Digital Marketing and the Millennial
Written by Dr. Srini. R. Srinivasan, Associate Professor of Strategic Management & Marketing at SP Jain’s Digital Marketing & Metrics Program.
Over the past 15 years, digital media platforms have revolutionised marketing, offering new ways to reach, inform, engage, sell, learn about, and provide service to customers. Millennials, also called Generation Y, are an essential ingredient in the development of e-commerce. Having grown up socialising and making purchases online, this generation’s usage of e-commerce will continue to grow along with its discretionary income. Millennials access digital media on a daily basis with the help of computers and mobile phones and have the ability to communicate and purchase from a supplier anywhere in the world. Due to their familiarity and usage of digital media, they have been identified as a driving force in online shopping. The Internet, social networking, and inter-active technologies are empowering Millennials to be more active in the creation and advancement of products and brands. Word-of-mouth goes around the world these days. This generation wants to have input regarding all aspects of a product, even its promotion.
Digital media refer to electronic media that disseminate information in the digital format. This includes any media available via computers, mobile phones, smart phones, or other digital devices such as digital outdoor signs. The Internet is a prominent venue of digital marketing. Digital advertising is a form of promotion that uses the Internet for the express purpose of delivering marketing messages. The Internet has become the fastest growing advertising medium of this decade. Advertisers spend hundreds of millions of dollars to place their ads on high-traffic websites. With the increasing usage of digital media by consumers, more companies are using digital marketing to reach their target markets.
Digital marketing is the practice of promoting products and services using digital distribution channels. Digital marketing is also referred to as e-marketing and includes digital or online advertising, which delivers marketing messages to customers. The growth in the prominence of digital, social media, and mobile (DSMM) marketing has paralleled technological innovations such as the increasing penetration of home Internet and affordable high speed broadband connections, the development of social media platforms such as Facebook, and widespread consumer adoption of “smart” mobile devices. Such innovation has also influenced the ways that consumers behave across all types of market settings. For example, just as the rapid growth in mobile adoption has opened new marketing communications and targeting possibilities, the ubiquity of social media has changed how buyers share information with each other and interact with brands. Thus, the “digital transformation of marketing” over the past years is reflected in the ways that firms and customers have embraced new technologies and most interestingly, how technology has facilitated novel market behaviours, interactions, and experiences.
Successful marketers should realign their techniques in order to positively engage these vocal consumers. Internet-empowered consumers are ready to ‘jump on the bandwagon’ if the digital message appeals to them, or shun a product if the message annoys them. Marketers should connect with this new generation of consumers on their turf, the digital arena; this will facilitate successful communications.
About the author:
With more than 18 years of corporate and academic experience, Dr. Srini. R. Srinivasan is the Associate Professor of Strategic Management and Marketing. He holds a PhD degree in Management and is an approved research guide in Mumbai University. His areas of interests include Strategic Management, Marketing Strategies, Marketing, and Retail Shoppers behaviour. A member of several advisory boards, author of several textbooks, and the Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Indian Retail (JIR), Dr. Srini is a recipient of Rajiv Gandhi award from Indian Solidarity Counsel.
He has also published numerous articles, Research Papers, and Case Studies in national and international journals, magazines, and newspapers of repute. His recent case study has been published with Ivey Publication and he is a Consultant for many organisations in the areas of Strategic Marketing and Retail strategies.
