CHAPTER 1

Digital Marketing Landscape

Introduction

Digital marketing comprises all marketing efforts that use digital technologies and electronic gadgets or the Internet connectivity. Businesses are using their websites and digital possibilities like the search engines, social media, and e-mail to engage with current and prospective consumers. The digital landscape extends beyond Internet marketing as it also includes alternative options even without the use of Internet like social media marketing, search engine marketing, mobile phones marketing, and various additional other genres of digital media. Using such alternatives of digital media, customers can get any desired information at any time and at any particular place. Utilizing different media not only has an access to brand communication by the corporates, but also offers an opportunity to follow and engage with what the other media channels, acquaintances, societies, business associations, colleagues, and so on are communicating and sharing as well. Digital marketing represents a comprehensive range and assortment of product, brand, and service marketing tactics. For example, Canon iMage Gateway offers the facility of sharing digital pictures. The L’Oréal’s brand Lancôme utilizes newsletters to communicate and engage with consumers for further strengthening customer bonding and brand loyalty.¹ Likewise, McDonald’s employs the online channel network to fortify the engaging brand communications and interactive relationships. They have created an online brand community for children, such as the Happy Meal website for educating and involving the customers to play entertaining and interactive games and as such promote and strengthen the brand customer relationship.² This has facilitated and supported to extend to such consumers who may not be accessible due to time and location constraints of existing distribution networks. As such, digital marketing is being used for communicating, connecting, engaging, and encouraging real-time interactive communications on company’s own website or through its social media manifestations. Companies are utilizing the various social media platforms to dispense their posts to target audience organically without any involvement of the publishers or distributors that is characteristic for any conventional marketing process. Thus, this is the age of marketing online whether via websites, online ads, opt-in e-mails, interactive kiosks, interactive TV, or mobiles.³ In addition, marketers these days within a multichannel buying environment and customer buying journey context are attempting to improve their customer knowledge by using digital technology and online channels like web, e-mail, databases, plus mobile/wireless and digital TV⁴ and are analyzing the customer profile, buyer journey, sales funnel, marketing funnel, behavior value, and loyalty drivers. The interactive consumer market is evolving as the Internet availability and connectivity continues to make waves in the digital marketing industry. The technological, demographic, and market forces are shaping a new digital media culture and as such the rich array of innovative websites are also being created for all the visitors. Many companies are developing online creative and innovative content for visiting customers, extending them occasions and reasons to explore the world, form communities with others, and create their own content and reviews of products and services. Through the use of digital marketing strategies, firms have been able to not only identify and target market needs accurately, but deliver information to clients in real time, as well. Because of the unique interactive features of the Internet, companies are able to integrate and amalgamate the advertising and website content to advocate and promote brand awareness and brand reliability. Online marketing environment⁵ thus offers a plethora of opportunities and also challenges for digital marketing landscape. The digital marketing landscape has progressed and advanced now and it offers a multiplicity of high-tech and cutting-edge formats and mechanisms to marketers. This has ultimately resulted in new business models and a plethora of value-enhancing opportunities for digital marketing practitioners. However, not only is there a need for the businesses to further keep pace with evolving online consumer journey, consumer behavior, and the digital landscape, but also businesses are required to recruit, train, and empower proficient professionals for using efficient processes and technologies to shape the interactive and innovative connect with the consumers. There is also a continuous and consistent need for producing an updated quality content for websites, social media platforms, mobile sites, and customer relationship management.⁶ The issue remains to develop a unifying strategy, governance, or system to create cohesion, reuse assets, or measure effectiveness across the company’s complex value chains. Therefore, in order to develop a critical understanding of the digital marketing landscape, this chapter explores and examines the various aspects of digital marketing process and the implications along with the mobile marketing phenomenon. More specifically, the chapter examines and analyzes the mobile marketing and the technologies associated currently with mobile marketing practices. Finally, the chapter concludes that mobile-synchronized and mobile-optimized websites are not sufficient enough for building and sustaining the online customer relationship and loyalty. There is a need to enhance the mobile experience by utilizing key tools and functionality to build into various social media platforms to end up in-store or on a call leading to real-time conversions.

Digital Marketing

Digital marketing is the process of advertising and promoting the products and services online and building long-term and sustainable customer-engaging relationships in order to add value for the customer and the company.⁷ Digital marketing comprises online advertising, direct marketing, e-mail marketing, and mobile marketing.⁸ Whereas the e-commerce term is utilized when a company offers a creative and engaging platform to sell their products or services online,⁹ the digital marketing landscape represents multiple sophisticated digital technologies that offer a personalized experience to target audience through social media, blogging, content marketing, lead management, paid search, and search engine marketing. Marketers can adopt an omnichannel approach that would not only leverage the unique benefit of print with the convenience but also include the accessibility of digital interactive tools on different digital platforms to get real-time consumer insights.

Digital Marketing Process

The digitalization of business processes for enhancing the value for the consumers is the hallmark of any digital marketing process. It involves a strategic application of digital technology in business processes like procurement, payment production, inventory, marketing, sales, and distribution. For a strong and robust digital marketing process the marketer should clearly define the digital strategy with a focus on integrating search engine marketing and consumer engagement and conversions by striving for omnichannel presence. As such, the focus of any digital strategy should be to convert digital processes and endeavors into meaningful results and to develop, maintain, refine, and update the processes and technologies in a business context. For achieving desired outcomes from the adoption and usage of digital efforts, firms are using multiple digital marketing options where social media marketing, website marketing, online advertising, search engine marketing, e-mail marketing, and mobile marketing are the most used digital marketing tools¹⁰ for reaching out directly to the customers. Remember that, using relevant and appropriate keywords, people search goods and services through search engines.¹¹ These search engines accordingly produce two categories of results: the one that appears on the top along with the related links and are presented on the right side are called as the paid search results and the one that are ranked lower in order are termed as organic or unsponsored results. There is a strong role of search engines in digital marketing and e-commerce as these engines rank-order the searches. It is believed that for higher returns on the investment and for increasing the quality traffic for your brand higher page ranking is required. Search engine searches are also predictive of sales, that is, there can be a parallel drawn between Internet search activity and sales, because having a high ranking in search also results in enhanced and improved branding and this increased brand awareness and a strengthened and sustained positive brand image eventually result in increase in sales. Firms can think of optimizing their websites in order to take maximum advantage of the search engine. One way is to study and understand the search engine requirement and then optimizing your website and content accordingly for achieving the high rank order for organic searches. The other approach of ranking higher in the search results could be to simply use search engine marketing. Firms can have higher rank order by adopting paid advertisement results or search engine advertising. The rank order of such paid results is as per search relevance decided by the search engine algorithm. While following this approach, remember that the search engine users typically look for and inspect only the first 10 to 20 results and as such, it suggests a strong relationship between the search rank order and the level of traffic on your firm’s website. In addition, there is another combination of strategies and techniques called as search engine optimization. This approach can be followed to attain a high-ranking placement in the search results page of a search which will increase the number of visitors to a website. This simply means adjusting, modifying, and aligning your content as per the search engines to rank higher and to get more links from others. The search engines crawl and scan all the content and keywords that have external links and work out the content quality and relevance using search algorithms to rank-order that particular site. Therefore, the marketers and firms should attempt to align, adjust, and modify their websites; improve and enhance their optimized functionality; and make them more user-friendly and relevant so as to align and congregate with the prerequisites of the search engines algorithm to the extent possible. More specifically, the firms should focus more on improving their search process and the desired search results by enhancing and manipulating the content and the links as per search engine specifications and requirements wherein the firms can use the site performance test tools and dashboards to monitor and audit the site performance. Along with this, keep on improving the quality of the content on the pages and increasing the frequency of updates as per the algorithms.¹² Also, do not neglect your landing page, as this is like the appearance and doorway to a superstore that supports the obligations and conditions of any search request. As a marketer ask yourself: Are you capable and competent to respond and resolve the questions and queries of the audience visiting the site? Is the content plausible and comprehensible? For addressing this, the practitioner should ensure to include the appropriate and relevant keywords representing the local language or geographically specific content,¹³ to prompt and encourage nearby consumer to visit, connect and engage with the firm and its website. Similarly, the focus should also be on creating links for the website with external sources. This link building will result in higher acceptance and admiration of the company. Also, consider the click popularity; it means if more people are hitting a particular search item then this particular search result will start ranking higher in order. Marketers can add a unique, attractive, and appealing buying proposition in the search result for gaining click popularity. The search engines algorithms interpret and treat this as a touchstone of the reputation of websites. In sum, search engine optimization is an enduring and persistent progressive activity that requires reanalysis, refinement, maintenance, and improvement on a continuous and regular basis. In addition, the companies can also ensure and do the search engine marketing using search engine advertising or by means of sponsored-search advertising. The advantage of following the sponsored-search advertising route is that both paid and organic searches are shown in order by the search engines. For example, in search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo, a maximum of top three results and ads that are displayed on the left side can be sponsored. As such, the companies usually pay per click basis if the paid search results along with the attached links are clicked by users. Remember, such paid sponsored results will surface only when a visitor is searching and typing in certain specific keywords and the firms can decide accordingly to pay the search engines using either cost per click or cost per acquisition or cost per mention pricing. Firms thus can decide and fix a budget for such paid campaigns and their frequency using one of these pricing models. Remember that in case of such paid advertising campaigns, rank and position are computed and regulated on the basis of overall score using quality and highest bid like criteria, which ultimately is decided and interpreted by the search engine algorithms. In other words, whenever a company attempts to bid the price to pay for a particular keyword then the search engine will search, interpret, and decide utilizing the relevance of the text, audio, video content, and the relevance of the search keywords along with other considerations and interpretations like the past record of the clicks and the performance and relevance score. So firms can modify their digital marketing process accordingly and adopt paid route by using a targeted and controllable real-time budget to gain conversions or click-throughs or more impressions. In this context, it is further recommended that companies should increase the budget for paid advertisement if CTR (click-through rate) is increasing; in other words, a higher number of click-throughs indicate an increase in paid advertising effectiveness, therefore the firms should increase the paid advertising budget to bid for competing keywords without effecting the number of click-throughs. Further, earlier the Internet was used as a distribution network to improve sales and thus intensify performance and growth. Previous research supports that an online existence could provide gains and rewards to consumers along with creating an enhanced and engaging buying experience akin to the conventional bricks-and-mortar storehouses. The prophecy of an upsurge in the online customer journeys and the new innovative and engaging buying experiences have become an interesting research area amongst researchers and practitioners with a focus on the use and advantages of digital tools and technologies and their impact on shoppers. Also, with the advancement of digital technology the core focus area of digital marketing practitioners is to improvise the strategic process of creating, distributing, promoting, and pricing digitally displayed products for real-time targeted consumers in the digital milieu. Further, the new digital technologies such as mobile banking, virtual and augmented worlds, and social media have also emerged on the digital marketing landscape. The marketing process now projects and calls for a major revamp and reorientation due to Internet, big data, and smartphones. Now with everything getting digital, firms are also going for digital marketing. These days the companies are using the interactive chatbots technology to have the advantage of a combination of voice text and messaging simultaneously to have direct interactive conversation with the consumers. Similarly, the messaging applications like WhatsApp and Facebook messenger are using the bots for customized communication and personalized experience quickly and accurately. Today the chatbot technology is also being used to gather the customer usage data for improving and enhancing the interaction and experiences. The digital marketing is now becoming an ever-changing landscape; therefore, knowing where your audience is located has become the key concern for marketers now. Thus, the new mantra for business success is reaching out to your target audience, being able to see and analyze your traffic, and engaging them meaningfully. Content and video marketing strategy are also dominating the current digital marketing space. The dynamic technology has enabled the marketing practitioners to use voice search and voice commands; the use of voice assistants has also enhanced the information access experiences of mobile users. However, this also poses a challenge for marketers to optimize the content to match the requirement of the voice searches, as this requires the incorporation of natural and native conversation along with the local phrases while deciding friendly and familiar keywords for exact voice searches. Similarly, block chain technology has also moved to contribute to digital marketing after disrupting the banking and financial institutions. With the use of block chain technology, firms are now becoming capable and adept in tracking and locating real-time customers and can place their customized ads to target the real customers and real-time engagements and not the bots accordingly. The block chain technology also empowers the customers by allowing them to have more control over how their personal data should be used by marketers. In today’s world, digital marketers are required to make consumer experience more real and authentic and this requires regular assessment and evaluation of strategies and also the regular tracking, monitoring, and updating, as per the latest digital technologies and trends. In the current high-tech and digitally connected era of multiscreen and multidevice, businesses are required to quickly respond and adopt innovative and maybe disruptive digital trends and strategies. For example, firms using artificial intelligence can easily evaluate and interpret the online consumer journeys, marketing, and sales funnels. The real-time data mined from social media platforms, blog posts, and so on can also be analyzed using the analytical digital tools and the real-time data analytics to know and profile the online search and buying patterns. For example, Mastercard has created a chatbot called Facebook Messenger bot that is being used to automate the payments handling processes. It can analyze and predict as to what the consumer desires and it responds like a real-time person. Similarly, AI is also being used for programmatic advertising, that is, real-time bidding for digital display ad buying wherein AI is used to automate the ad buying in order to reach out to a more specific targeted audience resulting in higher conversions and lowering acquisitions costs. The AI technology-based chatbots are also utilized for real-time chat with clients or website visitors. For example, brands like OLA and Uber use this technology to make their customers hire cabs using their mobile application. Users can go to the menu to choose and track the location, type of ride, estimated time of arrival, and payment options. Furthermore, digital marketing has progressed from an operative position and has gained a status of core business enabler for all the practitioners, as artificial intelligence and machine learning are swiftly advancing and fast-tracking the knowledge and understanding of online consumer journeys and patterns and creating pioneering course of actions to serve them more distinctively in a customized and engaging manner. Digital marketing has nowadays turned out to be the highly eminent and innovative constituent of online business. To support this, voice search and the Internet of Things (IoT) gadgets are also offering novel means to dispense customized content and reach real-time customers. For example, Facebook and Google are providing store-specific tracking and real-time customer targeting. Search engines are also helping firms to advertise and reach out to in-market audiences. Similarly, it is worth noting that media houses and media channels are also utilizing digital data. The data-driven approach is now facilitating targeted ad buying across multiple formats, digital displays, and screens. However, marketers are now expected to understand and revisit their digital marketing process as customers converse, write, and search in their natural language using phrases and not in keywords. Focusing only on keywords will eventually diminish the user experience. Therefore, it is suggested the firms should quickly adopt the application of AI and voice search as these are now contributing toward augmenting the consumer engagement and experience during the buying journey.

Role of Mobiles in Digital Landscape

Mobile phone is the suitable device that connects and offers the consumers online access to data and information. It also keeps and stores the personal profile data and identities and addresses of other acquaintances. It offers personalized features as per the preferences and inclinations of users. It is also utilized as a means of self-appearance and expression by personalizing its features, as per the preferences and inclinations of users. Mobile devices facilitate an effective and personalized communication by connecting and locating people through various location-based technologies and global positioning system.¹⁴ Marketers can easily locate, track and target, and offer location-based specific and customized offerings to the potential consumers. As such, the mobile gadgets have gradually become significant part of marketing strategy in modern times. Mobiles offer marketers to use the pertinent marketing data for real-time customers using their location, buying history, occasion and time of purchase, and technology available along with device type. Mobile devices along with their functional phone features provide facility to search for information along with real-time live video and live chats and interactions while shopping. They also connect consumers with the retailers through various mobile applications and, as such, have become a steady and perpetual friend and companion to the users. Remember that nowadays it is the smart mobile-and smart device-based marketing and it is quite different from desktop-based and laptop-based marketing and conventional marketing. Traditional mobile devices had a limited screen size and features like camera, scanners, and global positioning system; however, with the progressing advancement, the introduction of modernized smartphones and smart watches have changed the whole scenario; now not only are such smart devices facilitating computing and communicating features but by using these smart devices users can download and install various business applications, social media platform applications, and utility applications to have direct access to businesses, movies, entertainment, sports, and other utilities. Smartphones and smart gadgets are now the most personal technological devices used by people for booking, ordering, and making payments online for goods and services. Therefore, smart mobile- and smart devices-based marketing has become a latest and emergent theme of significance and excellence. Conventionally speaking, the intensification of mobile marketing is there due to additional reasons like high worldwide access and penetration of mobile devices and purchase and adoption of mobile devices with larger screens along with the availability of higher and faster connection speeds with the ever-growing network coverage¹⁵; mobiles are able to facilitate the access to more and more users and offer them personalized and customized propositions than any other digital marketing media. The main benefit of the mobile device and other smart devices is that they offer and support the users to obtain personalized information and make payment transactions at any time and at any location because the smart mobiles and other smart devices are wearable, portable, and remain on most of the times.

Mobile Marketing in Digital Landscape

Mobile marketing is a comprehensive expression, representing marketing communications, and includes and covers terms like mobile commerce, mobile advertising, and wireless marketing and advertising. In other words, it is a type of marketing communication that utilizes the smart-phones and the smart devices using Internet or wireless connections to give users the customized offerings as per desired time, location, and occasion. This also provides them regular relevant updates about the new goods and services. However, in most of the previous research, the discussion is about conventional mobile marketing, utilizing the feature phones or conventional mobile phones with limited and simple features and proficiencies. One of the approaches followed in the previous research was to associate mobile marketing with traditional electronic commerce wherein m-commerce is considered as a subcategory of e-commerce, and the only point of differentiation is the type of the device or channel used. Likewise, there is another approach that is focused on mobile commerce wherein all users can buy, sell, and exchange relevant information using mobile gadgets wirelessly contrary to e-commerce which emphasizes on wired computing network environment.¹⁶

As such, we need to understand that it is a means of conveying personalized posts from business to mobile users. Mobile marketing essentially utilizes permission-based interactive communication. It is more explicitly explained as e-commerce activity that is performed using web supporting mobile gadgets and technologies. It also includes reaching out and engaging with the interactive audience. Broadly, there are two views about mobile marketing where one is firm centric and the other is generic and represents the conventional approach of marketing communication. Remember that mobile marketing is not telling and selling but satisfying consumer needs and as such these needs and expectations are not restricted to place or time zone. They are spontaneous and have to be understood, analyzed, and satisfied as fast as possible in order to convert them to sales, as the interface and an interactive communication between a business and a prospective consumer lasts for a very less time and is usually not sustainable and engaging at all. In sum, it is believed and proposed here that the core of mobile marketing has to be the firms’ intent to create and provide value to the customers rather than merely focusing on the technology involved, as marketing is shaped by its objectives and strategies and not the technology involved as such. The technologies can be used as the tools to realize the marketing goals. (See Exhibit 1.1 depicting the mobile marketing approach.)

Technology has enabled firms to offer products and services along with the location-specific promotions to users by identifying their location and site in real time. In essence, the firms are reaching out to the targeted shoppers to offer them a real value proposition by utilizing their spatial and temporal interests and preferences.¹⁷ The convergence and integration of technology, processes, tools, and applications have further enabled the smart devices to support the marketers’ endeavors to send location-based, highly personalized, and context-aware services to customers.¹⁸ The firms can offer these location-specific personalized services in two different formats: one where the customer seeks on her own further details about the goods and services and the other where customers get the automated AI-based communication. Remember that the cell phone users tend to disclose and share their location and other personal details like phone number, e-mail id, and pin code, either on social media or while seeking value-added customized offers from the firms.²⁰ Therefore, these users create and share cumulative extents of media content,²¹ and marketers can thus adopt targeted mobile advertising as it is perceived as relevant and useful by users who are located at or close to a position related to the advert.²² The purpose of such paid mobile-based interactive and personalized communication should be to influence the attitudes, intentions, and behavior of users²³ by sending context-sensitive, extremely personalized advertising to the right person at the right time at the right place.²⁴ Further, unlike other communication types, the modern mobile communication is universal, pervasive, and more content- and context-specific equipped with latest technology and sensors They have advanced and offered numerous novel advertising techniques, and empowered businesses companies to influence their customers more regularly and effectively. However, the practitioners should advance their comprehension and expertise related to smart mobile know-how and technology, specially, gaining an insight into how, when, where, and how frequently the users use the smart mobile features and the technology and the other related services in wireless and wired environment. Knowing such user behavior can be really instrumental in creating and communicating the personalized and meaningful messages to a specifically identified target audience. Using mobile for sending, receiving, and forwarding personalized text and audio messages with ease at low cost connotes the most pivotal way of utilizing the mobile communication for building and enhancing customer bonding and loyalty. However, studies have shown that shoppers have strong unenthusiastic and negative outlooks about trustworthiness and genuineness of the source, the time of getting the message, and the personalization and context relevance of the content²⁵ as senders broadcast to a larger target audience using some databases. Such bulk messaging defeats the very purpose of connecting and engaging with the users and this puts off the users and prompts them to avail the do not disturb (DND) services. The unsolicited messages that include images, text, audio, animations and videos, and so on, should therefore be avoided. However, the firms that are sending more personalized, solicited, and desirable mobile communication with more control in the hands of the receivers can get more positive outcomes.

Exhibit 1.1 Mobile marketing approach

Source: By Author

Quick Response Codes

A quick response code, also called a QR code, is a two-dimensional, readable, and scannable barcode that directs consumers to a website or to take a specific course of action. In other words, it is most commonly utilized to trace and track information about goods and services being offered by the firms. It is also repeatedly and regularly used in the advertising and promotion campaigns. These codes can be found in a variety of forms such as printed advertisements, movie posters, products and packaging, and on many other printed materials. It is especially convenient for smartphone users also. These codes have black squares arranged in a grid (matrix) on a white background wherein data are projected in parallel and perpendicular routes to represent data in a more visual and readable form. Firms can store and represent more data by simply varying the width of the parallel lines; these lines are popularly termed as linear or one-dimensional bar-codes that can be read by optical scanners. Increased smartphone penetration and access to high-speed Internet have led to a surge in the use of the QR codes. Modern-day smartphones and smart devices have QR code reader feature in them that permits smartphone camera to act as a scanner. The QR code readers and scanners can extract information from the patterns shown and outlined in the code matrix. These codes are regarded as an innovative progression and advancement from older, two-dimensional barcodes. Such QR codes are a link between offline and online in the smartphone age. In the absence of links, these codes help navigate the likely new users and loyal consumers to a brand’s store, social media account, or promos. Research has also indicated that customers value and recognize the accessibility, manageability convenience, and rewards that they obtain from QR code campaigns very optimistically. It is suggested that marketers should think about the benefit that scanning of the code will offer to the consumer. If the prospect is already interested in your offering then she would like to get to your site link quickly and easily to seek more information or even to place an online order. Therefore, offer such benefits that motivate the customers to scan, for example, a coupon, an exciting video, or a guide in pdf format. (See Exhibit 1.2 projecting various types of QR codes and their functions.)

In context of the QR codes types shown in the exhibit 1.2 it is recommended that the practitioners can use QR label, to sales invoices for navigating the clients to new offerings or using the codes on business card driving toward special discount coupons. It is also suggested to always utilize and prefer the dynamic QR codes than static QR codes. These dynamic codes permit you to easily edit the content like text, images, and links without reprinting the code. Apart from QR codes there are other trendy formats like EZcode and Data matrix. While a two-dimensional code can store more than 7,000 characters, the conventional codes like UPC/EAN; one-dimensional barcode is capable of storing around 30 characters. However, from smart mobile/smart device marketing perspective, it is suggested that along with the usage of QR codes there is a need to create an ecosystem of smartphone and smart devices supporting advanced technologies that can provide alternatives and preferences and new innovative and engaging experiences to marketers and customers. Mobile marketing has now become a significant part of any marketing planning process. More and more, people are using their smartphone devices to explore and search customized relevant information. Using technologically advanced smartphones, tablets, or wearable smart devices users can get relevant and engaging communication using “near me” search options to meet their specific expectations and needs. Web browsers, weather apps, and many other useful apps that users download frequently use the geolocation. Using these data marketers can track the users from geolocation to actual location and can send notifications to offer an expected solution like coupons, rewards, recommendation promotion, or any other related content to meet their need and wants.

Exhibit 1.2 Various types of QR codes

Location-Based Marketing

Location-based marketing provides the facility to individualize the content as per the context of the individual user, bridging the physical and digital context to give meaningful and immediately useful actionable content at the time when it can be used. The location-based marketing can be explained as the procedure of activating and sending a notification or action when a device user enters or exits a predefined geolocation or geo-fenced location. One way to know the location of the user is to use the GPS signal of the mobile device. However, inside the buildings, the GPS signals may not reach the devices; therefore, in such cases, beacon technology such as Bluetooth or Wi-Fi should be used to locate users. Using this, marketers can send some location-based actionable notification and information for users frequently visiting a particular location. The other technologies used in location-based apps include NFC and radio frequency identification (RFID). By showcasing and incorporating NFC into marketing strategy, the practitioners can have an edge over competitors by creating and offering an engaging experience to consumers. Using this data transfer technology, marketers can tag products and services. These NFC tags can direct the users to a specific website blog or social media, video, or pdf files. However, NFC can only function within a short range, but the data transmission is much faster than the Bluetooth and its short range supports it to become suitable for secure mobile payments. Businesses every now and then are emerging with innovative and specific applications, resulting in value addition and revenue generation alternatives; these applications can be related to communication, information, entertainment, and commerce. For example, Domino’s Pizza has addressed the multidevice concerns by introducing applications for all mobile operating systems like Android, iOS, and Windows Phone to serve multiple groups of consumers. Consumers using this application can now see the detailed menu, order a pizza of their choice, explore coupons and discount schemes, and search nearby Domino’s outlet. Thus, for any successful mobile marketing application there is a need to develop user-friendly personalized design that can enhance and augment the consumer experience and engagements. (See Table 1.1 showing types of mobile marketing and its applications.)

Table 1.1 Types of mobile marketing applications

Also, it is observed that all everyday technologies have been merged into a single device called the smart device or smartphone which has now become a customized and personalized device for communication and interaction on various platforms. It is seen that smartphones and smart wearable devices are outperforming the desktops and laptops; these smart devices are addressing the changing dynamics of virtual digital world where smart multiscreen and multidevices are facilitating the global access and networking. Advanced smart, integrated, and converged technologies will continue to offer progressively meaningful and substantial means of establishing sustainable brand positioning and thus expanding the revenues and brand equity of firms. The smart mobile- and smart device-based marketing landscape is transforming and evolving very fast. Although the influence of mobile marketing activities has gained momentum and drawn attention of the practitioners, the studies in the mobile marketing field are still limited, are highly fragmented, and lack the common ground needed to accurately depict the field as a whole.²⁶ Therefore, there is a strong felt need to study the impact of high-speed and low-speed data connectivity, battery recharge time, talk time, standby time, front camera, and back camera along with the studies on the impact of additional features like face recognition, finger prints, and other sensors, impact of use of location detection, and easy sync with social media platforms. The smart technology-enabled cellphones have further advanced the lifestyle of the users. These smartphones are now frequently used for effecting the imbursements and compensations. These smart electronic transactions utilize an electronic procedure for initiation, authorization, or realization of payment.²⁷ Such a smart authorization of payment can be done from a remote location or it can also be a proximity exchange of personal information through smart devices. The contactless payment methods are convenient and cost effective for firms and clients as users can pay using their smartphones at any point of purchase. The smart devices utilize the near-field communication (NFC) application or a contactless application to pay and interact with the contactless payment systems of the vendors. For users as such, these smartphones have thus transformed into electronic wallets as these devices support the barcode applications and/or the Wi-Fi-enabled contactless card readers that can be used for making payments at any point of sales.

Also, in future there can be more studies exploring and describing the innovative ways to generate customer value and the impact of the proliferation of sensors in smart devices on improving communication and enhancing consumer engagements. The smart experience that starts on a smart device should also result in store visit or a call and ultimately in sales. Mobile marketing utilizes the tools to track, interpret, and estimate the efficacy of a mobile campaign very promptly. Using mobile marketing tools and technologies the practitioners are attempting to track the delivery of the notifications and the personalized messages, open rate, and CTRs along with the purchases. However, most of the firms focus on one or two facets of their mobile ad campaign like track and evaluate the delivery and CTR and struggle with interpretation of metrics used and their role in assessing the conversion rates. Therefore, understanding this is indispensable for firms to examine and estimate the ad campaigns’ likely attainments against the costs of information and data upkeeps and for taking appropriate decisions related to target audience and campaign content and contexts. The most challenging aspects in mobile marketing are still its reliability, consistency, and authenticity in terms of source, content, and quality of the communication. Many firms that are adopting mobile marketing are still lacking experience in overcoming such challenges and as such have no specific mobile-based marketing strategy. These days, merely optimizing the websites for smart mobile devices is not sufficient enough for maintaining customer loyalty; there is a need to enhance the mobile experience by utilizing key digital marketing tools and functionality to build into various social media platforms to end up in-store or on a call leading to real-time conversions. Therefore, marketers need to acquire critical insights into the digital marketing processes in order to utilize digital technologies and tools for marketing in the digital world effectively and efficiently.

Conclusion

Information-based decision making and the use of records of data for continuous improvement have now become the in-action approach of the businesses. The firms across businesses are attempting to follow more consumer data-driven decision making. For business excellence, the firms are now promoting the data-driven culture by utilizing consumer data-centric interfaces. In this connected world, the firms can record and store all the interactions and the transactions to create a shared interface for easy access to the active and encrypted information and reports and their real-time analyses. Therefore, the goal for any intelligent corporate should be to become a data-driven enterprise at the earliest to fully exploit the power of digital technologies. Therefore, Chapter 2 discusses the significance of mobility services, multicloud services, and artificial intelligence to become a data-driven and AI-powered enterprise to compete, differentiate, and successfully reach consumers.

Endnotes

1. Merisavo, M., and R. Mika. 2004. “The Impact of Email Marketing on Brand Loyalty.” Journal of Product and Brand Management 13, no. 6, pp. 498–505.

2. (Rowley 2004)

3. (Chaffey and Smith 2008)

4. Chaffey (2007)

5. Gurau (2008)

6. Edelman and Singer (2015)

7. (Turban, et al. 2008)

8. Chaffey and Ellis-Chadwick (2012)

9. (Chaffey 2007)

10. Ryan (2014)

11. Shih, Chen and Chen (2013)

12. (Parikh and Desmukh 2013)

13. (Kumar et al. 2013)

14. Gordon, Bruner II and Anand Kumar (2007)

15. Pousttchi and Wiedemann (2006)

16. Ngai and Gunasekaran (2007)

17. (Unni and Harmon 2007); (Mishra 2000)

18. (Dhar, et al. 2011)

19. (Tang, et al. 2010)

20. (Multisilta, et al 2009)

21. (Manyika, et al 2011)

22. (Leppäniemi, Karjaluoto and Salo 2004)

23. (Burmann and Warwitz 2014)

24. (Zabadi 2012; Zhang and Li 2012)

25. (Varnali and Toker 2010)

26. (Pousttchi 2007)