Apart from the substantial youth population, more or less every person in India (inclusive of the countryside) today owns a cell phone with abundant apps.
Termed as ‘Digital Marketing,’ the mode of buying and selling has of late enormously gone online following which a plethora of brands, a score of firms and individuals are all social media savvy in a bid to mesmerise the masses for buying their products and make a fortune out of it. It is because the social media podium is not only efficient, but also comparatively cost-effective vis-a-vis other media. This global platform provides the firms a widespread market to promote their respective brands besides getting an additional opportunity to interact with the customers, build bonds and earn reputation both for their brands and themselves.
Going by the trend and fact that the world is irrefutably getting closer and quicker due to these social networking websites, it has become imperative upon almost all industries to make their presence prominently felt in the social media arena. The most popular social networking site ‘Facebook’ is being noticed teeming with individual state-of-the art pages dedicated to nearly all companies, and are also observed keeping their respective business promotional pages most up-to-date with news and views.
Social media marketing is being noticed enabling a brand attaining fabulous number of fan following by striking the right-cord-approach with its most recent add-ons to existing designs, fresh collections, declaration of forthcoming sales and discounts. Such an enchanting endeavour is seen stirring their fans’ zest and zeal. This new-age trade promotional effective tool can be used not only by a celebrated company, but also by a fresher or an individual selling online via these pages linking them to their parent websites with proper payment gateways.
It is incredible that even a nondescript young Indian woman can earn in tune of lakhs by just using social interactive platform ‘Instagram’ while working at ease at one’s own home. Social sites and apps like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, et al, can endow us with additional possibilities to advertise and make income quite efficiently and interestingly. Only one needs to be just stay web-connected armed with a handy tab, laptop or a desktop.
Since audio visual indisputably makes a mammoth mark on our head and heart, another potent platform of social media marketing is via video channels like You Tube. For instance, while promoting a jewellery product, its audio visual exhibition instantly captivates the attention of its audience and thus popularises the brand.
The newly evolved words and tools viz ‘snapchats’, ‘instachats’ and ‘#hashtags’ are not only useful for connecting with the world, but also very useful for digital marketing. Uploading photographs of the most recent designs, forming a group of followers and following the correct groups can work wonders in order to generate brand devotion and augment the company’s universal web existence.
‘Blog’ is another tool in the list of digital marketing. A brand can partner with the bloggers to make the brand name popular.
(Dr Rout is a management expert based in Bhubaneswar)
