Digital Marketing

What is Digital Marketing?

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 .

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:

A picture of Guglielmo Marconi.

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:

Search engine optimization (SEO)

Search engine marketing (SEM)

Content marketing

Social Media Marketing (SMM)

Pay-per-click advertising (PPC)

Affiliate marketing

Email marketing

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!

An image of billboards in Times Square.

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.

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  for targets, send texts offering deals and promotions to subscribing customers, or use QR codes.