OVERVIEW
In the COVID-19-influenced world, a company’s digital presence is typically the first thing a customer turns to or discovers when they seek information about your products or services. That’s why the use of digital marketing is critical to business success.
This article will provide an introduction to what digital marketing is, some items to consider when developing a digital marketing strategy, and some of the different digital marketing channels that are available for you to use.
DIGITAL MARKETING 101
The term “digital marketing” has been around for almost as long as marketing has been around (there’s one argument that the first instance of digital marketing was when Alexander Graham bell placed the first phone call in 1876, but that may be a bit of a stretch). Depending on your perspective, a variety of significant dates could be considered the beginning of the digital marketing era:
- The IBM PC was introduced in 1981
- Database marketing software became available in 1986
- The World Wide Web was developed in 1989 by Tim Berners Lee
- In 1993 the first banner ad was placed on a website
- Yahoo! was launched in 1994
- And many more…
So although digital marketing is considered to be several decades old, there’s still a lot of confusion about when exactly it began, what it is and how to use it. I’ll leave determining when it began up to the “experts” and just deal with what it is and how to use it.
DIGITAL MARKETING DEFINED
In its simplest form, the term “digital marketing" refers to using digital channels (i.e., marketing channels that are typically accessible via the Internet) to connect and engage with your prospects and customers. The wide variety of digital channels available provides marketers with greater freedom than many of the more traditional marketing pursuits. However, due to the large number of digital channels available (such as websites, social media, email marketing and mobile marketing), marketers must be very prescriptive about which digital channels they use.
A key point about digital marketing is that it’s not just about the customer destination; it’s actually a business model you need to embrace. It’s not just about having a website (which is basically table stakes in today’s digital world); it’s about understanding and optimizing the customer engagement process across all digital channels so customers can easily find the information they need, when, where and how they want it.
Digital marketing is doing business in a manner that takes into consideration all the different ways your marketing provides information about and drives awareness of your product so that it enhances the customer’s online experience, provides them with the information they need, and incents them to continue moving down the sales funnel. This means knowing how you’re going to use your website and other digital channels to most effectively provide the customer with the right information, in the right way, at the right time, in the right format.
THE VALUE OF DIGITAL MARKETING
This is where digital marketing really provides value. The term digital marketing implies the use of technology, and through that technology digital marketing offers several key benefits that are not typically available in traditional marketing.
The first benefit is that it provides you with numerous different ways to track and measure the effectiveness of your marketing activities. You’re able to track your marketing on a very granular basis (for example, by customer or by how certain content is performing), so you can immediately tell what is, or is not, working. This level of insight allows you to make faster adjustments to your marketing strategy. There are also numerous tools (many of them free) to help you track and measure your digital marketing activities.
The second benefit is that digital marketing allows you to provide personalized content in real time. Through the use of AI and analytics, you can track customer visits to your website or other digital channel, analyze their activities there and then based on predetermined rules, serve up appropriate content based on what they’ve looked for, where on the site they currently are, etc. The ability to provide personalized content in real time like this differentiates your site from the millions of others on the web that only provide static content.
The third benefit is that depending on which channel you use, digital marketing allows you to communicate in real time with your customer. The ability to immediately respond to comments, answer questions, or provide clarification or additional information lets you keep the customer engaged while they’re actually looking, instead of after the fact.
As you can see, digital marketing provides the marketer with a wider set of tools with which to engage and interact with customers than more traditional marketing channels do. This is why digital marketing has become such an important part of the marketer’s tool chest.
GETTING STARTED WITH DIGITAL MARKETING
To get started in your digital marketing journey, you need to develop a digital strategy, the first step of which is to determine which digital channel(s) to use. As there are literally dozens (if not hundreds) of potential options, it’s important to have done your customer, competitive and market research before proceeding, as that will help inform your digital strategy.
Selecting the right digital channel(s) should be based on the knowledge of how and where your target customer searches for information, as that lets you properly position your company or your product in front of them. Your choice of channel(s) will then help you determine the type of digital marketing activities.
The following list gives you an idea of the breadth of available digital marketing channels from which you can choose:
- Website
- Mobile Marketing
- Affiliate Marketing
- Content Marketing
- Advertising
- Online
- Banner
- Marketing Communications
- Online
- Paid
- Earned
- Owned
- Text/SMS Marketing
- Instant Messaging
- Apps Marketing
- Email Marketing
- Inbound / Outbound Marketing
- Social Media Marketing
- Blogs
- Posts
- Videos
- Tweets
- Articles
- Podcasts
- Audio
- eBooks
- Infographics
- Communities of interest
- Enhanced Reality
- Virtual Events
- Forums
- Webinars
- Virtual Roadshows
- Virtual Reality / Environments / Worlds
- Streaming
- On-demand
- Personalization
- Artificial Intelligence
- Chatbots
- Digital Assistants
- Machine Learning
- Gamification
- Interactive Demos
- SEO / SEM
RELATED MARKETING ACTIVITIES
While many digital marketing activities are done on a stand-alone basis, there are also other, more “traditional” marketing activities which are often used in conjunction with digital marketing. These may include:
- Account-Based Marketing (ABM)
- Advertising
- Demand Generation
- Event Marketing
- Field Marketing
- Inbound / Outbound Marketing
- Lead Generation
- Traditional Marketing
- Radio
- TV
- Billboard
There may also be internal functions at your company that take advantage of some of the digital marketing activities and outputs, such as:
- AR / PR
- Corporate Communications
- Executive Communications
- Sales Enablement and Training
I point this out to help you understand that digital marketing is not always a stand-alone activity. It can also be used just as effectively when combined with more traditional marketing strategies.
How you use digital marketing depends strictly on the needs of your business. From something as simple as a single digital marketing activity (such as an inbound marketing campaign) to a fully integrated marketing strategy that includes numerous types of marketing (such as traditional, digital, event, and field), digital marketing provides the marketer with a wide variety of channels and choices. It’s interesting to note that if digital marketing is used in an integrated manner, non-digital marketing channels are often used to drive traffic to the digital channels and vice-versa, providing numerous opportunities for cross-promotion.
SUMMARY
Digital marketing provides the marketer with a wide variety of channels to choose from to connect with customers. It also lets the marketer track how effective the various marketing actions are in a detailed, real-time manner, giving them the option of making changes immediately.
More importantly, it delivers value in an engaging, interactive way by providing the customer with more personalized, relevant content and information, helping them to move down the sales funnel.
© 2021 – Richard Hatheway / Catalyst Strategic Marketing
