Digital Marketing and the Rise of Online Advertising

“The future of advertising is the Internet” – Bill Gates

Considered amongst the smartest men alive, Bill Gates couldn’t have put things more distinctly. Digital Marketing has taken the field of marketing itself in a direction many didn’t see coming some time ago. The ubiquity of internet devices and social media connectivity has made this field an indispensable today’s advertising business.

On the outset, this does seem an easy enough concept. The promotion of products and services online through peer-to-peer sharing and other strategies seems simple enough to understand, but notoriously tough to implement.

Before delving into techniques and strategies, the question is- What is digital marketing?

The Essentials of Digital Marketing

The marketing of any product or service on a digital medium is called digital marketing. The medium can be computers, mobile phones, tablets or even iPods.

There is a reason why such marketing overpowered traditional advertising. On televisions and billboards, advertising is a one-way street. Customers don’t have a platform to communicate with manufacturers and companies themselves. This gap in communication is eliminated by the internet.

Online platforms selling products like Amazon and Flipkart rank products based on consumer ratings and allow customers to give in-depth reviews about the product in question. This creates a direct line of communication between consumers and manufacturers as the latter is able to grasp what the former truly needs.

Strategies and Techniques

As mentioned above, digital marketing might seem straightforward but involves a large amount of planning. Some techniques used by the individuals to increase the online visibility of a website are mentioned below:

1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO): It is a set of guidelines set by search engines which if followed, results in a higher position of a website on Search Engine Page Rankings (SERP). These guidelines include factors like keyword density, back-linking, domain authority etc.

2. Search Engine Marketing (SEM): Though SEO is a subset of SEM, many experts use SEM while talking about paid advertising online. To get higher rankings on search engines, companies often purchase certain keywords on search engines. SEM deals only with paid results while SEO is about unpaid and organic results.

3. Social Media Marketing: Seeing a chunk of the online audience on social media websites, forming a solid social media marketing plan has become essential for digital marketing strategies of companies. Using trending posts and targeting specific groups of people online who might feel interested in a product offered by a company are only some ways of promoting products on social media.

The Legacy of Digital marketing

While there is no denying the importance of digital media, there will come a time when companies will have to change their approach yet again. Marketing is a very dynamic field. Considering the organic nature of audience online, it is safe to assume the tide will turn soon. Whether digital marketing chooses to swim or drown remains to be seen.

Why Missing Out On Whole Foods Robs Us Of Good Nutrition

You’ve been robbed! If you’re eating food that’s been processed and refined, you’ve been swindled out of all the good stuff in food.

It’s a terrible development, but it’s true. We took out the nourishing things in food, leaving our shelves filled with food that’s empty of nutrition.

As whole food nutritionists and researchers, Sally Fallon and Mary Enig, Ph D, explain in the beginning of their cookbook, Nourishing Traditions, “In no period of our history as a nation have Americans been so concerned about the subject of diet and nutrition. Yet… in no period of our history as a nation have Americans eaten so poorly.”[1]

Despite being a wealthy nation, we’re literally starving. Despite the fact our waistlines are growing, our nutrition has declined.

And the simplest way to explain this paradox is by understanding more about the whole foods we gave up over the course of generations in favor of processed, weak, and empty food. Ironically enough, historically people gave up whole foods as they gained wealth. Whole, unprocessed foods were associated with poverty while refined foods were associated with privilege.

However, now we’re learning that we got the raw end of the deal when we traded in whole foods for refined ones. We literally gave away the gold in food. Because when we gave up these “primitive” forms of food, we gave up scores of nutrients we needed to thrive.

What Is A Whole Food?

What is whole food? Whole food is food that is minimally processed or refined. It has most of its edible parts intact. Whole foods include molasses or Rapidura sugar as opposed to white sugar… whole wheat flour instead of white flour… brown, black or rose rice instead of white rice.

When we refine foods, it usually means we’re removing the more complex-tasting, sometimes harder to digest but nutritionally rich parts of the food. With grains like rice and wheat, it means removing the outer bran and germ. These parts of the grains give us vitamin E, healthy fats and protein. When removed, we lose as much as 25% of the grain’s protein along with at least 17 nutrients, according to the Whole Grain Council. [2]

And while usually we think of whole foods with regards to grains, it happens throughout our food system.

Sugar processors bleach off the iron in dehydrated cane sugar and molasses.

With fruits, we often settle for only the sugary juice, removing the fiber-rich pulp. Additionally, many fruit juices are pasteurized at high heats, robbing you even more of nutrients in fruits.

And even when we eat wholesome vegetables, we often peel off edible skins that are loaded with nutrients. For example, most of potato’s nutrition – such as vitamin C and protein – is found in the skin.

Now obviously, many foods we can’t eat without any processing. You need to peel bananas. The outer husks of grains are completely inedible. And we can’t eat potatoes without cooking them.

Nonetheless, while food may require some processing to make it edible, by minimizing this as much as possible, you can ensure you’re getting the most nutrition out of your foods.

Where Can You Get Whole Food?

The best way to eat more whole foods is to take control of your food in its rawest form. Buy whole raw ingredients and prepare them yourself. This way, you can be sure you’re getting all the nutritious parts of the food and minimizing nutrient loss by cooking them carefully.

  • Buy whole, organic fruit where you’ll know you’re getting the skin where much of the antioxidants and fiber is as well as the fibrous pulp. Ditch the fruit juices.
  • Opt for whole grains like steel-cut oats, whole wheat and brown rice. Be careful: By law whole wheat products need to be made of 100% whole wheat. But there are no such requirements for “multigrain” products or “whole grain” products. The Whole Grains Council has created a 100% Whole Grains stamp that verifies 100% whole grains in each serving. But without this stamp, “whole grains” on the label is open to interpretation. Check the ingredients listing carefully.
  • If you want a little sweetness, opt for unprocessed or minimally processed sweeteners like raw honey, rapidura sugar and maple syrup. While these sweeteners can still spike your blood sugar and thus should be eaten in moderation, you’ll still get a good dose of nutrients in every bite. And these nutrients can even help slow down the delivery of sugar to your bloodstream.
  • If you eat meat, look for minimally processed meats. Instead of ham, salami or deli turkey breast, opt for grassfed meats and wild-caught seafood you cook and prepare yourself.

Some foods are difficult to prepare for consumption at home and need some kinds of processing at the industrial level to make them edible.

For example, chlorella algae’s indigestible exterior cell wall makes it impossible for humans to access chlorella’s full nutrition. Chlorella manufacturers have to pulverize this cell wall in order to increase its bioavailability without sacrificing the whole food nutrition of chlorella. However, while they may break down the cell wall, quality manufacturers leave the cell wall fragments in the chlorella mix for its fibrous good nutrition.

Don’t Get Swindled Out Of Whole Foods

Don’t get robbed nutritionally! Shop carefully. Read labels. Spend a little more time in the kitchen. Bring more whole foods into your diet and join the growing number of people who have rediscovered the truly rich nutrition in these simple foods.

You’ll soon discover how well good nutrition pays off in the long run!

Sources:

[1] Fallon S et al. Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats. Washington DC: New Trends Publishing, 2001, p. 1

[2] What Is A Whole Grain? Whole Grains Council website.

The Impact of E-Commerce on the Global Economy

The impact of e-commerce on the global economy is far-reaching. It is having a profound and radical effect on businesses throughout the world, leveling the playing field for businesses outside the traditional economic powerhouses in many ways. Because people can shop online, without ever leaving their homes, and shop at any shop that has an online commerce site no matter where the business is located, global commerce is more competitive and has less barriers to entry than ever before.

One way to measure the impact of e-commerce on the global economy is to realize how it has affected traditional brick and mortar businesses. There is no ability for traditional brick and mortar businesses to stay out of e-commerce; the business simply will not thrive without a web-based component.

Smaller businesses and retailers no longer have to commit to the expense of a brick and mortar location, because their global reach makes it possible to achieve enormous success with e-commerce. Because the impact of e-commerce has been so great, the methods by which businesses market to their target markets have been radically affected as well.

Online marketing allows e-commerce businesses to reach a larger target market more effectively. No longer are businesses marketing only to the people who can drive to their stores; now, anyone who fits the target profile, anywhere in the world, can be targeted through effective online marketing techniques.

The impact of e-commerce has affected everything from the cost of doing business to the level of service companies are capable of providing to the ways in which marketing occurs. These changes are not going to disappear; if anything, the challenge will be to stay a step ahead of the shifting nature of technology in order to take advantage of the power and reach afforded by these new marketing venues.

Ultimately, the impact of e-commerce will be to level the playing field among economically disadvantaged countries. As the infrastructure required fore-commerce to be possible reaches even the smallest communities, borders and political power will be less influential in terms of success than a company’s ability to effectively market online, build a community of followers, and create lasting relationships with their target market.

Success will come first to those in e-commerce who are flexible, embrace change, and are willing to risk trying new marketing approaches and platforms in order to extend and deepen their reach. In the near future, it’s likely that traditional shopping through brick and mortar locations will transform even more radically, becoming secondary to the online experience or possibly disappearing altogether.

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