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Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Digital marketing is built on the core principles of traditional marketing


Kenscio Digital Marketing Pvt Ltd is among India's early pioneers and a leading provider of Digital Direct Marketing solutions and services. It is among the few players to effectively plan, develop, manage and execute digital one to one communication campaigns for a large number of reputed companies in India.

Mr. Manjunatha Kutarahalli is the Co-Founder and CEO of Kenscio. He has over 28 years of experience in technology and product management. He has vast experience in large-scale operations, building competencies in niche technology areas, turnaround and high growth companies that develop leading-edge applications for diverse industry channels and client needs.

In 2009, Mr. Manjunatha co-founded Kenscio Digital Marketing, a digital direct marketing company, catering services to world's largest players and managed to get 50 clients in its very first year. He did his M.Tech in Computer Science and Engineering from IIT Madras and then one-year senior management programme from IIM Kolkata. He is an electronic gadgets freak and enjoys writing blogs.

Mr. Manjunatha spoke to The Hindu Opportunities on careers in digital marketing field.

What propelled the digital marketing boom in India?

India's Internet population is growing at an exponential rate propelled by factors like de-regulation in the telecom sector, increased use of social networking sites, adoption of e-commerce, and daily deals portals trading goods and services in economical way, etc. So, to tap the growing Internet audience, marketers are now exploring opportunities to connect to them through digital mediums like the Internet, search engines, email, social, mobile, video etc.

Who constitute the typical audience of a digital marketing strategy?

The primary audience is from metros and tier 1 cities who are tech-savvy and want the convenience and comfort of shopping online from their offices or homes. There is a considerable increase in audience from tier 2 and 3 cities. Age group from 20 to 45 years is the most active audience, and they are also aiding their parents who are above 50s. Male shoppers are still the largest audience for online marketers, while women centric portals continue to expand.

How is a career in digital marketing different from a career in traditional marketing?

Digital marketing career covers the basics of traditional marketing and marketing in a new internet environment. A career in digital marketing would cover internet marketing paradigm, web analytics and intelligence – a quantitative way to interpret data and create market intelligence for decision makers, market research to include internet mediums, digital marketing issues, consumer behaviour and internet laws.

What are the unique roles available in digital marketing field? What are the skills required to assume those roles?

Digital media provides a variety of career roles. Content Marketing, SEO, SEM, Email Marketing, Mobile Marketing, Blog and Article Marketing, Reputation Management, Web Design, Video Marketing, Social Media Marketing and Media Planning are some specialised areas.

Each of these roles requires unique skill sets; sometime these are pure technical roles. For instance, a SEO marketing professional has to know how to optimise the website for better organic ranking in various search engines for key words consumers may be querying. An email-marketing specialist should possess email-marketing skills and be aware of relevant laws governing email-marketing communication. He should have an insight to consumer behaviour and analytics, and marketing spends and returns.

Should every aspirant of a career in digital marketing possess both technology and marketing skills?

Understanding of the Internet technology is a must for a successful career in digital marketing along with the core traditional marketing skills. An understanding of the Internet consumer behaviour, web analytics, consumer engagement with different digital channels, applicable rules and regulations governing each digital channels and for protecting consumers, are very important for a digital marketer.

Can professionals from traditional marketing upgrade to digital marketing? What does the transition involve?

Yes, digital marketing techniques and expertise is built on the core principles of traditional marketing. For those who have a basic degree in computers, transition is very easy. For those who don't have a basic degree in computers it would be a little difficult. Also, there are several certification, diploma and postgraduate courses on digital marketing from several institutes, industry, organisations and universities.

What does it take to be at the top in this field?

The success for any marketing function is to assist the business. Marketing spend is directly related to sales. As digital marketing is more measurable, the performance of digital marketing professional is easily assessed. So he has to master the marketing medium and show results. He has to experiment with different digital marketing mediums, and find where the customers are most engaged and which medium provides the best returns on the investment both for acquisition of new customers or influencing existing customers to buy more.

What are the challenges professionals in digital marketing face?

There are two kinds of challenges. Technical challenges include how each digital channel works, and the corresponding expertise required in those, implementation and day to day execution. Marketing challenge is to understand the consumer behaviour and assimilating marketing analytics and ROI from different mediums.

How is the future for digital marketing professionals?

The future for digital marketing professionals is bright. The country's Internet population is predicted to reach 25% of the population, and e-commerce industry to reach 100 crores in revenues by 2015. There is a big need of skilled manpower in this industry. So, traditional marketers should acquire digital marketing skills and new marketing professionals can take up digital marketing courses and pursue a bright career here.

Source: THE HINDU: » FEATURES » OPPORTUNITIES
http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-opportunities/article3548483.ece

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