Social Media And Email Marketing To Top Online Marketing Initiatives

In the past few years, marketing has undergone a dramatic change. It has lead entrepreneurs to create better ways to reach their customers by engaging them with better content, rather than the like and dislike buttons in the digital marketing. The social media with 68.8 percent and email marketing with 53.1 percent, are going to be the top two online marketing initiatives that will see an increase in marketing investments in 2012, states India e-Marketing Outlook 2012, conducted by Octane.in. Octane.in is a provider of email services and creator of on-demand multi-channel marketing campaigns platform.

Indian companies have just understood the role of social media and online marketing in their eventual growth. This year several startup companies and even old school players such as cement, car, iron and steel companies, will be seen using digital marketing, specially social media for their business growth. “Startups who will allocate more of their budget for digital marketing rather than traditional marketing, which is an expensive way of marketing especially for startups, will see tremendous growth in their business. Among all the digital marketing methods, social marketing is free to some extent and can be aggressively used by them to create buzz among the target audience,” says Adhvith Dhuddu, Founder and CEO, AliveNow, a social media management firm.

The end of 2011 saw social marketing standing at a profound crossroads. Some organizations understood the importance of social networks and, as a result, increased investments in creative engagements, marketing and service programs. In 2012, the social media marketing will only continue to mature with a better understanding of what really works in social media. “Some of our clients have increased their marketing budget spend on the online, search engine marketing, email marketing and social media marketing. We have even seen our clients increasing their budget by over 100-150 percent exclusively for social media marketing,” adds Dhuddu.

Apart from the engagement that social media brings in, there are few other reasons for the companies to enter into the field. The executives of such companies are being compelled by the young generation to indulge in social media to ensure a much better reach to their target audience. “Several executives have started using digital media, especially social media, for the first time after being encouraged by their kids. Kids influence them to join their social media account and get a hang of it to understand its importance in the current market trend,” says Bhupendra, CEO, InRev Systems, a web-based product company.

The TRAI directive on usage of SMS for promotional messages has also compelled several companies to increase their email marketing budget by more than 11 percent in 2012. “India will see an increase in the digital users by 30-40 percent compared to what it was in 2010, thus inspiring the companies to indulge and spend more on digital marketing,” adds Bhupendra.

The most optimistic prediction about digital marketing investment in India is to increase it to a minimum of $1 billion by the end of the year, of which more than 20 percent of the contribution will be from social media. Initially companies used to create a web page, where after landing users were not able to browse other stuffs. However, today social media is used to engage customers to create brand loyalty. Customers have become more vocal. They share their thoughts, good or bad, provide a feedback and companies are eager to know what their customers like and dislike about them, thus helping the companies to provide better experience. We are in the social revolution: the reality of change is broadly accepted, but norms about fundamental issues still remain elusive.