User:DanielXu/sandbox

Digital Marketing Mix

Definition
Marketing Mix, generally defined as the 4 Ps of Product, Price, Place and Promotion, was still one of the most important elements for making and applying marketing strategy to many marketers since introduced by Jerome McCarthy in 1960. With the development of digital media and Internet, it is necessary for marketers to know how adjust those 4 Ps and make a digital marketing mixture in order to fit in digital market place. Digital marketing mix is fundamentally same as Marketing Mix, which is an adaptation of Product, Price, Place and Promotion into digital marketing aspect. Digital marketing can be commonly explained as 'Achieving marketing objectives through applying digital technologies'.

Product
Thanks to the interaction and connection of the Internet, Product has been redefined as 'virtual product' in the digital marketing aspect, which is regarded as the combination of tangibility and intangibility. Through the form of digital, a product can be directly sent from manufacturers to customers. For example, customers could buy music in the form of 'mp3.' rather than buy it in CDs. As a result, when a company is making strategy for Internet marketing, it is necessary to understand how to vary their products in the online environment. Here are some indications of adapt the product element on the Internet.


 * Modifying the core product. In this case, it particularly refers to the products that can be remodeled into digital forms including movies, music, books and other publishing etc. Take Netflix as an example. The widely use of Internet has changed its form of products from selling and renting DVDs through retail store into selling and renting video online.
 * Providing digital products. In order to gain market shares in the Internet, companies need to widen its product range such as a psychological counseling can offer online consultation via video calls.


 * Building the whole product. Apart from selling products online, Amazon.com also provides a paid subscription service called Amazon Prime, with which customers could enjoy free delivery and videos on Amazon.


 * Conducting online research. The Internet offers a low-cost and convenient way of making marketing researches, which is helpful for companies to find out what products or services do customers prefer.

Price
Price concerns about the pricing policies or pricing models from a company. Due to the widely use of the Internet, many applications could be found in both consumer's and producer's perspective. From consumers' side, the Internet enables people to make a comparison to a real-time prices before they make a consumption decision, which is time-saving and effort-saving for the consumers. As for the suppliers, they can adjust prices in the real-time and provide higher degree of price transparency with customers. Besides, the Internet is more likely to ease the pressure on price because online-producers do not have to put budget on renting a physical store. Hence, making new or adjusting pricing strategies is essential for the company that wants to enter the Internet market.

Pricing strategies and tactics see also: Pricing

Place
With the application of the Internet, place is playing an increasingly important role in promoting consumption since the Internet and the physical channels become virtual. The major contribution from the Internet to the business is not only making it possible to selling products online, but also enabling companies to build relationships with customers. Furthermore, since the convenience of navigating from one site to another, place from the digital marketing perspective is always linked with promotion, which means retailers often uses third-party websites such as Google search engine to guide customers to visit their websites.

Promotion
Promotion refers to select the target markets, locate and integrate various communications tools in the marketing mix. Unlike the traditional marketing communication tools, tools in digital marketing aim at engaging audiences by putting advertisements and contents on the social media, including display ads, pay-per-click (PPC), search engine optimisation (SEO) etc. In order to help in making online marketing campaign, Chaffey and Smith suggested that they can be separated into six groups.


 * Searching marketing, including search engine optimisation(SEO), pay-per-click(PPC).
 * Online PR, enlarging good comments on one's products or services while responding adverse comments.
 * Online partnerships, building relationships between third-party webs to promote products or services.
 * Interactive advertising
 * Opt-in e-mail advertising
 * Social media marketing, starting and participating in customer to customer, customer to company interaction through social media.