication of the information to the customers actually enhances the value of the information. On the other hand, Ahuja (2015) opined that traditional marketing tools could not guarantee communication of important information to the customers in real time due to breakthrough in communication channels. However, digital media tools are less influenced any through in communication channels. Therefore, such marketing tools are quite effective in providing real time product and service information to the customers, which manages the right value of the promotional messages.
Cost is an important factor to be considered, which has replaced traditional marketing tools with the usage of digital marketing tools. According to Ribón, Monroy and Ortega (2017), traditional marketing tools were quite expensive and the design of traditional marketing media used to increase the overall organizational cost for managing the promotional strategies. Moreover, the advertising channels like television, radio, Yellow Pages, magazines require enough investment from the part of organizations for regularly updating and designing the promotional contents. On the other hand, Kleppinger and Cain (2015) opined that digital marketing tools sometimes needs little investment for updating the digital media pages. However, such investment cost is quite less than those of traditional marketing tools. Moreover, the organization can easily create an e-mail account, social media account, You-Tube pages within fraction of time and without spending much amount of money. In this extent, traditional marketing methods like television advertisement, radio advertisement, billboards and other is quite expensive and needs huge investment for its perfect design and development.
Gottlieb and Bianchi (2017) stated that Contemporary business organizations can develop online marketing strategies with very little cost than traditional marketing strategies. Therefore, digital marketing tools can effectively develop promotional tools for communicating product and service information with much lesser cost than those of traditional marketing tools. Hence, digital marketing tools have gradually replaced the traditional marketing tools in developing and managing promotional strategies. While considering the example of Aer Lingus, the organization has recently given major focus on the digital marketing tools for reducing their overall promotional cost. Moreover, the organization is quite successful in reducing the cost of overall promotional strategies. Furthermore, the organization is now more capable of reaching worldwide customers with lesser time, which enhances the value of the information in real time frame (Earley and Maislin 2016). Furthermore, the cost effectiveness of digital media is also insisting the organization towards replacing the traditional marketing tools with digital marketing tools for its strategy management.
Most of the contemporary organizations are ramping up their brand and business on digital marketing campaign, using different channels. Hence, digital marketing tools are quite effective in knowing and understanding the core unique value of the competitor organization. According to Opreana and Vinerean (2015), digital marketing tools are quite effective in identifying and recognizing the core and unique value of the competitor organizations. In such situation, traditional marketing tools are less effective in recognizing the unique attributes of the competitors with limited brand exposure. Killian and McManus (2015) pointed out that with increased brand exposure, digital marketing tools facilitate the organizations to have a look on their competitor’s strategies and plan accordingly for gaining competitive advantage over their competitors. In this way, digital marketing tools are quite helpful over the traditional marketing tools in gaining competitor’s information and formulating competitive strategies towards beating the competitors. Furthermore, Karjaluoto, Mustonen and Ulkuniemi (2015) opined that real time results from the digital marketing tools facilitate the contemporary organizations in better understanding the competitive scenario in the market. Therefore, the organizations can easily track any limitations in their strategies and improve those strategies towards beating the competitive pressure generated from the competitors.
Having a dominant and optimized online presence on digital media through smartphone and tablets, contemporary organizations can easily influence the buying behavior of the customers. According to Franco et al. (2014), almost 82% of the mobile searchers around the world check on the in-store purchase using their phones. Furthermore, almost 65% of people look for most valuable and accurate information to their queries through the usage of digital media. 33% of mobile users ultimately purchase products and services from different brands than they have in mind because of the information listed. Therefore, it can be said that digital media is quite effective in managing the strategies of customer attraction.
On the other hand, Tomše and Snoj (2014) stated that traditional marketing tools are ineffective to provide detailed information to the customers. Therefore, such marketing tools are not much effective towards influencing the purchasing behavior of the customers. The limited information provided through the traditional marketing are less influential on customer attraction strategies. Digital marketing tools directly direct the customers towards the main websites of the customers, where they can access detailed information regarding the products and services. Such detailed information provides clear and accurate ideas of products and services to the customers, which lead them towards taking purchasing decisions. In this way, digital marketing tools are quite effective than traditional marketing tools for managing the promotional strategies and attracting customers.
Strong digital marketing strategies allow diverse business organizations towards competing with each other on similar line of the sizes. A well structured and reputed website design, which entitles smooth journey for the customers, can be unparallel in promoting the products and services. According to Lamberton and Stephen (2016), traditional marketing tools can be high expensive for the small scale businesses towards promoting their products and services. On the other hand, Vásquez and Escamilla (2014) opined that designing an attractive website can be less expensive for the small scale customers than those of traditional marketing strategies. Moreover, small scale organizations can use same digital media tools and techniques towards competing with the big companies in the same market. Moreover, well designed and developed websites facilitate organizations towards attracting the customers in visiting the products and services.
Furthermore, Wedel and Kannan (2016) stated that websites having easy interface assist the organizations in selecting their products and services effectively and order for those products and services. Therefore, unlike the traditional marketing tools, digital marketing tools like attractive websites help even the small scale organization towards beating the large scale organizations. In this way, digital marketing assists in better maintain the competitive strategies. With such advantage of digital marketing, it has gradually replaced the traditional marketing tools. While considering the evidence from GoCar Company in Ireland, it can be found that the organization has attractively designed its websites for easy interaction with the customers. Such attractively designed websites of the organization provides detailed car service information to the customers to the customers. Such precisely constructed websites and detailed information encourage the customers toward taking purchasing decisions (Taiminen and Karjaluoto 2015). Therefore, the organization can effectively maintain its competitive strategies over the competitors for gaining competitive advantage.
Tradition marketing tools are limited in direct interaction with the customers. Moreover, traditional marketing is only concerned with making the customers aware of the existence of the brands. As per Wedel and Kannan (2016), traditional marketing tools are restricted in gaining inner perspectives of customers with lack of direct interaction with customers. Therefore, organizations are incapable of knowing the information about the brand preferences. Moreover, in traditional marketing, customers are mostly avoided and their concerns are not given much priority. In this way, ignorance of customer concerns actually leads to customer dissatisfaction. On the other hand, Taiminen and Karjaluoto (2015) opined that digital marketing tools like websites and e-marketing even have live chat options for the customers. Such live chat options in the digital marketing tools facilitate the customers in resolving their queries in details. Furthermore, the customers can also provide their feedback on these live chat options regarding the brands.
Stone and Woodcock (2014) stated that the customers can also communicate their complaints over these chat options for getting immediate solutions. In this way, organizations can better provide importance to the customer concerns for getting resolving their issues before those issues become the reasons for customer dissatisfaction. Therefore, digital marketing tools are more effective than the traditional marketing tools in maintaining customer retention strategy towards retaining customers for longer time. In this way, digital marketing strategies have replaced the traditional marketing strategies in terms of developing customer retention strategies. According to Tomše and Snoj (2014), digital marketing tools are quite effective than those of traditional marketing tools in promoting attractive discounts and offerings in real time. With the limitation of time, customers can often skip the promotional advertisement on their television, radios and newspapers. However, Taiminen and Karjaluoto (2015) opined that most of people are becoming highly tech savvy in the today’s world. Therefore, it is easier to persuade the customers with the attractive discounts and offerings with greater exposure in the digital media sites. In this way, digital media facilitates the organization in managing their customer loyalty strategies. Such facilities of digital media marketing have ultimately replaced traditional medial marketing.
Conclusion
While concluding the study, it can be said that advancement of technology has led the organizations to be concentrated more on digital media marketing than those of traditional media marketing. In traditional media marketing, the organizations get lesser scope towards interacting directly with the customers. On the other hand, in digital media marketing, the organizations can directly interact with the customers. Therefore, in digital marketing, organizations gain deeper insights regarding the customer preferences. Furthermore, the customers can also provide their preferred suggestions over the brands. In this way, contemporary organizations incorporate customized values in their products and services through the recommendations provided by the customers in the digital marketing tools. Such customized value has led the organizations in replacing the traditional marketing tools with digital marketing tools. Furthermore, increased customer interaction with the customers over the digital marketing tools facilitates in better customer relationship, which is not possible in traditional marketing tools.
Unlike the traditional marketing, digital marketing facilitates the contemporary organizations in enhancing its brand exposure through increased customer referrals. Moreover, digital marketing tools have the advantage to make the promotional strategies viral. Therefore, digital marketing tools have ultimately replaced the traditional marketing tools for its increased brand exposure. Apart from that, designing traditional marketing tools is quite expensive for the organizations. On the other hand, digital marketing tools are quite less expensive to develop than those of traditional marketing tools. Therefore, digital marketing tools have replaced the traditional marketing tools in terms of its cost effectiveness and increased brand exposure.
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