Marketing has come a long way in the past decade. Earlier, Marketing consisted of print and television advertisements which were underscored by catchy one-liners and self-promotion. Businesses would spend hours wondering about that one single sentence that could generate enquiries, make passers-by enter a shop or make the marketing flyer worth a read.
However, as Marketing has moved more and more into the digital space, just punch lines or blatant self-promotion isn’t enough to generate interest from the consumers. The Internet has opened up numerous channels of discovery giving consumers lots of choices. But at the same time, the consumer is also weighed down by too many choices.
So, what does a consumer do amidst several similar choices? Typically, the consumer runs a filtering process in his mind that will take him to the best service or product that he’s looking for. Here I am assuming that the basic filtering in terms of offering, budget, location etc is done and now the consumer needs to choose from 5 equally suitable companies.
Now, this is where the companies have an opportunity to stand out from each other, create a unique identity and win over the customer. And, this is what has taken Digital Marketing to a whole new level. Today, the consumer has the intelligence to see through glorious self-promotions, advertisements, catchy tag-lines. The consumer tries to find out the real substance in a company. And that substance is found in the company’s knowledge in its area of expertise or in the transparent information that it gives out about its offering. This knowledge or information can do wonders for a potential customer – It can comfort him, make him feel that his money will be in safe hands and assure him that results will be delivered without fail.
