What is Digital Marketing?
Digital marketing is the use of digital technology to deliver your marketing messages and enable your customers to interact with your business.
Traditionally, marketing has been about sending your messages to your customer. With technology, you can now engage in a dialogue with your customers and deliver what they really want and what they don’t want that you think they want. There is often a big gap and digital marketing is what allows you to communicate one-on-one with your customers and on a large scale.
So what areas does digital marketing cover?
For me Digital Marketing includes:
- Websites including:
- Search engine optimization (SEO) – getting found on Google, etc.
- Pay Per Click (PPC): Paying for someone to find you on Google, etc.
- Banner Ads – Paying for banners to drive visitors to your site
- Electronic Commerce: The ability to buy and sell products, services, and information over the Internet.
- Consumer Reviews – Consumer reviews are a powerful way to attract consumers to your e-commerce site as they make the purchase decision easier as the reviews are from consumers who purchased the product. Entire companies are based on this concept, such as TripAdvisor.
- Blogging. Personal websites with stories, expert opinions, etc. that you think will help your readers, customers, and stakeholders.
- Social networks. Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, YouTube, Google+, Ushi, Xing, etc. These are web-based systems that allow you to connect and share information like ideas, links, photos, videos with like-minded people. They can also generate revenue for your business and thus can be routes to market for your business. They can be great ways to connect with people you may not be able to reach through any other means. Twitter can be a great source of publicly available information in real time and has reported major world events before the world press.
- Social media news. Mashable is by far the largest social networking news site.
- Online public relations. There are specific websites to make press releases available to the press. Prlog.org and helpareporter.com are examples.
- Webinars/Events: Webinars are one of many seminars distributed over the Internet. This allows you to present to a large number of people regardless of location. The events are traditional meetings or workshops but are marketed through social networks such as Linkedin.
- Email Marketing – Sending mass emails that you think are relevant to the people you are sending the message to.
- Lead Nuturing – This is where a prospect gives you their email address in exchange for something free. This is usually an ebook (in pdf format), a video, an emails course on how to do something.
- Viral Marketing: Sending a message that is so compelling that people pass it on to others unknown to you. A great way to send a message if you do it right.
- Video: An increasingly popular method of sharing ideas, conveying information, and selling on the web. Excellent for selling more complex products or services. YouTube is the most popular today, but video is being incorporated into more digital media.
- Music/Podcast. Spotify is becoming the most popular legal file sharing system as it gives you access to a wide range of music. Podcasts are voice recordings on a particular topic. They can be downloaded for listening on your computer or MP3 players at a later date. Ideal for relaxing or learning about a new subject on the go.
- Chat/Instant Messaging/Skype. Chat and Instant Messaging are keyboard conversation systems that take place in real time. That is, one person writes something and the other responds. Both must be present and online for this to work. Users of Facebook, Bebo, etc. they use this, especially the younger generation. Skype is an Internet-based video and phone system that allows Skype users to call each other for free or at a very low cost and is becoming increasingly popular for business use and will grow now that the video version is available on Facebook.
- Smartphone or mobile applications. Smartphone or mobile applications (or software applications from which the term is derived) are small pieces of computer software that run on your phone and allow you to do things that you would normally do on a computer. The need to work anywhere, anytime means these will become increasingly popular with business systems starting to appear on them. Ideal for anyone who works outside the office, including executives, sales and technical staff. Also keep an eye out for a growing number of consumers using their mobile phones for online shopping while filling their time waiting for something.
- Cloud based storage/file sharing. The cloud is, for most purposes, another name for the Internet. So cloud-based storage is the ability to store information on the internet, including backing up and sending large files to customers and vendors. DropBox and Yousendit are examples of systems for sharing large files between unrelated users. There is a wide range of providers of remote backup systems now and most companies include them in their backup strategies. Personal file sharing is also available for two or more computers to link together to share information, including music and videos. Personal file sharing is generally not a business tool for large companies.
- Cloud based systems. They are systems that allow you to work anywhere. Google has Google Docs, Microsoft has Office 365. Many third-party software providers are moving their systems to the cloud so customers can access them from anywhere and don’t have to worry about their own IT infrastructure. Companies are moving their IT infrastructure to the cloud to reduce costs as the entire infrastructure is managed by a third party.
- Extranets/Web Based Systems. Companies are now looking to give their customers and suppliers access to their information (via Extranets) and to their systems (via Web-based systems). This allows customers and suppliers to access the information relevant to them and allows them to do any processing themselves, saving you time and money, such as order entry and progress, and checking stock levels.
- Remote access. The ability to work anywhere means sometimes you need access to your computer at home or at work. Remote access through websites like Teamview and Logmein is a great way to access critical documents away from your computer. Some of these systems allow you to demonstrate your product and service online. This saves you and your customer time and money.
- Online Games/Games. More gaming companies are moving their operations to the web so that their services can be accessed anywhere, anytime. Also note that more consumer apps have gaming technology or ideas built in to make shopping more fun. The term is called gamification. This could be challenging for parents as the line between buying something and playing a game becomes blurred.
In an era where systems are everywhere, businesses need to understand how to exploit digital marketing as a means to better serve their customers, reduce costs, and make their organization more agile.
All organizations, large and small, need to understand digital marketing and have a strategy for how they are going to exploit the opportunities that digital marketing offers.