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E-commerce and Covid-19

Digital marketing in the age of Covid-19 is more important than ever as people are spending more and more time at home, this means more time on the internet and on their devices.

Digital marketing can be described broadly as any marketing practice using a digital device and or taking place over the internet. Digital marketing can be approached in multiple different ways to get your business known to more people and the beauty of digital marketing is that your advertisements and offers can be directed to those who are more likely to be interested in your products and or services.

Digital marketing as a whole is a lot cheaper than traditional marketing and advertisement methods such as television advertisements and billboards which are both expensive and can only be personalized to a minor degree. On the other hand some forms of digital marketing such as social media marketing can be much more targeted to more specific segments of the population that may be more inclined to buy their certain products and or services.  Digital marketing can be a lot cheaper to, email marketing for example can be effectively free, of course you cant spam every email you know but those who show interest and or have bought from you before can be alerted of new deals and products and or services that they may be interested.

Targeted advertising is one of the ways Facebook has become one of the most profitable companies in the world, it increases audience engagement helping both the companies advertising and Facebook with their pay per click approach meaning the more clicks they get on those ads the better, Facebook being a business there main goal is to make money so they push this targeted advertising to the furthest they can get they have recently got flack for this though as people have began to worry more about their digital privacy.

The publics concern about targeted advertising has been voiced loudly and by a lot of people and particularly focused on platforms (like Facebook). How much access these platforms have and how they  use their personal information is worrying when you have no idea what is going on behind closed doors, I remember recently I got a pop up from Firefox telling me about an extension that stops Facebook from tracking you across the internet. Some feel that the information that sites like Facebook uses to classify individuals and target advertisements is infringing on their right of privacy and this is a delicate line that has to be walked when using digital marketing and specifically targeting advertising.

With so many people spending more and more of their time at home the way people interact with business has changed, for some businesses this is a big opportunity and a big problem for others. With a reduction in face to face contact and an increase in online traffic due to lock downs and quarantines, business are doing more online than ever.

This transition was easier on some businesses than others, those that relied more heavily on face to face interactions like barbers and hairdressers and travel companies were hit harder, with the in ability to switch to entirely online business the reduction / complete loss of customers left some with the in ability to continue operating. A good example of the effects the restrictions that covid-19 brought with it is the plummet in stock price of Qantas, dropping from almost $7 per share too $2 in a month (AUD). On the other end of the spectrum those businesses that could more easily adapt to an online operating environment were more suited to the transition to e-commerce. Business that were already strong in the sector have been more than ok even thriving as people start to buy more online than they do in person. Amazon for example has double their share price since the start of the outbreak in March from roughly $1,800 per share too over $3,000 (USD). The entirety of my investment portfolio isn’t enough for 1 share in amazon after the covid-19 out break.

Covid-19 has been problematic for most but some have made the most out of a bad situation and used the increased internet traffic and extend periods that people are spending at home the best they can those who couldn’t adapt fast enough to the new business environment have had big challenges and those that couldn’t adapt by virtue of their services being in person have had the hardest time during this pandemic, small businesses especially.

References

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/digital-marketing.asp

https://www.wired.com/story/why-dont-we-just-ban-targeted-advertising/

google stocks.