1. Set the problem
In the era when the whole world uses advanced technology with digital systems, applying scientific advances, biotechnology, physical technology, using robots at work,… It is impossible not to mention the success and development of the global Internet.
In Vietnam, according to We are Social in 2020, Vietnam has 96.9 million people; the number of mobile subscribers is 145.8 million subscribers (accounting for 150% of the total population of the country); the number of Internet users is 68.17 million subscribers (accounting for 70% of the population); The number of social network users is 65 million people (accounting for 67% of the population). On average, in a day, also in Vietnam, users spent 6 hours and 52 minutes accessing the Internet.
In particular, they spend 2 hours and 37 minutes using social networks, 2 hours 43 minutes watching online streams or videos and 1 hour 21 minutes listening to online music (Nguyen Hoang Tien, 2020). With such a rapid and popular internet technology boom in Vietnam, consumers have clearly accessed information and used online shopping channels on a variety of electronic devices. Traditional, modern or Online Marketing is still not the most effective choice for marketing activities of organizations and businesses. Instead, Digital Marketing will become an extremely effective method of reaching customers and targets for businesses and organizations. To clarify what the phrase Digital Marketing is and why Digital Marketing is the trend used by organizations and businesses in the digital age, this article would like to introduce General Marketing, Digital Marketing, Digital tools used in the industrial era 4.0, as well as benefits and efficiency brought to organizations and businesses when using Digital Marketing.
2. Some concepts
2.1. Marketing
The term marketing was first born in America in the early twentieth century. It spread to Europe, Asia, and then Vietnam in the 1980s. According to Philip Kotler and Nancy Lee (2020), understanding, researching and analyzing the market is very important for businesses to build an appropriate marketing strategy, thereby helping to optimize activities and bring core benefits to businesses as well as for social goals. Marketing is an extremely large field and depending on the brand, each organization will use different models to serve its communication purposes, in general, marketing is to understand the psychology, desires of customers, of the audience that the organization (business) aims for and thereby propose appropriate operational strategies.
Theo Hiệp hội Marketing Hoa Kỳ: “Marketing là một hệ thống tổng thể các hoạt động của tổ chức được thiết kế nhằm hoạch định, định giá, xúc tiến và phân phối các sản phẩm, dịch vụ, ý tưởng để đáp ứng nhu cầu của thị trường mục tiêu và đạt được các mục tiêu của tổ chức”. Theo Philip Kotler – Giáo sư lỗi lạc Danh hiệu S.C. Johnson & Son về Tiếp thị Quốc tế tại Trường Quản lý Kellogg, Đại học Northwestern, nhà kinh tế học, cha đẻ của Marketing hiện đại từng phát biểu: Marketing là tiến trình doanh nghiệp tạo ra giá trị cho khách hàng và xây dựng mạnh mẽ mối quan hệ với khách hàng nhằm đạt được những giá trị từ những phản ứng của khách hàng (Philip Kotler, 2007). Thực tế, Marketing không chỉ dùng cho các doanh nghiệp mà còn được dùng trong các tổ chức khác như trường học, trung tâm chăm sóc sức khỏe, tổ chức thương mại,… Marketing được sử dụng trong các tổ chức hoạt động có lợi nhuận và cả những tổ chức hoạt động phi lợi nhuận. Marketing tổng quát là hoạt động phân tích hành vi khách hàng, định vị sản phẩm trên thị trường và sử dụng một số công cụ hỗ trợ như: Sản phẩm (Product); Giá cả (Price); Kênh phân phối (Place); Hoạt động xúc tiến (Promotion).
2.2. Digital Marketing
Digital Marketing còn gọi là Marketing kỹ thuật số, nó bao hàm cả Marketing Online, (Marketing trực tuyến) và Marketing Offline (Marketing trực tiếp). Nếu như Marketing online theo định nghĩa của Philip Kotler (Philip Kotler, 2017) là quá trình tạo lập kế hoạch về sản phẩm, giá, phân phối và xúc tiến đối với sản phẩm, dịch vụ và ý tưởng để đáp ứng nhu cầu của tổ chức và cá nhân dựa trên những phương tiện điện tử và internet; cùng với Marketing Offline (Marketing truyền thống) là hình thức quảng cáo offline nhằm đưa các sản phẩm, dịch vụ của doanh nghiệp tiếp cận nhanh chóng với người tiêu dùng thì Digital Marketing bao gồm cả hai phần này trong truyền thông thông tin.
Digital Marketing is the use of digital tools by businesses and organizations to conduct advertising, attract customers, and attract the target audience. According to Wikipedia’s definition of digital marketing: “Digital marketing is the marketing of products or services using digital technology, primarily on the Internet, it also includes mobile phones, display advertising into any other digital medium.” According to Asia Digital Marketing Association (2021), Digital Marketing is a strategy that uses Internet tools as a means for marketing activities and information exchange. By all available digital media channels, businesses will implement digital marketing to build, develop and promote brands and products online.” In essence, Digital Marketing is a form of advertising that takes advantage of the unique characteristics of digital platforms to bring messages from brands to the right target audience.
Thus, Digital Marketing is a method of introduction and advertising that uses electronic devices such as personal computers, smartphones, mobile phones, tablets and other devices to interact with users. Digital marketing uses digital technologies through platforms such as websites, email, apps (basic and mobile) and social networks,…
3. Industrial Revolution 4.0 and Marketing activities
3.1. Digital in Industry 4.0 and Marketing 4.0
Industrial Revolution 4.0 (Industry 4.0), is a highly integrated physical and digital hyper-connected system with the focus on the internet, everything connected and artificial intelligence, big data. Industry 4.0 with a digitalized system, aiming to free people from complex work, applying scientific advances and robots at work, is a great step forward for humanity in terms of achievements of digital, biotechnology, physical technology,… According to research by Pham Thi Huyen & colleagues (2021), the 4.0 technology revolution has drastically and profoundly changed almost all fields, creating many opportunities and challenges for all countries, organizations and businesses. Along with the application of scientific and technological achievements, the internet plays an increasingly important role in human life. By the end of 2020, companies around the world have moved from 36% digitalization to 75% digitalization. According to Nguyen Hong Anh (2018) in 2016, PwC conducted a survey called “Industry 4.0: Building a digital company”. The scope is 2,000 companies across 26 countries. The results show that the percentage of digitalization of these companies will increase from 33% to 72% within the next 5 years. What’s more, these companies spend 5% of their revenue investing in digitalization. Research shows that there are many benefits that Industry 4.0 brings to companies in Asia, such as increased revenue (39%), increased production efficiency (68%) and reduced costs (57%).
In this digital age, human activities in every field are almost tied to digitalization, the internet and digital tools. Marketing activities of organizations (for-profit organizations and non-profit organizations) have become and will become Marketing 4.0 is inevitable.
According to Philip Kotler et al. (P. Kotler, 2016), Marketing 4.0 promotes the shift from Marketing 4Ps (Product – Product, Price – Price, Place and Promotion – Promotion) to Marketing 4C (Co-creation, flexible pricing – Currency, Community and discussion – Conversation). “Co-creation” means that creativity is not only on the part of the organization, the business creates the product, but the customer will participate in creating value for the product. The Marketing Department of the business will select useful information from customer feedback to improve, develop suitable products according to customer needs at low cost. “Flexible pricing” can be understood as prices that change according to market demand depending on specific times or each customer. “Community” means an organization or enterprise that creates a community of customers, people who use products – services and at the same time share information related to products – services, interact with customers or listen to feedback from customers, thereby improving products or service methods. The community of businesses, customers and society benefits and develops together. This community will support organizations and businesses to improve customer loyalty and attract new customers. “Discussion” can be understood as customers in the community of organizations and businesses interacting, discussing and sharing experiences about products, services and how to use products and services. This is a free and effective communication channel for businesses in promoting purchase intent, increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty, thereby promoting viral marketing.
Some provinces are almost back in the “new normal”. Through the period of social distancing due to the Covid-19 epidemic, most Vietnamese people have used the Internet via smartphones or computers to shop online, study and work online. Social networks such as Facebook, Zalo, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube ,… is all too familiar to the majority of people. Here are some tools that organizations and businesses use in Digital Marketing activities to bring information to people:
Search Engine Marketing (SEM): is search engine marketing. This is an integrated solution to improve website rankings and keywords of organizations and businesses on search connection pages, meeting the information needs of customers. SEM includes Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Content marketing, and PPC forms that are understood as paid advertising. With SEO, the organization will not need to spend a lot of advertising money but need to identify the right keywords, comply with algorithms so that Google appreciates the quality of articles, images, accompanying clips as well as reviews and searches from customers. Along with good SEO, it is necessary to have a suitable and effective content marketing strategy, the right keyword articles, in accordance with the needs and information preferences of customers. It shows up on blogs, ebooks, whitepapers, infographics,… In contrast to SEO, PPC helps organizations quickly appear and reach customers by spending money running ads to get the website to the top in search.
– Social Media Optimization (SMO): is the activity of promoting products, services and communicating information and brands on social networking platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, Zalo,… This is a tool used by customers to find information, highly interactive, it impacts the perception, behavior and attitude of customers to services, products and brands of organizations and businesses.
According to Buffer’s State of Social 2019 report, Facebook is the marketing channel of choice for businesses with 81%, YouTube ranked 2nd with 62% and Instagram ranked 3rd with 57%. Combined Mobile Marketing: advertising through mobile devices, which may include optimizing applications for better display on the app store optimization (ASO), push ads, display in applications to encourage users to install.
– Customer Relation Manager (CRM): is a customer relationship management tool based on technical links between organizations and businesses with customers. As a strategy of organizations and businesses in developing close relationships with customers through research, thoroughly understanding the needs, desires and habits of customers, approaching and communicating with customers systematically and effectively, managing customer information such as account information, demand, communication,… to better serve customers. Through the customer relationship system, customer information will be updated and stored in the database management system. Thanks to a special data detection tool, organizations and businesses can analyze and form a list of long-term and potential customers to devise reasonable customer care strategies. In addition, businesses also handle customer problems quickly and efficiently.
– Marketing on website and mobile device is using a website or mobile device to market products and services to customers. It encourages people to complete accounts to have access to information, production and business activities, relationship expression, social responsibility,… of organizations and enterprises. The main activities in website and mobile device marketing are Email marketing, SMS marketing, display advertising that in Digital marketing is shown in images, clips, animations or content text.
Video marketing: YouTube has become a popular search engine because it contains a lot of information, engages viewers, is fast-paced, and less time-consuming like viewing information on websites. Today, many users are turning to YouTube to search for information about products or services before they make a decision to buy or learn about something. There are several platforms like Facebook Video, Instagram, Vimeo to run video marketing campaigns.
– Blog Marketing is a form of marketing, advertising, publishing online content for brands, products, services, events … through the Blog tool.
Blog is a form of social media that encourages sharing opinions and content of people who have experienced products – services, customers, thereby building a community that benefits the brand of the organization or business. Blogs are important tools for modifying and improving search engines because of its search friendly structure. This is done by focusing each article on a specific keyword phrase, while linking internal and external content. In the past, organizations used to have a blog separate from their web, but today, both are integrated to make management simpler, as well as easier for visitors to retrieve. Many organizations use a blogging platform, like WordPress, for both their website and blog.
In addition to some of the above-mentioned tools, organizations and businesses are still using traditional offline marketing tools on other media such as newspapers, radio and television, public and outdoor places,…
3.2. Opportunities to connect customers, increase potential customers and develop the activities of organizations and businesses when using Digital Marketing
Measure website traffic: With digital marketing, organizations can know exactly how many people viewed their website homepage in a certain period of time by using digital analytics software available in marketing platforms. And also know how many pages these people visited, what device they were using, and where they came from, among other digital analytics data. This convenience helps organizations prioritize which marketing channels need to spend more or less time, based on the number of people those channels are directing to their website. For example, if only 10% of traffic comes from organic search, then it’s worth spending some time on SEO to increase that percentage.
– Spread information quickly at low cost: With Digital Marketing, organizations and businesses can personalize by building records of purchase history and customer preferences through tracking websites and product information that potential customers visit, as well as behavior on the site that can identify their interests. From there, there is a way to take care of this potential customer and encourage them to spread the content of marketing messages that organizations and businesses send. This is one of the biggest advantages of digital-based marketing. In addition, Digital Marketing allows organizations and businesses to run campaigns at low cost compared to costly advertising channels such as television, radio,… And organizations and businesses can adjust advertising costs at any time.
– Content performance and lead generation. Through the number of users visiting the website, organizations and businesses can accurately measure the number of people who viewed and were interested in advertising and referral materials. It is possible to see who has downloaded and used forms and documents in the website. By putting more information, forms, documents, it means that organizations and businesses have generated leads.
– Attribution model. The connection between marketing and sales points. An effective digital marketing strategy combined with the right tools and technologies allows the organization to track all sales over a certain period of time. It allows organizations and businesses to identify trends in how people research and buy products and services; Help organizations make more informed decisions about which parts of their marketing strategy deserve more attention and which parts of the sales cycle need to be fine-tuned. According to Aberdeen Group, organisations with strong sales and marketing links will achieve an annual growth rate of 20%, compared to a 4% decline in revenue for companies with poor links. If the organization improves the customer journey through the purchase cycle using digital technology, it is likely to reflect positively on the organization’s business or operating profitability.
– Target and connect with a large number of customers: Digital Marketing platforms allow organizations and businesses to target specific audiences, so identifying the right audience segments becomes easier than ever. For example, when organizations and businesses plan to run ads on Facebook, Facebook will be responsible for asking who the customers want to reach in this advertising campaign are and make typical choices such as age, gender, language, interests, behaviors, locations and many other options to determine the maximum number of customers that ads can reach close to. In addition, this audience segment will be expanded in number when all digital channels have sharing features.
4. Conclusions
Digital Marketing is a trend that is very important and used by organizations and businesses in the world and Vietnam in the era of industrial revolution 4.0. In the difficult economic context because of the Covid -19 epidemic, organizations and businesses in Vietnam need to limit costs, especially costs for marketing activities, but the unit must still have revenue, profit or be consolidated to expand, Digital Marketing is an inevitable first choice. In addition, most Vietnamese businesses have not paid attention to developing and using indicators to evaluate marketing activities – activities that directly generate revenue and profit. Without using measurement methods to evaluate marketing activities such as digital marketing, businesses can make serious mistakes. This article would like to stop at the introduction of Digital Marketing, the inevitable trend of using Digital Marketing and the benefits it brings to organizations and businesses. In the direction of further research on the field of Digital Marketing application, the author will study and survey the current situation of using Digital Marketing in organizations and businesses in a region through specific data.
BIBLIOGRAPHIC REFERENCES:
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Digital Marketing Overview and Things to Know https://eqvn.net/tong-quan-ve-digital-marketing/