DIGITAL MARKETING FOR INTERNATIONAL TRADE
Digital marketing has been around for about fifteen years, but it seems to get much more complicated: online exchanges, demand-side platforms, real-time bidding, advert optimisation and re-targeting. The main question today is, what is digital marketing?
Is it a powerful tool, a mysterious beast, a total headache or a revolutionary medium? In the 1900s, department store owner John Wanamaker developed advertising as we know it today and it worked, business boomed. The 1990s came with the digital age yet some quarters dismissed the internet as a powerful marketing tool. In the early 2000s, Google emerged and digital marketing grew in bounds and leaps. In simple terms, digital marketing involves product marketing via various online platforms on the internet.
The Impact of Digital Marketing on International trade
Digital marketing has made the world a small place for the business community around the world, this draws from the availability of internet around the world. Customers can always keep in touch and see what companies are updating about their services and products every other time. Nowadays, companies in the Americas or Europe can effectively advertise their services and goods to potential clients/customers in Africa or Asia. Doing business has never been easier, digital marketing has made it easier to reach out to new markets, this promotes international trade by opening new markets that never existed.
“…digital marketing has made it easier to reach out to new markets…”
The current debate by most companies revolves around the effects of being in a constant interactive mode with potential customers and the cost of advertising via traditional modes. New innovations in this digital age have transformed the media environment, and this has led to a shift by sellers and companies to explore cheaper and more efficient methods of advertising compared to the traditional avenues. The constant interactive mode creates a conducive environment for better and increased personalization at low costs. This creates a platform for companies around the around the world to collect data about different markets. The result is that companies can make tailored services and products for certain markets.
Even as digital marketing and internet availability have transformed world trade, it is important to note it does not solve all export-related problems such as inadequate production capacity or poor quality. However, the information on the internet can be used as a remedial tool to improve and correct some of these problems. For example, an agricultural company in country X can use Information from the internet to improve coffee production and enhance processing. The company will then market a better product. To reach new markets the aspect of digital marketing comes in which is more efficient than traditional marketing strategies.
In the past few years, digital marketing has transformed the media environment, it has created innovative ways of advertising goods and services. This is just the beginning of what is coming in the years ahead. International trade between countries will become increasingly competitive as companies around the world will try to get more innovative marketing strategies through the internet.
