The digital platforms that people use have started serving for purposes related to businesses. As Indians saw a shift in their life with the internet and mobile phones, marketing strategies also were upgraded to what we call digital marketing today. This have made digital marketing, a crucial aspect of today’s businesses and as much significant as making a product is. This article thus explores about the digital marketing landscape a city like Kochi has, including the major trends and challenges that might be faced.
Businesses have started thriving with strategies implemented across search engines, social media, and emails, and they are being used to bring leads and success to each venture. As every business has been using digital marketing in its promotional activities, it has shaped the ever-growing landscape for digital marketing.
Importance of digital marketing in Kochi
Kochi, the economic capital of Kerala, is a hub of startups and companies, and they have been using digital marketing guide to keep their promotional activities budget-friendly and user-engaging. To build their brand’s online presence, search engines and social media were utilised to attract specific audiences. The digital marketing services thus served were used differently at different stages of a business’s growth and help in gaining a competitive advantage over product sales.
Digital marketing helps in targeting the audience and gaining reach very easily with allocating marketing costs effectively. Targeting the customers doesn’t merely mean turning them into customers for once and never turning for them. It also means that digital marketing is done to re-engage the same customers and lure new potential customers by making them reach to you for their needs when they buy a product. This can help a business gain the attention of a chunk of people, and further enhancing services can strengthen loyalty from the side of customers.
Rise of digital marketing in Kochi
The time traditional marketing had proved to be insufficient enough to market a certain product/ service, businessmen looked for another way for marketing. Slowly, the majority of people started buying mobile phones, tablets, which had begun to be a part of their lives. The activities in such devices were earlier constrained to calls and messaging, and now, smart devices have applications for payment, shopping, messaging, contacting, browsing and so much more. This was the perfect chance for businesses in Kochi to strategise applications for marketing and attracting customers.
The major players for marketing turned out to be search engines like Google and social media like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc. Thus, companies gave themselves a chance to promote by building and optimising their websites for the services they provided offline, and created their own social media handles where they posted advertisements about their products and coupons. Understanding the potential of such a means did thus provided a new way of marketing known as digital marketing.
Key Digital Marketing Trends in Kochi
Digital marketing is an ever-evolving landscape where new methods arise that complement existing strategies. Areas of digital marketing, like SEO, SEM, SMM, email marketing, etc., are updated with new technologies. So, discussing these trends is essential given the changes that happen in daily life. Some trends might improve user experience, while others can ease a business’s workload. They can be as follows:-
- Role of AI
With the advent of AI, many time-consuming tasks have been much simplified. Common tasks like data analytics and insights, customer support, advertising, and content creation are performed using available AI tools. Even though it may be costly, their ability to comprehend the current trends make them highly valuable. Using a particular AI tool for a particular task mentioned above gives a chance to develop ideas for marketing and businesses much faster than it was supposed to. One of the example could be the emergence of AI chatbots that assists in providing relevant content on any topics, be it on product development or marketing.
- Voice Search Optimisation
Besides text-based search, voice search has gained prominence, and SEO activities based on voice search differ so from traditional SEO.Google Assistant, Alexa, Siri, etc., are virtual assistants mostly used for getting information about even the smallest queries. Therefore, digital marketers should consider voice search when they are involved in SEO and optimise the content that can be made available when they are used. Some ways to optimise for voice search are adding long-tail keywords and snippets after thorough research, auditing and optimising the content for the best one to be heard, performing local SEO, and monitoring the website performance.
- Virtual and Augmented Reality experiences
It’s the latest innovation in the digital marketing arena. By using this technology, creating content for promotions and introducing the latest product becomes easier. Even though such a technology is still in its infant stages, it is believed to be developed in the near future. Thereby, it can capture customer attention by giving them a perfect product experience, reducing people’s regret after purchasing. Personalisation and marketing can go hand in hand with this emerging technology.
- Social Commerce
Using social media to build a business is essential in digital marketing. In addition to building a website and enhancing it, there’s an opportunity to deal with all those by building an e-commerce shop within a social media platform. All activities that constitute e-commerce can be handled from now on in respective social media platforms. Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, etc, are major shops for social commerce that attract a wide range of audiences. These audiences can be well-targeted, and converted into customers. Through their reviews and purchases, customers’ social profiles can be collected, enabling them to improve their marketing strategy and gain additional revenue, too.
- Local SEO
Geotargeting is now a part of local SEO, which is used for making a business visible locally in the search engines. This helps in building location-based content and advertisements that can attract local audience. Geotargeting uses geographical location from GPS data, IP address, etc, to create content and engage in promotions. This will make the customers have easier visibility and accessibility in a particular area and improve its search engine rankings. So, this feature will allow local SEO to be used in an advanced way.
- Personalisation and Data Privacy
Personalised marketing implies marketing products by helping the customers with what the seller can provide and then engage them into making purchase. There are many businesses that have started introducing personalisation with the data that the customer provides. As data is collected, there is a concern over data privacy for the customers. As times for digital marketing have come a long way, securing customer data has also become a part of digital marketing, and it is a responsibility of business owners. Business owners must keep their eyes on illegal access or use and be restricted to those who require that data so that consumer trust remains.
- Blockchain in Digital Advertising
Without digital advertising reaching real customers and excessive interference of intermediaries, companies could lose their money invested in marketing. Such a challenge brings ad frauds like fake clicks, impressions, and clicks that can drain the allocated marketing budget. By implementing the blockchain, the need for intermediaries can be reduced and further make advertising more transparent and efficient.
- Content Marketing
Content marketing has also taken a new turn in the digital landscape. More than creating content in an interactive manner like videos, ads, etc, brands can use other visual content types like films, polls, and quizzes. The idea conveyed by making this type of content can build a sense of awareness and loyalty among the customers and boost conversions and sales.
Opportunities for Digital Marketers in Kochi
The trends in digital marketing have solved and developed the existing problems and strategies, respectively. Yet, the whole concept of digital marketing has embraced all aspects of people’s lives. Even in Kochi, opportunities and need for this marketing have built a different era of marketing. Using technology and innovations in Kochi can open doors to certain opportunities, and let’s discuss them as follows.
Digital marketing is said to have an expanding market as it is needed by businesses ranging from e-commerce to local stores. Thus, digital marketers can provide the required services for businesses aiming to build their online presence and diversified marketing strategies. Digital marketing needs solutions for product sales, and targeting the audience proves to be the core of it. As demand for it increases, the city has a supportive environment to ensure it gains business momentum.
We should also understand that there are industries that have applied such marketing strategies for their purposes. These industries include healthcare, education, e-commerce, real estate, tourism, etc., which have created websites or engaged social media platforms to promote their services and products. So, these industries can help digital marketers use the best marketing strategy.
Several digital marketing institutes in Kochi also train aspiring digital marketers to build their careers. They aim to provide the required expertise in SEO, SEM, SMM, content marketing, and more. Some other opportunities for aspiring digital marketers are to attend seminars and workshops and try getting online certifications and courses that may help them get employed.
Challenges in Kochi’s Digital Marketing Landscape
Even though we boast of digital marketing in today’s era, certain limitations hinder its scope. These limitations either arise due to the technological gap between the developed and developing, a lack of understanding of the society and its culture, or maybe due to the inefficiency in data management. Let’s discuss some of the challenges in detail as follows:-
- Digital Divide
Still, some people aren’t very active on digital platforms, and there can be a gap that can challenge digital marketing campaigns. This is expected to be much in rural areas, and strategies are to be built in accord with this too, as the rural people may also constitute a significant portion of potential customers.
- Lack of understanding the local sentiment
Having digital marketing without local content and aligning the taste of culture also outruns the effectiveness of digital marketing campaigns. As India is a diverse country with several local languages and cultures, any activity would matter to the people who are attached to such influences. If that doesn’t go well, a digital marketer has to create content by researching how local audiences consume the content and make a purchase. This enables better targeting of local audiences with the content they resonate with.
- Data privacy and security
Targeting customers is further engaged and ensures their data is safe with them and does not leak out of any fraudulent activities in the data management. Consumers may feel at ease buying a certain product or hiring a service when their data is protected very well. Thus, brand owners gain customer trust for their products, making data a very important aspect of customer targeting.
These challenges constitute the major portion of limitations under digital marketing. These are to be considered by marketers as well as businessmen because one of them can have a negative impact on product sales and marketing. There are other limitations, too, which imply that small businesses face barriers in employing marketing resources, increased competition between digital marketing agencies, and difficulty keeping pace with rapidly changing and emerging trends in digital marketing. So, these challenges must be overcome by researching and reaching out to solutions and nudging the solution to a particular limitation.
The Future of Digital Marketing in Kochi
As we conclude our discussion on the digital marketing landscape in Kochi, let’s summarize some points. Kochi is a hub of digital marketing agencies that aim to thrive by providing services like SEO, SEM, SMM, content marketing, email marketing, etc. These agencies are a reflection of the practical strategies for marketing, and there will be changes that might turn out the current trends. Therefore, every agency, like digital marketers, has to be at the forefront of the trends, opportunities, and challenges that the future will pose. Even though there is a huge space for the development of digital marketing in Kochi, learning and shaping the trends that influence the current reality and how the strategies act upon it also equips the space. In simpler words, the future of digital marketing will rest over the marketers who will weave its scope with their potential.
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