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Digital marketing is the act of promoting products and services through digital channels, such as social media, SEO, email, and mobile apps. Any form of marketing that involves electronic devices is considered digital marketing.

It can be done online and offline; in fact, both kinds are important for a well-rounded digital marketing strategy.

Do you want to learn more about digital marketing? This guide will cover everything you need to know to get familiar with digital marketing.

Why Digital Marketing Matters

Remember billboards? I do.

As a young kid in California, my experiences from the back seat of our car mostly alternated between: "Mom, when are we there?" and "Uh, look, McDonald's, can we go?" whenever one of those 10-foot billboards popped up on the side of the road.

Growing up with Indian parents, the answer to both of those would, most times, be the same: "not yet."

Sometimes, big brands would even start a billboard war, like this one between Audi and BMW, which got quite a few laughs:

In 2015, many of my clients spent hundreds of millions of dollars on billboard advertising.

Today, most companies have moved to online marketing.

That's because Google and Facebook generate more revenue than any traditional media company. After all, they control more eyeballs. That's why digital marketing matters; it's where the attention is.

The reason why billboards, like the ones above, will die, is because the future of driving will look like this:

Although driverless cars already exist, drivers still have to pay attention. As the technology improves, not a single passenger will spend their time looking at the road.

Do me a favor; take a peek at the passenger seat the next time you give someone a ride. Just for a second.

Chances are, they'll be looking at their phone.

Who will see those advertisements if no one is looking at the road?

What's more: the share of people spending more time using electronic devices continues to rise, while print advertising continues to decline.

That means you don't have much time to figure out this digital marketing stuff.

Nearly 5 billion people worldwide go online to shop, learn, entertain themselves and even work.

If you want to reach those people, digital marketing is a must.

Maybe you think you have a local store, so you don't need to worry about digital marketing.

You'd be wrong.

According to Google, 88 percent of people who conduct a local search on their smartphone visit a related store in the next week.

You'll miss out on that traffic if you're not online.

Digital marketing also provides access to more data and analytics about your customers, how they navigate the buying cycle, and what they want.

You need to understand and know how to leverage digital marketing for your business to succeed.

The History of Digital Marketing

Digital marketing was popularized in the early 2000s, but digital marketing has been around much longer.

Like, WAY longer. About 100 years longer, to be exact.

Here's a pic of the first digital marketer in history:

His name was Guglielmo Marconi, and he was born in 1874.

In 1896, he was the first human to demonstrate a "public transmission of wireless signals."

He invented the radio.
Shortly after his demonstration in England, Morse signals were transmitted across open water.

While it would take another 10 years for the radio to reach the general public, it sure didn't take the creators long to realize they could use it to sell stuff.

The first live broadcast was from an opera performance at the Met and guess what people did after it?

They bought show tickets!

Digital marketing was born.

Online Digital Marketing Overview

The 2 main pillars of digital marketing are online marketing and offline marketing. That said, since I'll talk about online marketing in a separate guide, I'll only mention the different areas of online marketing here for the sake of completeness.

The 7 big categories of online marketing are:

Intro to Digital Marketing

There are five main categories of digital marketing:

enhanced offline marketing

radio marketing

television marketing

phone marketing

QR codes

Enhanced offline marketing is a form of marketing that is done offline, but enhanced with electronic devices.

For example, if your restaurant uses iPads for your customers to place orders, then the offline experience of eating Thai food is enhanced with this electronic device.

People have been using digital media to enhance their marketing for decades.

Next, there's radio marketing. The next time you hear an annoying, over-enthusiastic car dealer shout every word of his or her commercial, thank Mr. Marconi.

Of course, we can't forget television marketing, which has been around for more than half a century.

Phone marketing is the biggest and fastest-growing area of offline marketing, with admittedly many flops, busts, and failures as well.

Enhanced Offline Marketing

What's the difference between a billboard somewhere in the desert of Arizona and a billboard in New York City's Times Square?

The size? The product?

Three letters: LED. Light emitting diodes.

All of the billboards in Times Square are electronic!

All of the billboards in Times Square are electronic!

Why? Because in the desert of Arizona, no one's competing with you for people's attention. If you have a billboard at all, you win.

In Times Square, attention is probably more valuable than anywhere else in the world, with more than 360,000 visitors each day.

If you want to be distracted, there are buses, taxis, promoters shouting, and then, of course, the electronic billboards. Some of them are even interactive, showing live feeds of the people on the square or pictures of customers.

Renting a billboard space on Times Square for just one day can set you back over $50,000.

Here's another example.

What do you see when you walk into an Apple Store these days?

People leaning over iPads, Macbooks, and iPhones.

Product demos should be an important part of your digital marketing strategy if you have any type of electronic product.

Another example is those free trial CDs that AOL sent out in the early 90s-you may remember those were everywhere at one point. All those CDs may have been annoying, but they are likely a big reason for AOL's early success.

Radio Marketing

In fact, it's thriving:

In recent years, radio made a smart move: having the hosts read out advertising sponsorships at the beginning of shows.

To create a sponsorship, find your local radio stations with a quick Google search. Find a station whose audience reflects your company's target demographic; radio stations should be able to provide you with the data that helps you select the right fit.

For example, if your company sells maternity products, you want to find a radio program whose average listener is a female between the ages of 24 and 40.

If you go the traditional radio advertising route, the key is to be entertaining and catch the listener's attention.

Cadillac and Dairy Queen are two brands that come up with solid radio commercials on a consistent basis.
You can listen to some examples here.
TV Marketing

Television marketing is so huge, it's unlikely to ever fully go away. However, it is changing as consumers move away from traditional television in favor of streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime.

Some fast facts about TV marketing:

Though cable TV ads are harder to target the right audience, have a low ROI compared to other forms of digital advertising, and generally seem irrelevant in the digital age, there is one type of television ad that may still be worth it; but it will cost you big.

Remember I mentioned renting a billboard in Times Square can cost $50,000 a day?

A 60-second commercial aired during the Super Bowl costs $5.6 million.

The often viral and memorable commercials still pay for themselves thanks to their cross-pollinating effect.

Roughly 10 percent of all TV commercial-related shares on social media come from Super Bowl ads.

So do about 8 percent of all views on Youtube that go to TV commercial videos.

If your commercial makes it to the blacklist (commercials the network decides can't be shown on TV), the viral effect is usually even stronger, like the infamous Carl's Junior ad that couldn't be shown in the 2015 Super Bowl.

What's more, these commercials become online assets, generating millions of YouTube views over time.

Sadly, the hype of the Super Bowl commercials is probably more of a remnant from a success period that's about to fade.

The $27 billion companies still annually spend worldwide on TV commercials may not always be the best investment moving forward. Television advertising, in the form we know it, is changing to make way for the more custom-tailored experiences we are already getting used to.

So, if you plan on doing offline digital marketing, I suggest focusing on a marketing platform or channel of the future-which in the case of television marketing, means streaming services.

Phone Marketing

Nearly 75 percent of Americans own a smartphone, and more people access the internet from their phones than via a desktop PC or laptop.

Mobile marketing is here to stay. In 2015, the amount spent on mobile ads exceeded that spent on desktop ads for the first time and the market continues to grow.

Let's look at some offline ways to market your products using phone marketing.

Calling and Texting

Cold calling is the act of calling a person with no prior contact in an effort to make a sale.

Cold calling can generate an average of three sales per day, so it doesn't have the scalability of social media or email. Still, it can be a valid method of marketing in some industries.

What works better is marketing via texting, an "app" available on every phone.

Online or offline, a text message is almost a guaranteed read.

While you should definitely get permission first, for example, by having your customers text a certain word to a phone number, several providers offer text marketing at scale.

There are several ways to leverage text message marketing.

Special deals, coupons, and discounts are great for restaurants to get additional customers and turn walk-ins into regulars.

You can see more examples of successful restaurant text messaging campaigns here.

Using text reminders as customer service can also enhance your mobile marketing as many pharmacies do. They alert customers when their prescription is ready for pickup.

Another option is to create a loyalty program, where you text participating customers special deals and giveaways.

QR Codes

QR codes are a type of barcode that take users to a specific web page or app.

This one, for example, is for the English home page of Wikipedia:

You used to have to download a specific app to use QR codes, but now all you need is the camera on your smartphone to scan and open the site.

They can be used to deliver ads, send users to a video, or even combined with other forms of enhanced offline marketing, like in this Burger King television ad:

Another example is Coinbase's 2022 Super Bowl ad:

How to Set Up an Offline Digital Marketing Strategy

Ready to set up an offline digital marketing strategy? Here's how to do it in four easy steps.

1. Set up an enhanced offline marketing strategy: Create ads optimized for platforms like digital billboards, give product demos, and offer digital product samples.

2. Create a radio marketing strategy: Approach local radio stations about ad sponsorships or create engaging traditional ads using silly voices, local celebrities, or mentioning trendy topics.

3. Engage in television marketing: The most effective way to get a decent ROI on tv ads is to buy ad time during popular events that people watch live, create ads that go viral (by being controversial, emotional, or funny), or create ads you can reuse across multiple ad channels.

4. Use phone marketing: Smartphones create unique phone advertising opportunities. Use modern software to cold call and leave ringless voicemails for targets, send texts offering deals and promotions to subscribing customers, or use QR codes.

FAQs

Conclusion

That's the scoop on digital marketing. As you can see, the internet is, by far, not the only place for marketers to gain success, even today.

Of course, no one can afford to miss out on the opportunities and every marketer will need to master online marketing.

Employing these offline digital marketing tactics can help diversify your lead generation beyond social media, content marketing, and the like.

Though our agency does not specialize in offline marketing, we can help you if you need help growing or getting your online digital marketing strategy off the ground! Reach out to learn more.

Do you use digital marketing strategies in your business? Which channel is most effective?

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Digital marketing is the act of promoting products and services through digital channels, such as social media, SEO, email, and mobile apps. Any form of marketing that involves electronic devices is considered digital marketing. It can be done online and offline; in fact, both kinds are important for a well-rounded digital marketing strategy.

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Defining digital marketing today using the Smart Insights RACE Framework. In this new era of digital disruption, make time to revisit your omnichannel marketing strategy and discover opportunities to accelerate your ROI

What is digital marketing? The answer to this all-important question is in flux, as 'digital' continues to rapidly merge into our new lives. As marketers, we must stay vigilant and continue to scan for new threats and opportunities in the digital landscape. But it can be difficult to work out which trends will actually add value to your marketing strategy, as opposed to vanity metrics.

At the same time, I still regularly come into contact with marketers and business owners using the term 'digital' simply to mean 'our website' or 'our Facebook page'. This thinking limits the scope and opportunity of what's managed and it means that activities that need to be properly managed may be missed.

To truly define digital marketing today, you need a structure that includes all your customer touchpoints, that integrates online, offline and omnichannel experiences, and empowers you with a data-driven approach to identify and manage your customers' journeys.

That's where our RACE Framework comes in. Our popular strategic marketing template informs marketers and managers about the function of digital and offline marketing activities in their customers' lifecycles.

If you're looking to optimize your marketing strategy, integrate your digital activities, or just need some help prioritizing next steps to grow your business, I recommend booking a free 1-2-1 consultation call with the team. Our consultation calls are designed to put you in the driver's seat and talk through your opportunities using the RACE Framework, so you can make an informed decision about the best strategy for your business. Book your call to find out more.

Plan your marketing strategy with the RACE Framework

The RACE Framework maps the online customer journey across all potential touchpoints, showing the scale and opportunity of all your digital channels - more than just 'a website' or 'a Facebook page'.

Within this framework of Reach, Act, Convert and Engage across all channels, you can implement digital practices effectively within your organization by planning, managing and optimizing your digital media, digital experiences and digital data.

The 5Ds of digital marketing

To understand the importance of digital to the future of marketing in any business, it's helpful to think about what audience interactions we need to understand and manage. Marketing today is about many more types of audience interaction than website or email... It involves managing and harnessing these '5Ds of Digital' that I have defined in the introduction to the latest update to my Digital Marketing: Strategy, Planning and Implementation book.

The 5Ds define the opportunities for consumers to interact with brands and for businesses to reach and learn from their audiences in different ways:

1. Digital devices - audiences experience brands as they interact with business websites and mobile apps typically through a combination of connected devices including smartphones, tablets, desktop computers, TVs and gaming devices.

2. Digital platforms - most interactions on these devices are through a browser or apps from the major platforms or services, that's Facebook (and Instagram), Google (and YouTube), Twitter and LinkedIn.

3. Digital media - different paid, owned and earned communications channels for reaching and engaging audiences including advertising, email and messaging, search engines and social networks.

4. Digital data - the insight businesses collect about their audience profiles and their interactions with businesses, which now needs to be protected by law in most countries.

5. Digital technology - the marketing technology or martech stack that businesses use to create interactive experiences from websites and mobile apps to in-store kiosks and email campaigns.

Defining digital marketing

The use of the internet and other media and technology to support 'modern marketing' has given rise to a bewildering range of labels and jargon created by both academics and professionals. It has been called digital marketing, internet marketing, e-marketing and web marketing and these alternative terms have varied through time...as this plot from 2014 to 2020 from Google Trends shows.

You can see that digital marketing is the term most frequently used today, as we can see from these definitions, so that is the term we focus on.

Do definitions matter? We think they do, since particularly within an organization or between a business and its clients we need clarity to support the goals and activities that support Digital Transformation.

If you're looking to transform your approach to digital data, media, and customer experiences, why not book a free consultation to kick off your strategic planning? Identify your problems, and discuss solutions that work for your business. Find out more about how the RACE Framework can accelerate your digital transformation process, and increase your ROI. Book in your call to get started today.

What is digital marketing?

Boiled down to its simplest form, and defined in my book Digital Marketing: Strategy, Implementation and Practice as simply:

'Achieving marketing objectives through applying digital technologies and media.'

I expand on this definition to include managing different forms of online company presence and presences such as company websites, mobile apps, and social media company pages.

This is in conjunction with online communications techniques including the likes of search engine marketing, social media marketing, online advertising, e-mail marketing, and partnership arrangements with other websites.

These techniques are used to support the objectives of acquiring new customers and providing services to existing customers that help develop the customer relationship through E-CRM and marketing automation.

However, for digital to be successful, there is still a necessity for integration of digital techniques with traditional media such as print, TV, and direct mail as part of multichannel marketing communications.

If we look at these other definitions such as this definition by SAS or this alternative definition from Wikipedia, we can see that there is a focus on promoting of products and services using digital media rather than a more holistic definition covering customer experiences, relationship development and stressing the importance of multichannel integration.

So for us, the scope of the term should include activities across the customer lifecycle:

Digital media and communications channels.

Digital and mobile experiences such as web design and mobile apps.

Prospect and customer relationship management through marketing automation.

Digital strategy and integrating multichannel communications and experiences.

Digital technologies and platforms to manage all digital activities.

My recent blog post on 2021 digital trends shows the latest innovations. It's crucial to keep these in mind as we consider the scope of digital marketing - since it is always developing. Moreover, it's important in these instances not to get carried away with trying to implement every digital trend immediately without considering your business objectives. This is why considering the function of digital marketing within your company can be a useful exercise.

Particularly for today's marketers, incorporating an integrated omnichannel approach to marketing is a 'must do' for success.

Digital channel managers today support the whole buying process from pre-sale to sale to post-sale and further development of customer relationships. Marketers with digital skills, sitting in specialist digital or integrated marketing teams, enable companies to leverage digital technology and media to meet those objectives.

Marketing managers and directors are responsible not just for marketing strategy, but also for maintaining a high level of marketing activities and coherence within their team. That's why we have marketing training and tools designed for channel marketers to upskill and develop their knowledge as well as strategy and planning resources for those who manage them. Since all our Smart Insights marketing solutions are integrated across the RACE Framework, you can confidently track and adapt the journeys which you know deliver the best results, integrated across multiple channels.

Defining marketing

It is important to remember that, despite digital using different communications techniques to traditional marketing, its end objectives are no different from the objectives that marketing has always had. It can be easy to set digital objectives based around 'vanity metrics' such as the number of 'likes' or followers, so it is useful to bear in mind this definition of marketing advanced by the Chartered Institute of Marketing:

'Marketing is the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably'.

This definition emphasizes the focus of marketing on the customer while at the same time implying a need to link to other business operations to achieve this profitability. Yet, it's a weak definition in relation to digital activity since it doesn't emphasize communications which are so important to digital activity.

In Digital Marketing Excellence my co-author, PR Smith and I note that digital marketing can be used to support these aims as follows:

Identifying - the internet can be used for marketing research to find out customers' needs and wants

Anticipating - the Internet provides an additional channel by which customers can access information and make purchases - evaluating this demand is key to governing resource allocation.

Satisfying - a key success factor is achieving customer satisfaction through the appropriate channel, which raises issues such as: is the site easy to use, does it perform adequately, what is the standard of associated customer service and how are physical products dispatched?

Optimizing your digital channels can be tricky, and a simple definition does not necessarily translate into something that is useful for achieving business objectives. That is where The RACE Framework comes in, as it can help you plan, manage and optimize your digital strategy.

Our graphical summary definition of the scope of digital marketing

We have put together this new visual definition summarizing all the digital activities that need to be managed across the Smart Insights RACE Framework. It's used in the new, 6th edition of Dave's digital marketing book. The infographic is divided into activities to develop and manage digital strategy at the top to the marketing activities at the bottom.

So, digital marketing is about utilizing digital technology to achieve marketing objectives. There is no essential need for digital to always be separate from the marketing department as a whole, as the objectives of both are the same. However, for now, it remains a useful term because digital requires a certain skill set to utilize digital technology effectively.

Not sure what to do next? Our experts can talk you through how to apply the RACE Framework to your own company, when you book your free 1-2-1 consultation call. Book a free consultation to discover the skills you need to create a winning marketing strategy and grow your business with the RACE Framework.

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What is Digital Marketing? A visual summary - Smart Insights

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What is digital marketing? The answer to this all-important question is in flux, as 'digital' continues to rapidly merge into our new lives. As marketers, we must stay vigilant and continue to scan for new threats and opportunities in the digital landscape.

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What Is Digital Marketing? And How Does It Work?

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