What is Digital Marketing? Explained in Simple Terms – update 2021

What is Digital Marketing? When we talk about digital marketing, we’re essentially talking about promoting your business online using a variety of channels. And these channels include search, social, video, email, and display.

So let’s understand what is Digital Marketing?

Digital marketing has become one of the most commonly used phrase these days. Although it’s easily used in a sentence, but quite often it is not defined accurately. For some it’s a synonym for “Internet Marketing” while others describe it as marketing using electronic devices.

Digital Marketing is a term defined to achieve your business objectives and goals using the online channels that include but are not limited to search engines, social media platforms, content creation & advertising in order to educate, engage & market your product or service to potential buyers.

what is Digital Marketing? Simply put, digital marketing is the promotion of products or brands using electronic devices or the internet. It also includes text messaging, instant messaging, video, apps, podcasts, electronic billboards, digital television and radio channels, etc.

Digital marketing uses multiple channels and technologies that allow an organization to analyze campaigns, content and strategy to understand what’s working and what isn’t – typically in real time.

The most common form of digital marketing is the website of the organisation and the epicentre of all its online activities. In order to drive qualified traffic to a website, or encourage repeat visitors and sales, savvy marketers include a combination of email marketing, search engine optimisation (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC) advertising and social media in their strategy.

The internet has transformed the way that people buy products or services. And, now, with mobile smartphones, that experience is everywhere. This puts the customer in charge of the buying process.

They’re armed with resources to conduct research, compare options, share what they’ve found, and even ask their peers for recommendations, all digitally. And, often, this happens simultaneously. What was once the norm in marketing has taken a backseat to its online counterpart.

Streaming music has replaced radio. And the opportunity to pay for many services eliminates advertising from interrupting our experience. The Yellow Pages has been replaced by Google Local and Yelp, where the consumer can easily read reviews and see pictures of the business.

As a business, you need to stand out throughout the journey a buyer takes. With so many user interaction points and what seems like an endless amount of channels, online marketing can feel overwhelming.

Three types of media you’ll be using in digital marketing

To focus it, let’s talk about the three types of media you’ll be using in digital marketing: paid, owned, and earned.

Paid

Your paid media will make up everything that you, well, pay for. This will include channels like Google Ads, Facebook paid ads, and display marketing.

Owened

Your owned media will encompass channels like your website, your list of customers that you use to send out emails, and a blog with an active readership.

Earned

Earned media is the world of organic press. Your social media accounts, mentions on other blogs, and articles written about you make up the channels within earned media.

Now, all of these channels overlap just as a user will overlap as they interact with each. And, together, these make up the foundation of digital marketing.

So, at the end of the day, digital marketing is the process of putting your business front and center along the journey that your customer takes.

History of Digital Marketing

The first approaches to digital marketing defined it as a projection of conventional marketing, its tool and strategies, on Internet.

The term digital marketing became popular overtime, especially in certain countries. In the USA online marketing is still prevalent, in Italy is referred as web marketing but, in the UK, and worldwide, digital marketing has become the most common term, especially after the year 2013

Just a decade ago, if a business wanted to reach out to target customers they would promote using traditional marketing mediums such as TV, radio, print. Simply because that’s where the potential customers’ used to spend their time.
However as humans evolved our technology advanced giving rise to a digital revolution.

To simply state, people started spending more time on online platforms such as Google, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube etc to stay acquainted with news, entertainment and commerce. Hence, today our lives run on a click.

But does that mean TV, print, radio don’t work any more? No, not at all! We cannot say that traditional marketing efforts do not have any impact. Rather, it goes hand in hand with digital marketing and the distribution has evened out.

Digital has become a part of our existence. From shopping apparel to groceries, furniture & getting laundry delivered everything is online. With this new shift, marketers did not waste anytime and quickly adapted to use social media & other digital tools to push & pull the consumer which gave birth to Digital marketing.

For marketers trying to compete in this new digital medium, it’s incredibly difficult to surface your content above the competitive noise. While the amount of time consumers spend on web and mobile has increased dramatically, the amount of available content has increased exponentially. More digital content is created in a day than most people can consume in a year. With so many distractions and choices, your audience has a very short attention span.

The exponential growth in digital channels has given rise to the importance of digital marketing. But digital marketing isn’t just about the channel. It’s also the mechanism by which people are creating and sharing content and experiences, engaging both with each other and the companies they do business with.