Albert Einstein once said, “Know where to find the information and how to use it. That is the secret of success.” The internet, a fundamental resource for connectivity, is crucial for all. In Jeff Kosseff's book The 26 Words That Created the Internet, the internet is defined by the phrase: “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.”
In the process of communication, coordination and collaboration in marketing, done to get people persuaded, AI based applications are excusably used. Internet based applications; specifically the Generative AI is boosting the digital marketing actions, however, a quest of ethical dilemma, bias and manipulation do exist. Digital marketing refers to the use of digital resource to facilitate connectivity in marketing activities by regenerating the delimited content in multiple copies as needed, feature of data representation in binaries, on digital advertising platforms and applications.Multichannel adoption to deliver promotional content to consumers on websites, social media platforms, search engines, email, and mobile apps is a handy task. Digital content encompasses various formats, including display ads, video ads, search engine marketing, social media ads, and native advertising, with a goal to reach target audiences effectively, intended to promote solutions in the form of products or services, and drive engagement or conversions by leveraging data-driven strategies and digital tools is digital advertising process.
The existing generative AI applications do exist both as a freemium and premium products. Users are not able to distinguish and choose the right product at the right time for the right purpose. The content generated by large language models largely depends on the type of prompt used while generating the response. The content generated by such systems might need validation and confirmation to a certain level.
The accuracy of queried content fundamentally depends on the volume, variety, and versatility of the data, while avoiding 'dirty data' is crucial during model training. The presence of such flawed data lowers the confidence of digital marketers, creating a dilemma about whether to adopt these applications. This uncertainty will persist until AI-based applications reach a more mature state.
Therefore, research is a must to provide a way out for the use of generative AI applications to make digital marketing phenomenal.The extended marketing methods have raised a need for proper policy to bind the stakeholders within a regulatory framework.
How Digital Marketing is transforming businesses in Nepal
Market is not always the same, so catching up with the customer’s choices and preferences and being adaptive with their favorites is a challenge for industries. Compelling and engaging content development and management is a bigger challenge for them. Beside that, security and privacy against theft of data and information is a major concern for customers.
Attacks and intrusions on systems providing digital services are an ongoing issue caused by sniffers, spammers, and intruders. This highlights the need for robust security systems and effective implementation of anti-malware software using appropriate methodologies, alongside establishing a comprehensive cyber policy to protect customer data. The fermium applications are the platform and gateway for data theft. Therefore,digital marketers must be clear before interacting with AI bots while exchanging valuable information.
Ethical and legal consequences can occur in various forms. To avoid the consequences, companies should use the original content for marketing, be familiar with the license agreements before publishing the content, and consider the intellectual property right of the digital content. The terms and conditions must be clear between the business firms and the customers that includes deliverables and timelines, mode of payments, confidentiality of information exchanged, authenticity of the users, integrity of the content, dispute resolution and legal responsibilities. Cyber law is the defensive measure for all digital marketing businesses, which must be demanding and marketers should regularly pursue cyber due diligence. Furthermore, digital marketing businesses must ensure confidentiality, integrity, authenticity, maintenance, privacy protection, data security, cyber security, validity etc. as well along with payment gateways that the businesses prefer and inclusion of financial institutions, maintaining the compliance of indispensable taxes and labor laws.
Digital marketing is a thoughtful apprehension, which aids value in digital governance, with ease of use and high degree of interoperability among prospective buyers, acquainted with affordable digital devices. Companies can track and monitor both the physical and digital presence of potential customers, with high degree of interactivity making marketing communication better and convenient for establishing the preeminent customer relationship through proximity marketing. AI driven marketing efforts are contributing to personalizing and enhancing the number and maximizing the customer satisfaction. Without proper digital marketing strategies to follow and not to follow, companies might lose direction. In order to control the fragility, companies should have clear digital marketing goals and objectives to increase the brand awareness, number of clicks in the website and overall conversion rate aiming for customer loyalty.
Industries underprivileged of digital marketing tools and practices are rare. Netflix and YouTube have revolutionized the media and entertainment industries by providing real time personalized services. Search engines are a base of monetization by advertisers building the brands. Pathao, Ola and Uber are moving the transportation economy to the next level. On top of these, AI applications are ruling by moderating and mediating the digital marketing process. According to Oguz A. Acar on “A practical Guide for Marketers Who want to Use GenAI” key areas where generative AI holds the greatest potential are customization, creativity, connectivity and cost of cognition and underscored that the consultants working with AI completed 12.2% more task and executed them 25.1% faster.
The reason behind the popularity of AI enabled digital marketing is global reach and local visibility. Unlike traditional marketing, there is no geographical restriction for international marketing campaigns. In addition, local search engine optimizations techniques and locally targeted audiences help companies to bring more customers to their doors. Cost effective execution of strategies through Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Social Media and Content Marketing are conduits of brand building, advertising, and too easy to start with. Some of the common platforms for content marketing include blogs, social media posts, websites, podcasts, info-graphics, webinar etc. The best part of digital marketing is that the engagement can be measured that ultimately provides insight to create more effective content to increase brand awareness and boost sales.
For startup companies, digital marketing can be a boon. They can opt the process of brand building starting with their websites, and official blogs. Using social media marketing to raise brand awareness can be precisely effective. Properly done content marketing strategy can aid business value from all perspectives. Companies can start with email marketing from the very beginning followed by advertising on Google and Facebook backed by machine learning algorithms for marketing automation.
With GenAI, the backbone for digital marketing, going hand in hand with traditional media, it is high time for the government to initiate the digital governance and provide a conducive environment for companies willing to support the digital marketing activities through social media and OTT (over-the-top) platforms. OTT platform providing television and film content over the internet on request to facilitate the requirements of the individual consumer is a potential avenue for digital marketing activities. From the government side, encouraging such companies and allowing them to follow the digital framework would help them to add value in digital marketing. Once it comes into the legal framework, grievances become easy to address formally.
Digital marketing incorporates online or web-based digital technologies such as smartphones, computers and other digital devices for the promotion of its products and services.
There are numerous sectors where digital media can provide benefits in regards to Nepali products and services. Besides the tourism industry, export of tea/coffee, handicrafts, garments and digital financial services can cash in from foreign currency with the help of digital promotion. Since, Nepal Government has declared 2023 to 2033 as Nepal Tourism Decade, focus on digital media could add a greater value.
Avoiding the use of generative artificial intelligence applications in digital marketing is not necessarily wrong and there is always room for improvement with the use of GenAI in Digital Marketing.
