Since we have determined that the power of digital marketing is quite big, I can hear all of you think: which type of digital marketing is the most effective? So before you begin to read, try to answer that question first!
Digital marketing has grown a lot the past few years and companies use it to deliver more value to its customers. Different forms of digital marketing can contribute to this goal by matching their marketing strategy as good as possible with the needs and wishes of the customers.
I will discuss a couple of popular digital marketing trends, beginning with the Facebook ads. As we all know, Facebook is used globally by over a billion of people. With 9.6 million users, Facebook is the biggest social media platform in the Netherlands (well, after WhatsApp, but they don’t use adds (yet) so we’ll leave WhatsApp out of this discussion). Organizations can use Facebook to target their customer very easily and quite precisely. Particular Facebook’s mobile ad business is booming, see the table below.
Another way of digital marketing is the use of YouTube. YouTube is an important influencer of the customer decision making process (see figure below), especially when it’s about product visualisation or product explanation. Because video enables more possibilities, organizations are able to put an emotional touch to their video, resulting in more brand engagement. With 7.2 billion users, YouTube is a very attractive channel for companies to use.
A relatively new entry to this market is Instragram. With more than 2 million users, it is not the biggest social platform, but can it be the most effective one?
Well, I won’t keep you any longer in your curiosity. The most effective way of digital marketing is E-mail marketing. In the Netherlands, consumers use advertising emails regularly to make online purchases, 73% buys something in response to an email! Email and advertisement go very well together!
I guess you had not expected that as answer, had you?
Sources:
Nationaal e-mail onderzoek (2016), Blinker
www.marketingfacts.nl/berichten/social-media-in-nederland-2016-whatsapp-overstijgt-facebook
adage.com/article/digital/facebook-q4-2016-earnings/302378/
www.fingerspitz.nl/blog/260-remarketing-via-youtube
www.emerce.nl/research/email-verleidt-steeds-meer-65plussers-tot-online-aankopen
www.blinker.nl/nationaal-email-onderzoek-2016/bedankt?submissionGuid=2f526b2d-fc32-4203-8b4e-0592091a3776
Dear Betul, thank you for your blog! You are right, I had indeed not thought of e-mail marketing and I guessed Facebook would have been number 1. When I read that the number one was e-mail marketing, I started thinking of marketing emails I receive. Firstly, I get once a week from Albert Heijn an email with the bonus, and with personalized discounts for me (based on my bonus card). Usually, I do buy one of these personalized discounts. Next, I often get an email from Zalando Lounge, where they offer large discounts on brands, and one from H&M, where they often offer free delivery. In contrast, I rarely buy something from an advertisement I see on Facebook, Youtube or Instagram. I guess I should have analyzed my own behaviour before thinking Facebook would be number 1 🙂
Deat Betul, Interesting read. Since it is illegal to ‘spam’ users with advertisements through email, it is quite logical to be the most effective way. I’ll explain further, the only way for a company to send an advertisement through email is when the prospect has already filled in an email form, and thus is familiar with the company and it’s services. Therefore, the company can directly target it’s audience and thus generate the highest response rate out of all other possible digital marketing options. Secondly, Facebook & Instagram hide posts from other users, so it makes sense that the amount of people that buys something through a Facebook / Instagram message is a lower % comparing to direct emailing. Nonetheless, thanks for the information and concrete data.
Hi Betul, thank you for the nice read and insights. I agree with you that digital marketing is becoming increasingly important. For entrepreneurs, it’s all about most effectively turning business opportunities into business clients. Especial for small to medium sized firms, I believe that digital marketing is key in converting these opportunities.
Nowadays, especially with the increasing amount of advertising channels (e.g. insta, facebook, googleAds), it becomes more difficult to measure their true effectiveness. In other words, which advertising medium resulted in converting this opportunity into a client? And more importantly, which particular advertisement and content made this opportunity to convert?
So in my opinion, as valuable as I think that your examples are, is the true most effective type of digital marketing channel dependent on the firm, industry and the firm’s overall content strategy. For example: a potential customer might first be introduced to your products through the Facebook Ad. The following day, he sees the same message and product on his favourite news-site (clever retargeting!). Gradually (and sometime unconsciously) the potential customer becomes familiar with the products, its attributes and possibly also its advantages. And then on day 3, he/she receives a promotional email with a killer offer for the product he/she has been seen for the last couple of days. The email just came at the right moment because the potential customer just purchased your product. But without the other digital marketing channels, the email might have had no impact at all. He could have ignored it or considered it as spam by directly deleting it.
Again, I think through cleverly implementing multiple digital marketing channels (with the correct content strategy), firms should consider the digital channels as a whole when reviewing its effectiveness, rather than focussing on individual channel conversion metrics.
Dear Betul,
You’re right, I didn’t expect email marketing to be the most effective way of digital marketing, mainly based on my own experience. I namely strongly dislike advertising emails and often instantly delete them when I recognize one by reading the header and sometimes first sentence. When I do read them, I mostly find the message too long, they are not offering a good deal or it is real spam from a company I have never heard of and is very irrelevant to me.
Facebook ads on the other hand are, while still annoying, much more adjusted to my interests. Therefore, I find them less irritating. Next to that, Facebook advertisements are also a lot smaller and look most of the times more appealing to me, partly because of the short message that they display which makes it easy to read. Additionally, I was expecting a more unconscious effect through Facebook ads. Especially, because of the fact that you scroll over a lot of them and unconsciously see the pictures or words. Did the paper you read examine this effect? I think it would be interesting to look further into that. What is your opinion on this? And I’m also curious about what you expected to be the most effective way of digital marketing.
Looking forward to hear your views,
Emily
Hi Emily, thank you for your comment. The paper I had read did not examine the effect of unconsciousness. It is indeed an interesting effect to look further into! The article I had read was about marketing effects what leads into direct purchases. I agree with you that Facebook ads will have an unconsciousness effect on the consumers, but this won’t always directly incite the consumer to action. Once it is on their mind, it will take a couple of days to decide if they want to buy the product or not and they probably will visit the physical shop or the website first to obtain more information. The Facebook add may helpt the purchase indirectly, but not directly.
Since Facebook is used by so many people and companies can target very precisely, I also thought that the Facebook adds would win this battle. But after reading the article and looked further into it, it makes sense to me that E-mail marketing has won this battle. The examples of Ananda de Jager also apply to me. Often I purchased a product at AH, because they offered me a personalized deal through the mail 🙂
Dear Betul,
Thank you for the interesting blog! You were right! I wasn’t expecting email marketing to be the most effective source of online marketing. Especially, because it is a really enoying way for customers to receive advertisements in my opinion. I am wondering if the email marketing is most effective when a customer agreed upon this marketing that the company is sending emails with advertisements or if the customers did not agree upon this strategy. Because when they did ask for this emails of a certain company, you already know this customer is interested in the products/services provided by this company. Then the customer is more willing to buy products/services which are market in the email. Do you think this is the reason that email marketing is the most effective? So this would than be the best way to attract excisting customers, but what about new customers? In my opinion, using Facebook and Youtube are two very effective ways of reaching new customers.