Electronic Marketing: Characteristics, Types and Methods of e-Marketing

E-marketing is the process of online marketing of a product, service, enterprise or brand. E-marketing not only includes marketing done on the Internet but also involves marketing through wireless media and e-mail.

Electronic marketing can include indirect and interactive marketing elements or direct response marketing. When e-marketing strategies are implemented correctly, the return on investment (ROI) can be higher than traditional marketing.

Electronic Marketing: Characteristics, types and methods of e-marketing

Electronic Marketing: Characteristics, Types and Methods of e-Marketing

What is Electronic Marketing?

Electronic Marketing is the process of marketing a product, service or brand using the Internet.

E-Marketing is the future of shopping today, as it has contributed to changing the ways of buying and selling services and products.

E-marketing is every activity that is done on the Internet to reach a potential or target customer, in order to market a product, service, or content and achieve the highest level of sales, and then gain the highest level of profits.

E-marketing relies mainly on the emergence of e-commerce, which helps to reduce the apparent gap between the manufacturer and the consumer.

E-Marketing manages to achieve the satisfaction of a large number of customers because it provides many options for buying online.

E-marketing can be defined as the advertisement of services and products and their sale through the Internet, through the use of websites and e-mail.

Although electronic marketing is a relatively new field, it has witnessed significant growth and development during the past few years.  Moreover, it is an area that is constantly evolving, and which is always new.

E-marketing is not just a branch of marketing in general, but it represents the nature of a technological age in which we live now. 

So there is no wonder, that you find that electronic marketing contributed greatly to the development and formation of the concept of marketing in general.

The Evolution of E-Marketing

The concept of marketing, in general, is adaptable and changeable to keep pace with technological developments. Therefore, traditional marketing did not depend on divided customer demands according to the market sectors.

Due to the emergence of many variables such as advertising, products, distribution, and prices, e-marketing aims to increase market share and business for institutions.

The development of e-marketing requires the presence of four variables: individuals, distribution, technology, and information and all of these variables are means of developing new offer or attracting new customers.

E-marketing based on the use of the technology aims to increase the profits of enterprises and make an effort to achieve the personal needs of customers in an interactive and permanent manner.

Digital developments have made the view towards e-marketing equivalent to that of traditional marketing.

Characteristics of Electronic Marketing

There are many characteristics that distinguish e-marketing, the most important of which are:

Addressability: the ability to apply transmission is the contribution of the Internet by providing assistance to agencies in order to determine their customers even before the implementation of the purchase. The role of digital technology is to provide multiple options for website users to determine their requirements.

Interactivity: Interactivity is the ability of customers to express their desires directly to enterprises, through their response and interaction with the marketing communications issued by these institutions.

Memory: It is the ability of electronic marketing to access databases that contain information about customers and their purchase dates. 

Memory storage helps agencies that use electronic marketing to obtain customer information in a timely manner in order to provide marketing offers to them.

Control: This provides customers with the ability to control all the information provided through them; it provides customers only the information they want, and without forcing them to provide any confidential information.

Accessibility: This provides more detailed information to customers about the institutions' products and prices, while activating the ability to compare a group of products. Therefore, commercial institutions seek to develop their products based on the wishes of existing customers, and in an effort to reach new customers.

Types and Methods of e-Marketing

Types of e-Marketing

E-marketing is divided into a group of types, namely:

E-marketing targeted to end customers: It is marketing that is concerned with the use of electronic means and aims to reach customers.

E-marketing applied between institutions: It is marketing that focuses on achieving a correlation between institutions and it contributes to achieving the benefits related to them.

Dual Distribution e-Marketing Strategies: This is the marketing that seeks to achieve the goals of customer-oriented marketing and e-marketing applied between institutions.

Government e-Marketplace (GeM): It is marketing that relies on the use of electronic means in order to provide services for both business and government institutions between them, which leads to achieving benefit for all, and helps to save time, and reduces the effort dependent on routine procedures.

Methods of e-Marketing

The success of implementing e-marketing depends on the use of the methods that help in this. The most important e-marketing methods include:

Search engine optimization (SEO): Search engines are relying on the use of a special type of website that contributes to providing information stored on all websites on the Internet and helps to achieve the desired goal of electronic marketing. Search engine optimization (SEO) is an important source of attracting customers and a method used to increase the number of visitors to the website that contains the products.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM): Search engine marketing is a type of digital marketing and it is one of the electronic marketing channels.
SEM seeks to increase and improve the appearance of the site to be marketed on the search engine results page.
As the owner of a product or service, the emergence of your site to top the first results in the search engines increases the number of visitors and thus increases profits.

Paid advertising: Paid advertising rectangles come first among the methods used in electronic marketing and are considered one of the most popular advertising methods across the Internet, as many website users see them.

Affiliate Marketing: Affiliate marketing is a performance-based marketing system in which a seller of a product pays a dependent commission when someone purchases his product. 
The "product" can be physical (books, CDs, DVDs, clothing, jewelry, natural medicines, etc.) or digital (e-books, e-reports, programs, online courses, etc.).
When your visitor clicks on your affiliate link (on your site), they are redirected to the seller's website, where the seller will close the sale; much easier after you've prepared for them!
When a visitor to your site purchases a seller’s product, you get a commission.

Social Media Marketing (SMM): Advertising and promotion of products via social media on the Internet. This branch of electronic marketing can be considered Word-Of-Mouth Marketing (WOM Marketing) across the World Wide Web.

There are specific tools designed to help marketers know how effective social media marketing is, and what improvements you might want to do to increase this effectiveness.

Email marketing: Email marketing is a highly active, cost-effective way to get your marketing message across to existing and potential customers. E-mails are very important in e-marketing. Many marketing officials are interested in designing e-mail forms that contain many different and interactive designs of products in order to reach consumers.
Email marketing mainly depends on having a valuable email list, so if you haven't had a chance to build it before, then it's time for that.