digital marketing research

• New Zealand
• United Kingdom

How to Conduct Market Research in Digital Marketing

Stay Informed With Our Weekly Newsletter

Receive crucial updates on the ever-evolving landscape of technology and innovation.

By clicking 'Sign Up', I acknowledge that my information will be used in accordance with the Institute of Data's Privacy Policy .

Market research is a vital component of digital marketing strategies.

Market research in digital marketing provides invaluable insights that help organizations understand their target audience, identify trends, and make informed decisions.

The importance of market research in digital marketing

It plays a crucial role in shaping digital marketing strategies. Market research in digital marketing helps businesses understand their customers, their preferences, and their behavior in the online space.

By analyzing market research data, organizations can identify opportunities, target the right audience, and create relevant content that resonates with potential customers.

Furthermore, market research in digital marketing helps organizations stay ahead of the competition by identifying industry trends, technological advancements, and consumer expectations.

It provides insights into consumer sentiment and allows organizations to tailor their marketing efforts accordingly.

The role of market research in shaping digital strategies

Market research acts as a blueprint for digital marketing strategies.

It guides businesses in setting objectives, defining target audiences, and identifying key performance indicators to measure success.

Market research in digital marketing helps marketers understand their customers’ needs and desires, allowing them to create products and services that genuinely serve their target market.

Moreover, market research helps businesses develop a competitive edge by highlighting gaps in the market and uncovering untapped opportunities.

By understanding customer pain points, preferences, and purchasing behavior, organizations can position themselves strategically and develop unique selling propositions that differentiate them from their competitors.

How market research influences digital marketing decisions

Market research provides the data and insights to make informed digital marketing decisions.

It helps businesses understand consumer behavior, preferences, and influences across various digital channels.

This information allows businesses to develop effective marketing strategies and allocate resources optimally.

For example, market research can help businesses identify the most effective digital marketing channels for reaching their target audience.

By analyzing demographic and psychographic data, businesses can determine which platforms their potential customers frequent and tailor their efforts accordingly.

This allows for targeted and cost-effective marketing campaigns, maximizing the return on investment.

The process of conducting digital marketing research

The process of conducting digital marketing research involves several crucial steps. These steps ensure that the research is thorough, accurate, and insightful.

Identifying your digital marketing research objectives

The first step in conducting digital marketing research is clearly defining your objectives.

What do you hope to achieve through your research?

Are you seeking to understand your target audience better?

Do you want to assess consumer sentiment towards your brand?

Defining your aims will guide the rest of your research process and ensure you gather the relevant data.

Choosing the right digital marketing research methods

Selecting the appropriate research methods is crucial once you have identified your research objectives.

You may choose to conduct surveys, interviews, or focus groups, depending on your objectives.

You may also utilize online tools to gather data on consumer behavior, such as website analytics or social media listening tools.

Choosing methods that align with your objectives and provide the most accurate and reliable data is important.

Analysing and interpreting digital marketing research data

Gathering data is only the first step. The true value of digital marketing research lies in analyzing and interpreting the data effectively.

By doing so, businesses can derive actionable insights to inform their marketing strategies and decision-making.

One key aspect of analyzing digital marketing research data is making sense of the findings.

Businesses can understand consumer behavior and preferences by identifying patterns, trends, and correlations.

This enables them to tailor their marketing efforts effectively to meet their customers’ needs.

Applying digital marketing research insights to strategy is another vital step.

Insights derived from research can refine marketing strategies, optimize campaigns, and improve overall digital marketing performance.

Making sense of digital marketing research findings

Analyzing data can be daunting, especially when dealing with large datasets. However, leveraging data analysis tools can simplify the process and give businesses meaningful insights.

Tools such as data visualization software can help businesses identify trends, patterns, and outliers, making it easier to draw valuable conclusions.

Applying digital marketing research insights to your strategy

The research findings should directly influence your digital marketing strategy.

By integrating the insights gained from the research, businesses can refine messaging, target specific customer segments, and personalize their marketing efforts.

This ensures that businesses deliver the right message to the right audience, leading to better engagement and, ultimately, more conversions.

Common challenges in digital marketing research and how to overcome them

Despite the numerous benefits of digital marketing research, there are several challenges that businesses may need help with.

By being aware of these challenges, organizations can take proactive steps to overcome them and improve the effectiveness of their research efforts.

Dealing with data overload in digital marketing research

In the digital age, businesses have access to vast amounts of data. While this can be advantageous, it can also be overwhelming.

Sorting through massive datasets and extracting relevant insights can be time-consuming and resource-intensive.

To overcome this challenge, businesses should employ data analysis tools to automate data processing and provide actionable insights.

Ensuring accuracy and reliability in digital marketing research

Ensuring the accuracy and reliability of market research in digital marketing is crucial for making informed decisions.

Organizations must use reliable data sources and validated research methods. It is also essential to check the quality of the data, eliminate biases, and ensure that the research sample is representative of the target audience.

By doing so, businesses can have confidence in the insights derived from the research.

The future of market research in digital marketing

The field of market research in digital marketing is continually evolving.

As technology advances and consumer behavior changes, businesses must adapt their research methodologies to stay ahead.

Here, we explore some emerging trends in digital marketing research and the impact of technology on the field.

Emerging trends in digital marketing research

One emerging trend in digital marketing research is artificial intelligence (AI).

AI-powered tools can analyze massive amounts of data, detect patterns, and generate insights at a speed and scale that humans cannot achieve.

This allows organizations to gain real-time insights and make data-driven decisions more efficiently.

The impact of technology on digital marketing research

Technology has revolutionized the way businesses conduct market research in digital marketing.

From online surveys to social media listening tools , businesses have easier access to invaluable data.

Additionally, data analytics and machine learning advancements have made it possible to extract more meaningful insights from complex datasets.

The future of market research in digital marketing is undoubtedly intertwined with technology, and businesses must embrace these advancements to stay competitive.

Market research is core to digital marketing strategies. It helps businesses understand their target audience, make informed decisions, and gain a competitive edge.

By conducting research effectively and addressing common challenges, organizations can harness the power of market research to drive success in the digital marketing landscape.

As technology continues to shape the field, embracing emerging trends and leveraging technology will be crucial for organizations to remain ahead in the ever-evolving digital marketing arena .

Do you want to dive deeper into market research in digital marketing?

Are you ready to launch your career in digital marketing?

If so, we encourage you to explore the Institute of Data’s Digital Marketing & Artificial Intelligence program. 

Alternatively, we invite you to book a  complimentary call  with a member of our team to discuss the Digital Marketing program in more detail.

Follow us on social media to stay up to date with the latest tech news

Stay connected with Institute of Data

Iterating Into Artificial Intelligence: Sid’s Path from HR to Data Science & AI

From Curiosity to Cybersecurity: Maria Kim’s Path to Protecting the Digital World

Mastering Cybersecurity: Ruramai’s Inspiring Journey from Law to Digital Defense

From Passion to Pursuing a New Career: Neil Kripal’s Driven Journey into Software Engineering

Embracing AI in Your Organisation: A Guide for Digital Marketers

Managing Stakeholders Through Change: A Guide for Digital Marketers

© Institute of Data. All rights reserved.

Copy Link to Clipboard

• Digital Marketing
• IT Staff Augmentation
• Data & AI
• E-commerce Development

Power of Digital Marketing Research: A Comprehensive Guide

Get Free SEO Audit Report

Boost your website's performance with a free SEO audit report. Don't miss out on the opportunity to enhance your SEO strategy for free!

• Key Takeaways

According to Gartner, 72% of digital marketers consider data analysis crucial for their success.

Statista reports that global spending on digital advertising is projected to reach $563 billion by 2024.

SEMrush reveals that 65% of marketers prioritize improving their organic search presence as a top inbound marketing priority.

Gartner predicts a continued rise in the importance of data-driven marketing strategies, emphasizing the need for robust digital marketing research.

Statista’s projections highlight the growing significance of digital advertising expenditure, underscoring the importance of effective research in optimizing ad spend.

In today’s online world, digital marketing research is super important. It’s all about gathering, analyzing, and understanding data to make smart decisions about marketing. It helps businesses figure out what customers want, what’s happening in the market, and what their competitors are up to. By using research, businesses can grow and stay ahead in the digital world.

Introduction to Digital Marketing Research

• Definition of digital marketing research:

Digital marketing research means collecting and studying data from the internet to make smart decisions about marketing. This includes looking at things like websites, social media, emails, and search engines. The goal is to understand what customers do online and what’s happening in the market, so businesses can improve their marketing strategies.

• Importance of digital marketing research:

In today’s digital world, where people are always online and have lots of information, digital marketing research is super important for businesses. With data-driven insights, businesses can really understand what their customers like, what problems they have, and how they buy things.

This helps them make marketing plans that really connect with their customers, get them involved, and reach their goals. Plus, doing research lets businesses keep up with changes in the market, which helps them stay ahead of the competition.

• Evolution of digital marketing research:

Over time, digital marketing research has changed a lot because of new technology and how people behave online. Before, it was mainly about looking at website numbers, but now there are many more ways to get information. Businesses can use tools like social media tracking and predictions to understand their customers better and plan their marketing.

This shows how marketing online has become more complicated, and it’s important for businesses to keep up with what’s new to stay competitive.

• Role in shaping marketing strategies:

Digital marketing research is super important for businesses. It helps them understand their customers and competitors better. By doing research, businesses can spot new trends, see where they can grow, and predict what customers want. This helps them create marketing campaigns that really connect with their customers.

Also, it helps businesses see how well their marketing is doing, track important numbers, and make their strategies even better. So, by using what they learn from digital marketing research, businesses can make smart choices that help them grow and do well in the digital world.

Understanding Consumer Behavior

• Importance of Understanding Consumer Behavior:

Understanding how people behave when making purchasing decisions is key for successful marketing. By knowing what motivates them and what they prefer, businesses can adjust their products, services, and marketing to better meet their needs.

This not only helps in predicting trends and finding new chances but also keeps businesses competitive. Plus, it builds better connections with customers. When brands show they get their audience, they can offer more personalized experiences, which leads to happier customers who stick around and recommend the brand to others.

• Digital Marketing Services

With a Foundation of 1,900+ Projects, Offered by Over 1500+ Digital Agencies Across Asia, EMB Excels in Digital Marketing. We Design, Redesign, and Sustain Customer-Centric and Enterprise Strategies for Optimal Conversion.

State of Technology 2024

Humanity's Quantum Leap Forward

Explore 'State of Technology 2024' for strategic insights into 7 emerging technologies reshaping 10 critical industries. Dive into sector-wide transformations and global tech dynamics, offering critical analysis for tech leaders and enthusiasts alike, on how to navigate the future's technology landscape.

• Methods for Analyzing Consumer Behavior:

There are different ways to understand how people behave when they shop or use products. Some ways include asking people questions in surveys, talking to them in focus groups, or having one-on-one interviews. These methods give businesses information about why people buy things and what they think about products.

Other methods involve looking at numbers, like analyzing data from websites or tracking what people do on social media. This gives businesses facts and trends about what people are doing. By using both types of methods, businesses can really understand their customers and make smart choices based on what they learn.

• Impact on Marketing Tactics:

Understanding how customers behave is super important for businesses. By knowing what customers like and don’t like, companies can create messages that really connect with different groups of people.

This helps them use their marketing money wisely by focusing on the things that work best. Also, when businesses understand what customers need and what bothers them, they can solve problems before they even happen. This makes them stand out in a crowded market.

Market Analysis and Competitor Intelligence

• Conducting Market Analysis:

Market analysis is a foundational step in any digital marketing strategy . It involves a comprehensive examination of the market landscape to identify opportunities, challenges, and emerging trends. This process typically includes assessing market size, growth potential, and segmentation.

By conducting thorough market analysis, businesses can gain valuable insights into their target audience’s needs and preferences, as well as potential gaps in the market that they can capitalize on.

• Identifying Key Competitors:

Finding out who your main competitors are is really important for understanding what other companies are doing and how you compare. This means doing some research to make a list of the businesses that are in the same market as you.

Your main competitors might be those selling similar services, or even those offering different solutions to the same customers. Once you know who your key competitors are, you can learn about what they’re good at, where they might be lacking, and how they’re doing in the market.

• Analyzing Competitor Strategies:

Studying what competitors do means looking closely at how they talk to customers and where they do it. This can include checking their websites, social media pages, ads, and the content they share.

By doing this, businesses can learn what’s popular in their field and find ways to stand out or try new things that competitors haven’t.

• Leveraging Insights for Strategic Advantage:

Using what we learn from checking out the market and spying on competitors is super important to stay ahead online. When we look at the data and spot trends, businesses can find smart ways to improve their marketing, make their messages better, and make their products or services stand out.

Whether it’s finding new groups of customers, making products better, or setting prices right, using what we know from checking out the market and competitors can help us make better choices and grow businesses.

SEO and Keyword Research:

• Importance of SEO in Digital Marketing:

In the big online world, SEO is super important for marketing success. It helps your brand get seen by the right people on the internet. When you tweak your website to match what search engines like, you climb higher in search results. This means more people find you naturally, without ads. So, SEO is like a bridge that brings your business closer to your customers online.

• Techniques for Keyword Research:

Keyword research is super important for SEO. It’s all about finding the words people type into search engines when they want info on a topic. Businesses do this to find popular keywords in their field, as well as longer phrases that match what users are looking for.

Tools like Google Keyword Planner and SEMrush help find these keywords. By knowing what users search for, businesses can make content that meets their needs better.

• Implementing SEO Best Practices:

Implementing SEO best practices means making your website better for search engines and users. This involves things like using the right keywords in titles, descriptions, and headers and getting other websites to link to yours. Also, it’s important to make sure your website loads fast, works well on mobile devices and is easy to navigate.

By following these practices, businesses can make sure more people find their website through search engines, leading to more visitors and potential customers.

• Measuring SEO Performance:

Measuring how well SEO is working is important to see if it’s helping and to make it even better. Some things we look at are organic traffic (people finding us through search engines), where our keywords rank in search results, how often people click on our links, and how many of those clicks turn into actions like purchases or sign-ups.

We can use tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console to keep an eye on these numbers over time and see if they’re going up or down. By paying attention to this data regularly, we can make smart choices about how to make our SEO strategies even better, take advantage of good opportunities, and fix any problems we find in the fast-changing online world.

Content Strategy and Audience Engagement

• Developing a Content Strategy:

A good plan for what you put online is super important for making your digital marketing work. This plan includes figuring out who you’re talking to, what they like, and what problems they have.

Then, you decide what kind of offerings they’d like to see from you. You also decide where and how often you’ll share this stuff. By planning everything out, you can use your content to connect with people and get the results you want.

• Tailoring Content to Target Audience:

In the digital world, not every content fits everyone. It’s crucial to make content that suits your audience. To do this, you need to understand who they are, what they like, and how they behave.

With this info, businesses can create content that really connects with their audience. It could be blogs, videos, or quizzes. Personalized content makes people more interested and keeps them coming back for more.

• Maximizing Audience Engagement:

Engagement is super important for digital marketing success. To get people involved, you need to do more than just make cool content. It’s about talking with your audience, asking for their thoughts, and getting them to join in. You can use fun stuff like polls, surveys, and contests to get them involved.

Also, being active on social media and letting them share their own stuff helps build a community. When you focus on engaging your audience and making real connections, you can turn them into loyal fans who love your brand.

• Content Distribution Tactics:

Making sure your content gets seen is just as important as creating it. Content distribution means getting your content out there to the right people. This includes using social media, sending emails, working with influencers, and sharing on different platforms.

It’s also about making sure search engines can find your content easily. When businesses use a mix of these tactics that match what their audience likes, they can reach more people and get better results.

Social Media Insights and Campaign Optimization

• Harnessing Social Media Insights

Social media has a lot of useful information for businesses. They can learn about their audience, like who they are and what they like. Tools on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter help track things like how many people engage with posts and who these people are.

With this info, businesses can figure out what content their audience likes, when to post, and which platforms work best for them.

• Optimizing Social Media Campaigns

Optimizing social media campaigns means making them work better. This involves creating posts that people really like and relate to. Also, it’s about showing these posts to the right people – those who are most likely to be interested. A big part of this is trying out different things to see what works best.

This could mean testing different ads or messages to find what gets the best response. By keeping an eye on how well things are going and making changes based on what the data says, businesses can make their social media campaigns even better at getting people engaged and interested.

• Leveraging User-Generated Content

User-generated content (UGC) is when regular people create content for a brand. It’s a great way for businesses to connect with their audience in a real and genuine way. UGC can be things like customer reviews , photos, or videos showing how people use a brand’s products.

It helps build a community around the brand and shows others that it’s trustworthy. When businesses encourage people to share content and give them rewards for it, it can help spread the word about the brand even more.

• Measuring Social Media ROI

Measuring the social media return on investment (ROI) is important for seeing if social media marketing is working well. Businesses can measure ROI by keeping an eye on key things like website visits, leads made, sales, and how much it costs to get new customers from social media.

They can also use tools to check how engaged people are with their posts, how often they click on links, and how many people actually buy something because of social media ads. By comparing how much money they spend on social media ads with how much they make from them, businesses can decide if their social media marketing is worth it and plan better for the future.

Email Marketing Effectiveness

• Strategies for Effective Email Marketing:

Email marketing is a great way for businesses to talk directly to their customers and boost sales. To make it work well, it’s important to send emails with useful and interesting stuff that people want to read. That means knowing what your customers like and need, and sending them emails that help them solve problems or learn something new.

Also, sending emails at the right time and not too often can make a big difference. By checking how many people open your emails and clicking on the links inside, you can see what works best and make your emails even better.

• Personalization and Segmentation Techniques:

Making emails personal is really important. It helps to connect better with the people you’re sending them to and makes it more likely they’ll do what you want, like buy something. You can do this by using information about what they’ve bought before, what they look at online, and things like their age and where they live.

Sorting people into groups based on what they have in common makes this even better. Then, you can send messages that fit exactly what they’re interested in or need, which makes them more likely to pay attention and take action, like buying your product.

• Email Automation Best Practices:

Email automation makes sending personalized messages easier. It sends emails automatically based on certain actions, like when someone subscribes or clicks a link. This helps welcome new subscribers, keep leads interested, or remind inactive users.

It saves time and resources by doing repetitive tasks and sending the right content when it’s needed. But, it’s important to keep emails personal too, so they don’t feel automated.

• Analyzing Email Marketing Metrics:

Understanding how well your emails perform is super important. You want to know if people are opening them, clicking on links, and taking action. Keep an eye on metrics like open rates, click-through rates, and how many people unsubscribe.

By comparing these numbers with what’s normal in your industry, you can see how your emails are doing. Trying out different things, like subject lines and designs, through A/B testing can also help you figure out what works best for your audience and make your emails even better over time.

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)

• Understanding the Conversion Funnel:

The conversion funnel is like a roadmap in digital marketing. It shows how people go from visiting a website or app to doing what the business wants, like buying something or joining a newsletter. There are different steps along the way, like when someone learns about a product, thinks about it, and then takes action.

Understanding this funnel helps businesses improve how many people take action. By looking at each step, they can find ways to make it easier for people to buy or sign up, which boosts their success.

• Identifying Barriers to Conversion:

In simple terms, conversion rate optimization helps businesses find and fix things that stop people from doing what they want on a website. These problems could be anything from hard-to-use menus to long checkout pages or not feeling safe.

By looking at data and testing how users behave, businesses can figure out where the problems are and fix them. This might mean making forms easier, speeding up how fast pages load, or making things more secure. Finding and fixing these problems is super important for making sure digital marketing works as well as possible.

• Testing and Optimization Strategies:

In boosting conversion rates, it’s crucial to test and improve strategies systematically. A/B testing, trying different versions, and UX testing help businesses figure out what works best. By listening to user feedback and using data, they can make their websites or apps better.

This ongoing process helps them tweak messaging, design, and features for better results. With constant testing and refining, businesses can make sure their online stuff works great and brings in more customers.

• Improving Website User Experience:

To boost conversion rates, it’s crucial to make websites and apps easy and enjoyable for users. This means making sure everything works smoothly and is easy to understand. Businesses can do this by:

• Making the design work well on different devices.
• Making it easy to find things on the website or app.
• Using clear buttons and messages to guide users.
• Making sure pages load quickly and don’t have too many distractions.
• Providing useful and interesting content. When businesses focus on what users want, they can create digital experiences that help them make more sales.

In summary, digital marketing research is super important for businesses today. It helps them understand what customers want, how the market is changing, and how well their marketing is doing. With this info, they can make smarter decisions and get better results. Whether it’s improving their website’s visibility on search engines or getting more people interested in their brand, digital marketing research is the key to success.

By using data to guide their strategies, businesses can connect better with customers, boost engagement, and keep growing in a fast-paced digital world.

Get in touch with us at EMB to learn more.

• What is digital marketing research?

Digital marketing research is the systematic process of gathering, analyzing, and interpreting data to inform marketing strategies and decisions in the online realm.

• Why is digital marketing research important?

It helps businesses understand consumer behavior, identify market trends, and refine marketing strategies for optimal results in the digital landscape.

• How can businesses conduct digital marketing research?

They can utilize various tools and methods, including surveys, social media analytics , website analytics, and competitor analysis, to gather relevant data.

• What role does SEO play in digital marketing research?

SEO and keyword research are integral parts of digital marketing research, as they help businesses enhance online visibility and target relevant audiences.

• How can businesses measure the effectiveness of their digital marketing research efforts?

By tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) such as website traffic, conversion rates, engagement metrics, and ROI, businesses can gauge the success of their research-driven strategies.

• Why is digital advertising important?

Digital advertising is crucial because it enables businesses to reach a highly targeted audience, track and measure campaign performance in real-time, optimize ads based on data insights, and achieve measurable results. It also offers flexibility, cost-effectiveness, and the ability to reach global audiences instantly, unlike traditional advertising methods.

Related Post

What are mobile ads and why are they important, understanding all about in-stream ads, what is interactive advertising and how does it work, what are text overlays things to know, what are highlight reels and how to create them, how emotional storytelling drives brand loyalty, table of contents.

Expand My Business is Asia's largest marketplace platform which helps you find various IT Services like Web and App Development, Digital Marketing Services and all others.

Article Categories

• Technology 871
• Business 417
• Digital Marketing 348
• Social Media Marketing 135
• E-Commerce 134

Sitemap / Glossary

Copyright © 2024 Mantarav Private Limited. All Rights Reserved.

• Privacy Overview
• Strictly Necessary Cookies

This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.

Strictly Necessary Cookie should be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for cookie settings.

If you disable this cookie, we will not be able to save your preferences. This means that every time you visit this website you will need to enable or disable cookies again.

Advertisement

Trends and patterns in digital marketing research: bibliometric analysis

• Original Article
• Published: 12 August 2021
• Volume 10 , pages 158–172, ( 2022 )

Cite this article

• Zahra Ghorbani 1 ,
• Sanaz Kargaran 1 ,
• Ali Saberi   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-8839-6772 2 ,
• Manijeh Haghighinasab 1 ,
• Seyedh Mahboobeh Jamali   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-8728-5827 3 &
• Nader Ale Ebrahim   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-7091-4439 4  

2338 Accesses

29 Citations

11 Altmetric

Explore all metrics

In today’s digital era, the importance of digital marketing has increased from one year to another as a way of providing novel properties for informing, engaging, and selling services and products to clients. The research’s aim is to investigate trends and patterns in the area of digital marketing research from 1979 to June 2020 through a bibliometric analysis technique. A total of 924 articles published were obtained from the Scopus database for the analysis. In this paper, we examine variant bar charts including the year of publication, writer, publication, keyword, and country to provide more insights. Results indicated that digital marketing research steadily increased during the study period and the maximum publications occurred in the year 2019 that reach to 163 documents. The trend of publications is still growing. The top 20 documents based on the times cited per year (TCpY) were qualitatively analyzed. The largest number of multiple (MCP) and single (SCP) publications was from the USA, followed by the UK and China. The top 20 most repeated authors’ keywords out of 1909 with their trends illustrated. The “real-time bidding”, “machine learning”, “big data”, “social media marketing”, and “influencer marketing” are the emerging keywords in the digital Marketing area. This bibliometric study generally provides the whole image of the field and suggests that researchers focus on novel areas to add new findings and knowledge in the literature if they conduct digital marketing research.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Subscribe and save.

• Get 10 units per month
• Download Article/Chapter or eBook
• 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
• Cancel anytime

Price includes VAT (Russian Federation)

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Rent this article via DeepDyve

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Way Forward for Sustainable Digital Marketing: A Bibliometric Analysis

26 years left behind: a historical and predictive analysis of electronic business research

Bibliometric Analysis Based on Scientific Mapping in the Use of Digital Marketing Strategies

Explore related subjects.

• Artificial Intelligence

Abedini, A., R. Rahman, H.S. Naeini, and N. Ale Ebrahim. 2017. The 100 most cited papers in’industrial design’: A bibliometric analysis. Exacta – EP, São Paulo 15 (3): 515–526.

Aghaei Chadegani, A., H. Salehi, M. Yunus, H. Farhadi, M. Fooladi, M. Farhadi, and N. Ale Ebrahim. 2013. A comparison between two main academic literature collections: Web of Science and Scopus databases. Asian Social Science 9 (5): 18–26.

Google Scholar  

Aksnes, D.W. 2003. Characteristics of highly cited papers. Research Evaluation 12 (3): 159–170.

Article   Google Scholar  

Ale Ebrahim, S., A. Ashtari, M.Z. Pedram, N. Ale Ebrahim, and A. Sanati-Nezhad. 2020. Publication trends in exosomes nanoparticles for cancer detection. International Journal of Nanomedicine 15: 4453.

Aria, M., and C. Cuccurullo. 2017. Bibliometrix: An R-tool for comprehensive science mapping analysis. Journal of Informetrics 11 (4): 959–975. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joi.2017.08.007 .

Barnes, S.J., and E. Scornavacca. 2004. Mobile marketing: The role of permission and acceptance. International Journal of Mobile Communications 2 (2): 128–139.

Baumgartner, H., and R. Pieters. 2003. The structural influence of marketing journals: A citation analysis of the discipline and its subareas over time. Journal of Marketing 67 (2): 123–139.

Bethu, S., V. Sowmya, B.S. Babu, G.C. Babu, and Y.J.N. Kumar. 2018. Data science: Identifying influencers in social networks. Periodicals of Engineering and Natural Sciences 6 (1): 215–228.

Bharadwaj, V., P. Chen, W. Ma, C. Nagarajan, et al. 2012. Shale: An efficient algorithm for allocation of guaranteed display advertising. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the 18th ACM SIGKDD international conference on Knowledge discovery and data mining, 1195–1203. https://doi.org/10.1145/2339530.2339718 .

Brodie, R.J., and B. Juric. 2018. Customer engagement: Developing an innovative research that has scholarly impact. Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science 28 (3): 291–303.

Cai, H., K. Ren, W. Zhang, K. Malialis, J. Wang, Y. Yu, and D. Guo. 2017. Real-time bidding by reinforcement learning in display advertising. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the Tenth ACM International Conference on Web Search and Data Mining, 661–670. https://doi.org/10.1145/3018661.3018702 .

Cavallo, R., R.P. McAfee, and S. Vassilvitskii. 2015. Display advertising auctions with arbitrage. ACM Transactions on Economics and Computation (TEAC) 3 (3): 1–23.

Diodato, V. 1994. Dictionary of bibliometrics psychology press . Binghamton: The Haworth Press.

Ferreira, M.P. 2011. A bibliometric study on Ghoshal's managing across borders. Multinational Business Review 19 (4): 357–375.

Ferreira, M.P., J.C. Santos, M.I.R. de Almeida, and N.R. Reis. 2014. Mergers & acquisitions research: A bibliometric study of top strategy and international business journals, 1980–2010. Journal of Business Research 67 (12): 2550–2558.

Fierro, I., D.A. Cardona Arbelaez, and J. Gavilanez. 2017. Digital marketing: A new tool for international education. Pensamiento & Gestión 42: 241–260.

Franceschini, F., and D. Maisano. 2011. Regularity in the research output of individual scientists: An empirical analysis by recent bibliometric tools. Journal of Informetrics 5 (3): 458–468.

Fujita, M., P. Harrigan, and G. Soutar. 2017. A netnography of a university’s social media brand community: Exploring collaborative co-creation tactics. Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science 27 (2): 148–164.

Ghanbari Baghestan, A., H. Khaniki, A. Kalantari, M. Akhtari-Zavare, E. Farahmand, E. Tamam, and M. Danaee. 2019. A crisis in “open access”: Should communication scholarly outputs take 77 years to become open access? SAGE Open 9 (3): 2158244019871044.

Ghosh, A., P. McAfee, K. Papineni, and S. Vassilvitskii. 2009. Bidding for representative allocations for display advertising. Paper presented at the International workshop on internet and network economics, 208–219.

Ghosh, A., B.I.P. Rubinstein, S. Vassilvitskii, and M. Zinkevich. 2009. Adaptive bidding for display advertising. Paper presented at the 18th International World Wide Web Conference, WWW 2009, Madrid, 251–260.

Gordhamer, S. 2009. Ways social media is changing business. New York: Mashable . Retrieved from http://Mashable.ComMedia-Business/2009/09/22/Social-Media-Business/ .

Guercini, S., P.M. Bernal, and C. Prentice. 2018. New marketing in fashion e-commerce. Journal of Global Fashion Marketing 9 (1): 1–8.

Han, S.-L., T. Thao Nguyen, and V. Anh Nguyen. 2016. Antecedents of intention and usage toward customers’ mobile commerce: Evidence in Vietnam. Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science 26 (2): 129–151.

Hay, A.M., and K.S. Beavon. 1979. Periodic marketing: A preliminary graphical analysis of the conditions for part time and mobile marketing. Tijdschrift Voor Economische En Sociale Geografie 70 (1): 27–34.

Järvinen, J., and H. Karjaluoto. 2015. The use of Web analytics for digital marketing performance measurement. Industrial Marketing Management 50: 117–127.

Jayawardhena, C., A. Kuckertz, H. Karjaluoto, and T. Kautonen. 2009. Antecedents to permission based mobile marketing: an initial examination. European Journal of Marketing 43 (3/4): 473–499.

Kalantari, A., A. Kamsin, H.S. Kamaruddin, N.A. Ebrahim, A. Gani, A. Ebrahimi, and S. Shamshirband. 2017. A bibliometric approach to tracking big data research trends. Journal of Big Data 4 (1): 1–18.

Kamal, Y. (2016). Study of trend in digital marketing and evolution of digital marketing strategies. International Journal of Engineering Science 6 (5): 5300–5302.

Kaplan, A.M., and M. Haenlein. 2010. Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media. Business Horizons 53 (1): 59–68.

Kargaran, S., M. J. Pour, and H. Moeini. 2017. Successful customer knowledge management implementation through social media capabilities. VINE Journal of Information and Knowledge Management Systems, 47 (3): 353–371.

Karjaluoto, H., and T. Alatalo. 2007. Consumers’ attitudes towards and intention to participate in mobile marketing. International Journal of Services Technology and Management 8 (2–3): 155–173.

Khodabandelou, R., N. Aleebrahim, A. Amoozegar, and G. Mehran. 2019. Revisiting three decades of educational research in Iran: A bibliometric analysis. Iranian Journal of Comparative Education 2 (1): 1–21.

Kim, J. 2018. Social dimension of sustainability: From community to social capital. Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science 28 (2): 175–181.

Kim, E.Y., and K. Yang. 2018. Self-service technologies (SSTs) streamlining consumer experience in the fashion retail stores: The role of perceived interactivity. Journal of Global Fashion Marketing 9 (4): 287–304.

Ko, E. 2019. Bridging Asia and the world: Global platform for the Interface between marketing and management . New York: Elsevier.

LABS, X. 2017. How is big data influencing digital marketing strategy? Retrieved from https://www.xcubelabs.com/blog/how-is-big-data-influencing-digital-marketing-strategy/ .

Lamberton, C., and A.T. Stephen. 2016. A thematic exploration of digital, social media, and mobile marketing: Research evolution from 2000 to 2015 and an agenda for future inquiry. Journal of Marketing 80 (6): 146–172.

Levy, S., and Y. Gvili. 2015. How credible is e-word of mouth across digital-marketing channels?: The roles of social capital, information richness, and interactivity. Journal of Advertising Research 55 (1): 95–109.

Li, S., J.Z. Li, H. He, P. Ward, and B.J. Davies. 2011. WebDigital: A Web-based hybrid intelligent knowledge automation system for developing digital marketing strategies. Expert Systems with Applications 38 (8): 10606–10613.

Maghami, M.R., M.E. Rezadad, N.A. Ebrahim, and C. Gomes. 2015. Qualitative and quantitative analysis of solar hydrogen generation literature from 2001 to 2014. Scientometrics 105 (2): 759–771.

Martín-Consuegra, D., M. Faraoni, E. Díaz, and S. Ranfagni. 2018. Exploring relationships among brand credibility, purchase intention and social media for fashion brands: A conditional mediation model. Journal of Global Fashion Marketing 9 (3): 237–251.

Nerur, S.P., A.A. Rasheed, and V. Natarajan. 2008. The intellectual structure of the strategic management field: An author co-citation analysis. Strategic Management Journal 29 (3): 319–336.

Perlich, C., B. Dalessandro, R. Hook, O. Stitelman, T. Raeder, and F. Provost. 2012. Bid optimizing and inventory scoring in targeted online advertising. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the 18th ACM SIGKDD international conference on Knowledge discovery and data mining, 804–812.  https://doi.org/10.1145/2339530.2339655 .

Poushter, J., C. Bishop, and H. Chwe. 2018. Social media use continues to rise in developing countries but plateaus across developed ones. Retrieved from https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2018/06/19/social-media-use-continues-to-rise-in-developing-countries-but-plateaus-across-developed-ones/ .

Ramos-Rodríguez, A.R., and J. Ruíz-Navarro. 2004. Changes in the intellectual structure of strategic management research: A bibliometric study of the Strategic Management Journal, 1980–2000. Strategic Management Journal 25 (10): 981–1004.

Ren, K., W. Zhang, K. Chang, Y. Rong, Y. Yu, and J. Wang. 2017. Bidding machine: Learning to bid for directly optimizing profits in display advertising. IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering 30 (4): 645–659.

Ren, K., W. Zhang, Y. Rong, H. Zhang, Y. Yu, and J. Wang. 2016. User response learning for directly optimizing campaign performance in display advertising. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the 25th acm international on conference on information and knowledge management, 679–688. https://doi.org/10.1145/2983323.2983347 .

Saura, J.R., P. Palos-Sánchez, and L.M. Cerdá Suárez. 2017. Understanding the digital marketing environment with KPIs and web analytics. Future Internet 9 (4): 76.

Shafique, M. 2013. Thinking inside the box? Intellectual structure of the knowledge base of innovation research (1988–2008). Strategic Management Journal 34 (1): 62–93.

Taiminen, H.M., and H. Karjaluoto. 2015. The usage of digital marketing channels in SMEs. Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development 22 (4): 633–651. https://doi.org/10.1108/JSBED-05-2013-0073 .

Taylor, C.R., Y.-N. Cho, C.M. Anthony, and D.B. Smith. 2018. Photoshopping of models in advertising: A review of the literature and future research agenda. Journal of Global Fashion Marketing 9 (4): 379–398.

Van Eck, N.J., and L. Waltman. 2010. Software survey: VOSviewer, a computer program for bibliometric mapping. Scientometrics 84 (2): 523–538. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-009-0146-3 .

Wang, J., W. Zhang, and S. Yuan. 2016. Display advertising with real-time bidding (RTB) and behavioural targeting. arXiv:1610.03013 .

Weinberg, T. 2009. The new community rules: Marketing on the social web.  Journal of Applied Communications 96(2): 11.

Whiting, A., and D. Williams. 2013. Why people use social media: A uses and gratifications approach. Qualitative Market Research 16 (4): 362–369.

Willett, P. 2007. A bibliometric analysis of the Journal of Molecular Graphics and Modelling. Journal of Molecular Graphics and Modelling 26 (3): 602–606.

Woodside, A.G., and P. Bernal Mir. 2019. Clicks and purchase effects of an embedded, social-media, platform endorsement in internet advertising. Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science 29 (3): 343–357.

Yang, Z., Y. Shi, and B. Wang. 2015. Search engine marketing, financing ability and firm performance in E-commerce. Procedia Computer Science 55: 1106–1112.

Yin, C., S. Ding, and J. Wang. 2019. Mobile marketing recommendation method based on user location feedback. Human-Centric Computing and Information Sciences 9 (1): 1–17.

Yodel, G. 2017. What is influencer marketing. Huffington Post . https://www.huffpost.com/entry/what-is-influcner-marketing_b_10778128#:~:text=Influencer%20marketing%20is%20simply%20the,the%20character%20of%20a%20brand.&text=Anyone%20with%20internet%20access%20can,well%20enough%2D%20become%20an%20influencer .

Yuan, S., J. Wang, and X. Zhao. 2013. Real-time bidding for online advertising: measurement and analysis. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the Seventh International Workshop on Data Mining for Online Advertising.

Zarrella, D. 2009. The social media marketing book . Sebastopol: O’Reilly Media Inc.

Zhang, M., and N. Dholakia. 2018. Conceptual framing of virtuality and virtual consumption research. Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science 28 (4): 305–319.

Zhang, W., Y. Rong, J. Wang, T. Zhu, and X. Wang. 2016. Feedback control of real-time display advertising. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the Ninth ACM International Conference on Web Search and Data Mining, 407–416. https://doi.org/10.1145/2835776.2835843 .

Zhang, W., and J. Wang. 2015. Statistical arbitrage mining for display advertising. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the 21th ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, 1465–1474. https://doi.org/10.1145/2783258.2783269 .

Zhang, W., Yuan, S., and Wang, J. (2014). Optimal real-time bidding for display advertising. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the 20th ACM SIGKDD international conference on Knowledge discovery and data mining, 1077–1086. https://doi.org/10.1145/2623330.2623633 .

Download references

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Social Science and Economics Department, Alzahra University, Vanak, Tehran, Iran

Zahra Ghorbani, Sanaz Kargaran & Manijeh Haghighinasab

Farabi Campus, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

Ministry of Education District 7, Eshragh Institute, Tehran, Iran

Seyedh Mahboobeh Jamali

Research and Technology Department, Alzahra University, Vanak, Tehran, Iran

Nader Ale Ebrahim

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Zahra Ghorbani .

Additional information

Publisher's note.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Ghorbani, Z., Kargaran, S., Saberi, A. et al. Trends and patterns in digital marketing research: bibliometric analysis. J Market Anal 10 , 158–172 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41270-021-00116-9

Download citation

Revised : 14 December 2020

Accepted : 31 May 2021

Published : 12 August 2021

Issue Date : June 2022

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1057/s41270-021-00116-9

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Digital marketing
• Electronic commerce marketing
• Search engine marketing
• Bibliometric
• Find a journal
• Publish with us
• Track your research