Digital media is becoming predominant in marketing these days, but how far they reach to the mass audience is the question. The growth of the digital marketing industry has led to an upsurge in digital marketing certification courses and demand for new-age digital marketers. While undoubtedly digital marketing fetch great results for the business when it comes to the mass market how effective is it really?

Let’s see:

What is the Mass Market?

It is a form of an undifferentiated market that comprises a vast group of end consumers with widely varied background and demographics. As opposed to a niche market, the mass market is not segmented based on lifestyles or preferences. If a company produces a product that is useful to a wide variety of consumers, then it is said to have a mass-market appeal. Wouldn’t it be just great only if companies were able to produce this mass-market appeal for all their products?

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Digital Marketing in Mass Market

Digital marketing provides affordable access to the mass market, unlike mass media channels of TV or newspaper. It aims to target a section of the mass market, by categorizing them into several segments based on their demographics or preferences.

In contrast with mass marketing that targets a wide section of the consumers as a whole, digital marketing is more of a ‘micro-marketing’ that segregates consumers based on different criteria. With digital marketing, it is not possible to target the mass market as a whole.

Concerns with Digital Marketing to the Mass Market

Visibility

According to a book by Byron Sharp named “How brands grow”, the author has emphasized that digital marketing is very narrow-minded and does not focus on long-term results. Instead, marketers should replace targeting with sophisticated mass marketing in order to gain greater visibility. Now, this is a very interesting viewpoint.

However, segmentation and targeting that is used predominantly in digital marketing, if done in the right way, it does get your brand visibility and reach the right audience. But how effective it is on the broader mass market?

There is no doubt that targeted marketing is used by brands to deliver personalization, which leads to greater visibility, engagement and conversion rates. But, there should be the right mix of targeted marketing as well as mass marketing strategies to stay visible in the market. According to the IPA’s Social Works Personalisation guide published in March 2017, broader marketing and micro-marketing techniques should be used in tandem to deliver increased brand relevance and visibility in the market.

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Targeting to the masses

There is no one size fits all approach in the digital landscape. Digital channels of Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and more tend to downsize the mass audience into small groups. For example, for a new product, the prime focus is to reach mass awareness. Whereas for established products, it is more of converting existing awareness to some sort of action and nudge the consumer to buy. Both of the cases require radical approaches to marketing.

Effectiveness

In order to measure the success of a digital marketing strategy, you need absolute clarity about what you want to achieve. Each digital channel is different in terms of its reach, engagement and conversion. You might be surprised to note that effectiveness is really hard to measure in certain digital channels. In fact, Facebook had admitted last year that it overstated for how long users watch videos on their site by up to 80%.

It is more important than ever to find new effectiveness metrics. More CEOs are urging Facebook and Google to step up and find a system of reliable metrics to measure the effectiveness of using their platform to market.

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Attentive Reach

Beyond reach, it is time to stress on the attentive reach that takes into consideration more than just ‘viewability’. No doubt social media and other digital channels help you take notice of several brand names, but more than just viewing do they lead to real-time conversions?

Marketers need to analyze how many views their campaign has generated, its reach and the average watch time. Nevertheless reach is important, but on its own, it is not really good enough.

Optimization

Now that with digital marketing, we are armed with the ability to tweak marketing campaigns in real-time, marketers must resist the temptation to make knee-jerk decisions, which tend to take them away from success. It is important to know what you are tracking and how effectively you are tracking so that you can tweak the campaigns when needed.

Is there anything in life which does not have its myths? Be it food, traditions, parenting, travel or for that matter even in digital marketing; there are misconceptions galore.

In spite of the importance of digital marketing in today’s business arena, there are so many misconceptions that are misleading. This is perhaps why many businesses are still apprehensive about adopting digital marketing strategy.

Here are the 6 common illusions & myths about digital marketing that ought to be clear.

Myth no.1: It is not meant for small businesses

It is a common assumption that digital marketing is a part of only the biggest in the corporate world and that small businesses cannot utilize its benefits. On the contrary, digital marketing is so cost-effective that small business owners can easily switch from traditional marketing strategies to digital methods. It helps you to connect with customers (without a call centre). You can sell directly (without even a shop), and you can also analyze your customers’ choice (without hiring market research)!

Also Read: Is Digital Marketing a good Career in India?

Myth no.2: Digital marketing is another word for social media marketing

Nope! You can say that social media marketing is a subset of the whole set called digital marketing. Social media is a tool used in digital marketing, but it is not the only one. Right from mobile-friendly websites and SEO to PPC and email marketing, digital marketing uses a variety of tools to reach out to customers. If you are interested in building a digital marketing strategy, you can search for a good digital marketing course in India.

Myth no.3: Digital marketing results cannot be tracked

Yet another misconception, it should be noted that efficient analytics make it easy to fathom how digital marketing is working for you. Google Analytics is easy to use and gives valuable information regarding how much your website is being visited and which media is working better to sell. Every marketing campaign that you launch via a digital medium can be tracked to details that you didn’t think was possible.

Myth no.4: Large website traffic needed

Digital marketing is effective more with quality than with quantity. So, even if your website doesn’t have a large visitor log, you just need the right audience who is interested in buying your product.

Myth no.5: Make your website, and it is done

Websites are a medium, but they work to attract customers only when you put fresh content. The scope of digital marketing goes beyond websites. It is a combination of various social media sites, algorithms and analytics.

With these misconceptions crushed, digital marketing is the key to a successful business.

The amount of data that is available in digital channels is immense and is indeed lauded for its ability to allow brands to make effective marketing campaigns. With a growing demand in the market for online digital marketing certification programs and jobs, there is no doubt about its immaculate growth.

More Information:

Why pursue a career in digital marketing?

Learn Basics of Digital Marketing Strategy

How to Effectively Use Digital Marketing Tools?

When You Should Change Your Digital Marketing Strategy?

Top 50 Digital Marketing Interview Questions and Answers in 2022

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