While the world awaits Gurupurab tomorrow, farmers from Punjab are protesting against the reformed farm bill 2020. Farmers have taken the protest to roads and are rallying from Punjab/Haryana to Delhi in order to make the union government listen to them. The three laws-The Essential Commodities (Amendment) Bill, The Farmers’ Produce Trade And Commerce (Production And Facilitation) Bill and The Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services-that have faced criticism from both the farmers and the opposition were passed in monsoon session of parliament in 2020. In fact, following this Harsimrat Kaur Badal, an MP of the Shiromani Akali Dal resigned from the BJP cabinet stating that the bills were against the farmers and would vanish the agriculture sector in Punjab. Opposition parties like Congress, TMC, DMK and BSP also opposed the bill stating that it was against the interests of marginal farmers. Gaurav Gogoi from Congress said that the government has been acquiring the lands of the farmers to help their capitalist friends and has termed it a ‘three-pronged’ attack on the farmers of this nation.

The government has said that these reforms will help the small farmers and accelerate the growth of the sector as private investors would be welcomed who would further build infrastructure and form supply chains for the farm produce. The government ensures that the laws will cut the prices of transportation and will be given better prices.

On the other hand, under the bill associated to commodities the protestors and opposition argue that big companies would be allowed to stock commodities which gives them an opportunity to make an upper hand on farmers making less prices for the cultivators. Then the bill relating to contract farming, the opposition says the sponsors might not be interested in dealing with farmers that are marginal and also that farmers will eventually be at a weaker position in negotiating what they need. And in the case of dispute, the advantage would like to exporters, huge companies, sponsors etc as the law provide a legal framework that requires farmers to be under a written contract with the big companies and also to produce for them. While the most important bill that is the agri market bill, protestors argue that without collecting ‘mandi fees’ the states will not be able to collect the revenue and there is a huge question mark about what will happen to the commission agents. The same bill seeks to remove various commodities from the essential commodities list like edible oils, onions, potatoes, cereals and pulses. All in all, what frightens the farmers the most is that this will end minimum support prices regime while the middlemen will also be adversely affected and mandis will lose their relevance and the farmers will also might not be able to bargain with the companies.

Now to make this a little more clear we need to understand that the bill is ultimately for the farmers of India and if they only are not satisfied then the bill deviates from its value.

With the advancement of the technologies people are also becoming advanced. They are adapting new technologies, trends and innovations and utilizing it to their best. Most of the people are now fully depended on phones and laptops. Especially in this covid-19 pandemic when people are stuck at their homes, they are spending more time on their phones or laptops as now we can find anything digitally like entertainment, informational and variety of content, songs, pictures, videos, etc. Now we can even buy almost everything from our homes only through ‘Digital Marketing’.

Digital marketing refers to the marketing where products and services are promoted or sold online with the help of internet through digital technologies like phones, laptops, computers, tablets or any other digital device. It was first used in 1990’s when the Archie search engine was developed. It can be also called as Internet marketing. Most of the marketers replaced their traditional marketing to digital marketing because they are more interested to do their business digitally as they know that most of the people use digital content daily. 

Advantages of Digital Marketing:

In today’s world Digital Marketing is the best and the most advantageous method of marketing than any other method.

• Global Reach: Digital marketing helps us to reach to the larger number of customers. You can easily promote and sell our products or services to our target audience from all over the country or even outside of the country.
• Time Saving: It’s a best time saver as we can reach to larger number of audiences with no or lesser time as compared to traditional marketing method.
•  Cost- effective:  when we promote our products digitally, it saves transportation, travelling and many other expenses. It’s affordable or less expensive option as compared to other option.
• Quick Responses: You can immediately track the responses you get on your product or services. You have the flexibility to measure your performance through your responses and taking actions for improving your campaigns in real time.
• Interaction: You can easily interact with your audience and solve their problems related to the products or services they purchased from you and can exactly know their choices.
• Multimedia: You can engage audience by adding different types of content like photos, videos and audios to your marketing material.
• Expansion: By expanding your brand recognition your sales will be boosted and that will help you to reach global markets.
• Variety: Customers can access large variety of products and services according to their preference as compared to the traditional marketing method. 

There are many other advantages of Digital marketing which also states its importance in today’s world.

Challenges:

• Marketers face many problems in adapting new and advances technologies as they get used to the traditional marketing.
• There is a lack of knowledge as many marketers or business man does not use any social media or digital channels for their business.
• Marketers face many problems in generating relevant traffic (visitors) to the website.
• Markets face problems in creating an attractive and awesome website and content.
• They also face challenges in promoting their campaigns through any digital or social media channels.

There are many other challenges that marketers face in digital marketing.   

Forms of Digital Marketing:

1. Social Media Marketing (SMM): Social media is one of the main reasons which instigate people to use their phones or laptops. About 170 million of people use their social media account regularly. So, marketers taking this as an advantage to grow their businesses online by promoting their products or services on social media apps like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, WhatsApp etc.

• Digital Advertising: It can be called as online advertising through digital channels like phones, laptops, desktop etc.

• Content Marketing: it involves creating, publishing and distribution of content to the target audience.

• Search Engine Optimization: Optimization means improving your website so that customers can easily your products or services online by one search only. It helps in attracting potential customers too.

• Email Marketing: It’s the act of sending a commercial message to the customers about new products, discounts and other details of marketing campaign through email.

• Marketing Automation: Marketing activities done through any particular software.

• Search Engine Marketing: Practice of marketing using paid advertisements.

So, as we discussed earlier Digital Marketing is one of the important industries which is rapidly growing day by day especially in this pandemic where many people are avoiding to step out from their homes. They are now preferring to shop digitally only. So, it provides lots of opportunities to the marketers and business man for growing their business digitally. But it also contains many problems and challenged. So, those who are interested in digital marketing, have to learn to cope up with these challenges by developing their knowledge and abilities in relevant areas.