The Internet & Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) held a seminar “Digital Marketing: Wake Up and Smell the Coffee”, on 14 September in New Delhi. The seminar tried to unveil the scope and potential of digital medium in advertising.

It noted that the digital medium is already impacting marketing, promotion, and customer acquisition efforts. The seminar also looked at the various ways and means by which the decision makers could take this medium seriously. Now the big question is whether the traditional media is ready to understand this medium and take on its threat and convert it into a great opportunity?

This year, marketers around the world are supposed to invest over Rs 50,000 crore in search engine marketing on Google, Yahoo and MSN. In that Indian firms alone will be spending over Rs 250 crore.

The seminar explored this opportunity from many angles. The speakers at the seminar stressed on the indispensable role of digital media in successful marketing.

The moderators of the session included R Sundar, President, Times Business Solutions; Adrian Moss, Group CEO, Deal Group Media PLC; Jaspreet Bindra, Country Manager, Online Service Business, Microsoft India; Shashi Sinha, Chief Executive Officer, Lodestar and Shailesh Rao, Managing Director, Google India.

The panellists included Sam Balsara, Chairman and Managing Director, Medison; Raj Nayaak, Chief Executive Officer, NDTV Media; Dinesh Wadhawan, Managing Director & CEO, Times Internet Ltd; Llyod Mathias, Marketing Director, Motorola; Rahul Agrawal, Director Marketing, Lenovo; Ashok Lalla, Director of Internet Marketing, Taj Hotels, Resorts and Places; and Dinesh Agarwal, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Indiamart Intermesh.

The first session discussed the impact of digital media on marketing, promotion and customer acquisition efforts with specific reference to some of the major brands in India. Many speakers affirmed that digital media was invading the space of traditional media and the opportunity needed to be seized.

There are challenges too; scepticism still prevailed on the question whether the digital medium could really absorb the full creativity available in this medium. Secondly, even the current definition of creativity, training and experience of leaders in this area are not fully in sync with the traditional notions of creativity. The panel discussion on “Building a brand through digital media” had panelists elaborating about the pressures that media planners have to cope with on the question of integrating digital media into their marketing campaigns.

The last part of the seminar was a discussion on marketing of small and medium businesses (SMB). In SMBs, the refrain is “Money is not the problem, but mileage is.” Money, of course, is a problem and mileage is essential in a competitive and crowded market. The new marketing solution for SMBs should take care of the potential of digital medium as well and integrate into the over all marketing, brand building, and promotional campaigns to expand the reach and hit the right audience.