Impact of Digital Marketing on ICDL 2016 Event Promotion: A Success Story

Digital Marketing

The main objective of the digital marketing is to reach out to a larger client base in lesser time with the help of digital media. It is so simple that end users have access to all kind of information in a single click button, no matter what time it is or which place the customer is standing. Digital Marketing is not only provide companies an opportunities to reach out to a large number targeted audience but also save money which were earlier consumed in conventional ways of marketing like printed flyers, banners, newspaper ads, flex, posters etc..

Digital marketing is opening doors of prospects for everyone including big event companies and organizations who want to catch a wide range of online customers or prospective participants to promote their events, services and products among a wide range of channels such as robust websites, email, social media, organic search, paid search, mobile and display ads etc,. But which digital channel one should use is still a confusing question?

Before planning an active digital marketing strategy, one should require to understand what are various kinds of digital marketing channels, and prepare a marketing strategy to decide which channels are most likely to work best for their businesses.

Channels of Digital Marketing

There are many digital marketing channels (YourStory, 2017) which are different from other marketing channels and require a new fresh approach and understanding of the behaviour of digital users.

A digital user can search the relevant information in various ways, such as by using an online app, search engine, websites, social media, etc. All of these channels are fairly different from, telemarketing, SMS and require trained manpower having proper knowledge of how each functions before marketing can be effectively commenced.

Further digital marketing channels are both internet and non-internet based.

Internet-Based Digital Marketing Channels

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  SEM (Search Engine Marketing)

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  PPC (Pay per Click) is a paid advertising model.

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  Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) – this is used to drive targeted website traffic to your website from search engines, e.g. content marketing strategies such as blogging and online person relations (E-PR).

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  Internet Advertising – paid advertising across a variety of methods, e.g. banner/posters, in-app advertising, PPC (as mentioned above), social media advertising, etc.

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  Social Media Marketing:One of the most popular forms of organic marketing utilising sites and networks such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter, and YouTube etc.

Non-Internet-Based Digital Marketing Channels

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  Downloadable apps

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  Digital display publicity

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  Mobile phones (including SMS and MMS)

One can use both direct and indirect digital marketing channels as mentioned above together to catch wide range of target audience, however the best approach is generally to use a variety of marketing channels to penetrate in the targeted niche.

Among various digital marketing channels mentioned above, the most important are content marketing, email marketing, search engine optimization and social media marketing.

Both direct and digital marketing can have high success rates when planned properly and targeted correctly. The key to success in both direct and digital marketing is to keep building clarity around who you serve, why they buy from you, and how you can better bring value to their lives. It’s a part of the one’s digital marketing strategy which combines various direct and indirect digital marketing channels.

In this chapter we will discuss how TERI Knowledge resources Centre extensively used these direct and indirect digital marketing channels in 2016 to promote its event International Conference on Digital Libraries (ICDL) and connect with the potential participants.