Understanding E-Marketing

E-Marketing is the practice of marketing which utilises the internet and any mobile electronic devices. Before we can fully understand what E-Marketing means for the practitioner we need to go back to first principles and define marketing:

The management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably (CIM).

Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large (AMA).

I would suggest that the definition from the American Marketing Association is more precise, particularly if you want to cover all aspects of marketing, ie Social Marketing.

To be successful, marketers have to address a number of a number of key issues. These issues are also known as the Marketing Mix, also known as the 4Ps or 7Ps (this link will give you a better understanding of the marketing mix).

All the issues related to Marketing are relevant to E-Marketing. E-Marketing is just an extension of marketing. This is an important thing to remember because it must be integral to the overall marketing strategy.

There are a number of key elements to E-Marketing. These include, but are not limited to:

  • Website development: brand or corporate brand.
  • Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).
  • Advertising (General, PPC and Geo Targeting).
  • E-Commerce.
  • E-mail marketing.
  • Social Media Marketing.
  • Community development (Blogging, Forums and Co-creation).
  • Mobile Opportunities (Text messaging, Apps and Bluetooth).

To help you further understand these concepts I have produced a number of interactive presentations for you to review:

E-Marketing

Search Engines and SEO.

Digital Marketing.

An Introduction To Social Media.

Social Media Marketing From Around The World.

An Introduction to E-Mail Marketing.

An Introduction to E-Commerce.

Digital Analytics.

The advantages of E-Marketing:

  • It can have a global reach.
  • Start up costs can be very low.
  • You can easily engage with your targeted market segment.
  • It is easy to monitor and control: you can get instant feedback on ROI.
  • Speed: information can almost be instantaneous.

The disadvantages of E-Marketing:

  • Security and Data Protection may be a problem
  • Pricing becomes transparent.
  • Bad publicity can hit a wider audience.
  • Everyone thinks they can do it.

Conclusion

E-Marketing is a key element to general marketing. It offers advantages that cannot normally be achieved through normal business channels. Your strategy must not be created in isolation, it must be part of the wider business and marketing plans. If you are going to roll it out do engage with the right resources.

For more interesting articles related to E-Marketing why not visit:

How To Analyse And Monitor Your Digital Marketing Platforms
Managing Social Media.
What is social media?
Understanding SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)
Using Twitter at Events
Editing URL Shorteners
Digital Trends
Social Media Marketing Campaigns from around the world.
What is Social Marketing?
Visually Optimise Your Websites and Adverts.
Understanding E-Mail Marketing
Map Your Twitter Followers
An Introduction to Search Engines.

 

Note: This article was first written in January 2012: It was last updated on 17th March 2015.

The following two tabs change content below.
Dr Alan Shaw is a Senior Lecturer and Marketing consultant focusing on a range of sectors. His main interests are in strategy development, social marketing, digital marketing, advertising, consumer behaviour and marketing application.
This entry was posted in Articles and tagged .