Summary

　"Digital marketing" is an umbrella term for marketing activities conducted through digital media for products and services. By connecting with consumers through electronic equipment/devices, companies can obtain a variety of customer information such as purchase histories in the form of digital data.
　A look at companies that take an aggressive approach toward digital marketing reveals that with their owned media such as websites and smartphone applications playing a central role, they are striving to optimize their overall marketing activities by putting emphasis on integrating physical stores with online channels.
　Companies are increasingly adopting the omni-channel strategy with the aim of approaching customers by organically linking all channels, ranging from digital media to brick-and-mortar stores. Successful implementation of such strategy will enable companies to apply digital marketing techniques to physical stores and to create a comprehensive customer profile, which was not possible only with data collected at physical stores, thereby allowing companies to devise and implement effective marketing initiatives.
　In the past, in terms of marketing, there was a clear boundary between potential and existing customers and between advertising and sales promotion. However, with the advent of digital marketing, these boundaries have become vague, enabling companies to conduct marketing activities by organically linking potential and existing customers as well as advertising and sales promotion. In response to this trend, marketing solutions offered by vendors are evolving in the direction of covering overall marketing activities.
　Particularly important among the key points in and challenges facing the promotion of digital marketing within companies is the establishment of key performance indicators (KPIs) and application of the PDCA (plan - do - check - action) cycle based on the KPIs. The PDCA cycle for digital marketing involves the implementation and analysis of marketing initiatives created based on the KPIs and hypothesis verification.

Contents

1. What is Digital Marketing?
2. Digital Marketing Case Studies
3. Linking the Digital and Real-World Channels
4. Trends in Digital Marketing Solutions
5. Key Points in and Challenges Facing the Promotion of Digital Marketing

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