BCP Business & Management EMFRM 2022

Volume 38 (2023)

Analysis of the Impact of Digital Marketing -- Based on Coca-

Cola Marketing Methods
Zhiyuan Liu1, *
1School of Electrical Engineering and Automation, Wuhan University, Hubei, China
*Corresponding author: [email protected]
Abstract. Out of the need to expand the market, marketing is one of the key topics that all companies
will pay attention to today. With the development of the times, marketers have found the significance
of digital marketing, however, the impact and the role of it still lack a unified understanding. Therefore,
the research topic of this paper is digital marketing‘s impact on traditional marketing methods. There
are a lot of meanings learning about the impacts of digital marketing. First, it can enable companies
and marketers to make better use of digital marketing to expand their markets and get more
customers. Second, a marketer can make better choices when making marketing plans if he knows
more about the digital marketing in this era. This paper is trying to analyze these impacts of digital
marketing for marketers aiming to give an understanding of it. The research methods of this paper
are as follows: Based on the differences between Coca-Cola's past marketing methods and the
marketing methods after digital marketing, the case results are analyzed. The analysis found that
digital marketing has a significant impact on traditional marketing in terms of marketing methods.
The creation of real-time, cost and product image is a significant impact of digital marketing. In
response to these impacts, marketers should formulate a more detailed work plan to expand the
scale of the industry in an era when digital marketing is becoming more and more common.
Keywords: Digital marketing, Coca-Cola, SEO.

1. Introduction
Marketing is a concept which has existed in this world for a long time, and it is a dynamic, restless,
and changing business activity [1]. While some academics say that the development of marketing in
its current form occurred con currently with the expansion of consumer culture in the 17th and 18th
centuries, others assert that prehistoric marketing practices may have existed. Others argue that
modern marketing's full potential wasn't unlocked until the decades after the first industrial revolution,
from which it later spread to the rest of Europe and North America. Different dates for marketing’s
emergence have been assigned, but according to Hollander and others, this is able to be explained by
a few issues with the marketing’s definition—whether it is referred to as "modern marketing"as a
well planned, programmed repertoire of professional practice that includes activities like marketing
communications, positioning, product differentiation and segmentation.
No matter how people define marketing, as a new concept which was born with the development
of the science and technology, it is clear that digital marketing is a marketing method based on the
communication technology, digital interactive media and Internet, which came out in the 1990s. By
the means of SEO, display ads, social, media marketing, website and e-mail Marketing, a company
can benefit a lot which contains these aspects: cost-efficient, better exposure, saving time, social
currency and brand building. These changes are not exclusive to the US dot com scene. Despite some
governments' best efforts, the Internet empowers European consumers, just like consumers in any
other culture, and establishes a truly international market [2].
When digital marketing came out for the first time, marketers noticed it but they did not put too
much into it. However, as time went by, digital marketing has become a significant marketing method
for companies to sell their products. More and more companies started to think highly of digital
marketing and it actually gives them a response which tells them that their money gets the feedback.
Digital marketing planning is no different to any other marketing plan, in fact it’s increasingly strange
to have separate plans for ‘digital’ and ‘offline’ since that’s not how your customers perceive your
business [3]. For marketers, they are not supposed to treat these two kinds of marketing methods too

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differently, instead they should look for the similarities between them and make more appropriate
choices on their marketing plans.
There are a lot of meanings of learning the impacts of the digital marketing to the marketing
methods. First of all, with the development of computer science and internet, digital marketing has
come to our daily life. For marketers and companies, they have to seize this opportunity to utilize
digital marketing expanding their markets. Second, understanding these impacts can help marketers
do more smart choices on the marketing plan they made.
There must be some impacts on marketing strategies since the concept digital marketing has come
out. And the question is how to find it out about these aspects. This paper chose coca-cola as an
example for the reason that it has a long history and it has taken marketing seriously since its first
year as a company. After analyzing the case of Coca-Cola, this paper has some conclusions that digital
marketing does have some impacts on the marketing methods.

2. Case Study
2.1 Case Description
Throughout the history of Coca-Cola, it is obviously that the company has always used advertising.
Without appropriate marketing plans and advertisements, Coca-Cola cannot be such a huge company
now. John Woodruff, the former CEO of Coca-Cola, made a well-known statement, “Coca-Cola is
99.61% carbonic acid, syrup and water. If it wasn't advertised, who would drink it? ” [4]. In 1886,
which is the year when Coca-Cola was founded, the first advertisement of Coca-Cola came out in
Atlanta Journal, which was a local newspaper. What’s more, in the same year, Frank Robinson
advised his boss to have Coca-Cola written as a logo of the company, which is used today on all
products of it. A year later, Coca-Cola released some coupons to make its customers get a free cola
from any dispenser. And in 1901, the amount they spent on marketing is more than 100000 dollars,
which shows the importance of marketing for the company. Coca-Cola’s billboard was put up for the
first time in 1925. And they started to sponsor the Olympics in 1928 for the first time. In 1929, they
started making neon lights for the dispenser. And in 1931 Coca-Cola made a Santa in red. However,
for Coca-Cola, it was far away from enough innovated, they made Coin-operated vending machines
in 1935 and it was the pioneer of the ones used today.
During the World War II, Coca-Cola decided to help the troops as good as they could. 64 bottling
plants around the world were shipped by them in order to be able to send Coca-Cola to the army
during the time. What’s more, this was also the time that the logo of the company came out. As time
went by, the fund needed was growing bigger and bigger. In 1953, the expense of marketing was up
to 30 million dollars, which equals to 250 million dollars right now. And in the 1970s, Coca-Cola
made their customers feel that Coca-Cola was "a brand related with fun, friends, and good times" by
creating more than five different types of new goods, one of which was one of the most effective and
well-known television commercials ever. Their advertisement featured various singers on a hilltop
singing "I'd Like to Buy the World a Coke."
In the 1980s, Coca-Cola didn’t stop the sponsorship and advertisement. For instance, they sent
their cola to the space, which made Coca-Cola become the first cola existed in the space. And they
sponsored a lot of sports around the world. And this situation continued until now.
The world has totally changed since 1990s by internet technology. In this new era, there has been
a new marketing method called digital marketing. And the marketing methods of Coca-Cola had to
change as well. In fact, as a company which started focusing on its marketing since its founding,
Coca-Cola has done a lot in digital marketing area.
2.2 Case Analysis
According to different business journals of America, internet advertisement is quicker than
traditional one [5]. There are three main points that really makes sense for Coca-Cola’s digital
marketing. First, they engaged directly with their fans. For instance, #VerdaderoAmigo ad campaign
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of Coca-Cola celebrates something like team building, unity and friendship. It seems that this
campaign has nothing to do with cola itself, but it really means a lot. This campaign was started in an
effort to combat cyberbullying and the cruelty, loneliness, and isolation it causes. The campaign tried
to make adolescents value their friends and stay away from bullying. Secondly, Coca-Cola is targeting
millennials. Lastly, they focused on personalizing, which gives different places different languages
on advertisement.
On the aspect of social media. It is obviously that they performed very well on different social
media platforms. The number of Coca-Cola’s followers on different platforms are shown in Table 1.
It is clearly that Coca-Cola has 2.8M followers on instagram, 109M followers on facebook, 3.4M
followers on twitter and 3.7M subscribers on YouTube. It is a huge number of followers, which can
make their products have more exposure and gain more traffic. On these platforms, it focuses on
different aspects. But they all have the same focus on building brand awareness of its advertising
campaigns in comparison to those of other businesses, and sometimes post engagement posts.

Table 1. Followers of Coca-Cola on different platforms [6]

Platforms The number of followers
Instagram 2,820,409
Facebook 109,306,812
Twitter 3,389,675
Youtube 3,740,000
Note：The data is organized from official account pages of these four platforms: : Instagram, twitter,
YouTube and Facebook
What’s more, Coca-Cola uses SEO strategies. Although establishing SEO infrastructure takes long
time, it is more permanent and pays attention to reputation management and brand perception [7].
From Coca-Cola’s website, this essay selected 3 keywords. Coca-Cola ranks first, followed by soft
drinks in second place, and carbonated drinks in third place. If you search for the keyword "Cola" in
Google Search, you will find the entire page of landing pages related to Coca-Cola, which is displayed
on the first page of Google SERP and indicates that Coca-Cola optimized the keyword "Cola"
correctly in search engine optimization because it displays everything related to Coca-Cola. Because
the brand is well-known worldwide, SEM can place the page top without using Google advertising.
The keyword "Cola" is the most pertinent because it is the first search result shown on Google SERP,
which drives users to the Coca-Cola landing page. In addition, each search result on the first page
will redirect visitors to their relevant websites. Because people can see results related to Coca-Cola
on the first page, which is the fourth link in the SERP, a search for the phrase "soft drinks" reveals
that the company has done an excellent job with its search engine optimization. The definition of soft
drinks was the first organic result, and Coca-Cola was so well-liked that they even included a picture
of a cup of Coca-Cola as a soft drink. Additionally, images of Coca-Cola are shown in the search
results for photographs. Because Coca-Cola is the soft drink manufacturer displayed on the first page
of SERP, Coca-search Cola's engine optimization for the keyword "soft drinks" was successful. By
searching for the keyword "carbonated drinks", you can see some non-branded beverages in SEO.
However, there are also images of Coca-Cola and other drinks. It illustrates that Coca-Cola has made
some efforts to add images to show the relevance of this keyword. On the first page of SERP, there
are no beverage companies. The result is mainly definitions. However, when searching for
"carbonated drinks", there are some images of Coca-Cola. This means that Coca-Cola does the best
in optimizing keyword relevance compared with other beverage companies. By doing this SEO,
Coca-organic Cola's search gained a reputation as one of the best sources for attracting customers,
generating interactions, and getting media attention.
It is clear that digital marketing is truly influencing Coca-Cola a lot, so what is it exactly? From
the viewpoint of a customer, the use of information communication technologies offers a number of

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benefits, convenience, including efficiency, richer and participative information, a broader selection
of products, cost reduction, product diversity, and competitive pricing [8]. What’s more, by the means
of digital marketing, consumers can take part in a lot of activities held by the company. For instance,
consumers can visit company’s website, read information about the services and products and make
purchases online and provide feedback [9]. As Davis said, this is the only illustration of how Coca-
Cola is ready to adapt to the needs of the moment in order to help their brand develop. The content
development work that has been done demonstrates this capacity and openness to change. As was
already established, a significant portion of the content shared on all of Coca-social Cola's media
platforms is user-generated content. This was initially because of who created the websites, but it has
now become a chance for Coca-Cola to increase two-way conversations and turn followers into much
bigger consumers of the business's social media platforms and goods.

3. Discussion
3.1 Real-Time
After learning about the case of Coca-Cola, a lot of differences about the marketing can be
discovered. Compared with with traditional marketing, digital marketing has a lot of aspects to make
itself competent, advantageous, and are always more popular than it is. Online marketing is real-time,
as opposed to traditional marketing, where businesses must wait until a certain time has passed before
hearing back from customers.
It is simpler to monitor how well particular campaigns for products are performing, and marketers
may adjust their promotional efforts as necessary depending on customer feedback, which is
impossible in traditional marketing because marketers cannot respond to customers in real time.
By traditional marketing, due to the costs involved and strategic expertise, it is not that simple for
retailers to compete with large competitors in the market. In terms of online marketing, through a
clear website, you can ensure wider access to the target audience through better services.

3.2 Cost Participation

Another area where traditional marketing technology and online marketing differ significantly is
cost participation. Digital marketing strategies of some commercial businesses can be developed at a
very low cost to replace more expensive traditional advertising channels like television, print media,
magazines and radio coverage.
By the means of digital marketing, the coverage and coverage of any commercial promotion idea
are much larger, because compared with traditional marketing activities, it can be seen anywhere in
the world at the best cost through a marketing campaign. Once any marketer optimizes the words on
the website to search for standard content, it remains determined. The cost of bit is very small to its
return on investment.

3.3 Correspondence
What’s more, marketers can design choices to persuade the target market to act favorably and
appropriately, visit their websites, and learn about their products' features and other services.
Customers can voice their opinions about the goods, their choices for purchases, and the resulting
feedback using this approach. It is also visible on the website, allowing marketers to take advantage
of customer interactions that are typically underutilized in traditional marketing approaches.
Moreover, brand development can outperform conventional marketing strategies. By providing
more chances, a well-designed website with high-quality content can both satisfy client wants and
significantly exceed their expectations. Online marketing may spread like a virus and encourage
classic model marketing.For instance, messages can travel swiftly by social media channels, email,
and social media websites.

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4. Conclusion
Digital marketing is based on dynamic internet channels with the highest frequency of use, and
they can change from year to year and are always influenced by market trends [10]. As time goes by,
there are more and more companies using digital marketing as their marketing method for the reason
that there are a lot of advantages of it. After learning about the case of Coca-Cola, it is clearly that
ways of marketing has changed a lot from the era of traditional marketing to the era of digital
marketing. And it is obviously that Coca-Cola really takes it seriously and they put a lot of money
into digital marketing.
There are 3 main points that digital marketing can do while traditional marketing can’t. It is real-
time, cost participation and correspondence. Comparing both types of marketing, digital marketing is
more economical and faster way to reach out to buyer directly, and is the ideal ways for business to
advertise both locally and internationally [11].

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