In a world so consumed by buzzwords, the term “digital marketing” can mean a lot of different things to different people. With this in mind, we thought we’d take the time to address what digital marketing actually means, and to a greater extent, involves.
In essence, digital marketing relates to how modern marketing is conducted through digital – namely online – channels, and it is for this reason that digital marketing goes under so many other labels.
Although this is a broad definition in itself, in this article we take a look at a few other more specific aspects of digital marketing to help give you a better understanding of why it’s so important to most brands in this day and age.
Article Breakdown
The different facets of digital marketing
You might have heard of pay-per-click (PPC), search engine optimization (SEO), or search engine marketing (SEM) and wondered how they all fit into the world of digital marketing.
In truth, they all fit snugly into the term, but some of these digital marketing techniques work better for some brands more than others.
To better understand what kind of digital marketing might be most appropriate for some brands, it’s a good idea to think about how strategy, planning, and implementation are utilized for different audiences and products in order to maximize returns.
For this reason, digital marketing is often thought about through five different avenues. These are devices, platforms, media, data, and technology, with each of these elements factoring into a digital marketing campaign in very unique ways – for example, a perfume company will need to make the most out of a digital platform like Instagram more than a plumber would (who might opt to use search engine marketing instead).
All of the factors basically function to support different opportunities for consumers to interact with brands, in addition to allowing businesses different ways to reach and learn from their audiences.
How businesses can benefit from digital marketing
As we previously mentioned, devices, platforms, media, data, and technology are what drive digital marketing, and now we’ll take a closer look at each of these elements to give you a better idea of what they involve.
Digital devices included smartphones, tablets, desktop computers, TVs, and gaming devices, as each of these means of digital interaction will yield very different audience experiences.
Digital platforms include things like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, and LinkedIn, as each of these sites will also require audiences to be approached in different ways.
Digital media related to digital advertising, email, search engines, and social networks and the different paid, owned and organic ways required to reach and engage audiences.
Digital data involves the methods that businesses and organizations collect data related to the audiences (in addition to any legal requirements related to this) and finally, digital technology relates to the kinds of marketing technology that businesses rely on to reach audiences (such as email campaigns).
Learning more about digital marketing
Consider all of the information above, it shouldn’t be too difficult to see why digital marketing is so frequently misunderstood.
Properly understanding digital marketing is often more about learning about the aspects of this marketing that benefit your specific industry, so for this reason doing a little bit of research can yield some much more targeted and relevant information.