What is marketing? What is digital marketing?
These are two of the most common questions that I get asked on almost a weekly basis if not more.
For many people, their opinion of marketing is very much formed from watching tv shows such as Mad Men. Where advertising is very much the aim of the game. Because of this the value of marketing is often overlooked and is seen as the colouring-in department or in many businesses simply a cost that reduces the bottom line.
For other people marketing is a term that is interchangeable with advertising. Regardless of whether it is in TV, radio, flyers, banners or any other medium that you can think of.
Marketing goes far beyond that and depending what the role encompasses can include customer engagement, print marketing, competitor analysis and much more besides.
Digital marketing, on the other hand, is a subsection of the marketing industry. Over the last few years, it has grown massively.
Digital marketing is a broader area of marketing than many first assume. Most people if asked “What is digital marketing?” would likely come repsond with “It’s Facebook isn’t it?”.
While Facebook and other social media networks are a huge part of digital marketing they are not the only aspects that businesses and marketers should be aware of.
Digital marketing covers a lot of what we now see in marketing, from customer feedback and interaction to paid advertising. It has opened up promotion space to small businesses who previously would not have been able to compete with companies who have much larger budgets to spend.
Social media, PPC, SEO, Email Marketing, Video Marketing all come under digital marketing, but as the use of digital marketing increases so too will how much the boundaries between digital and non-digital begin to blur.
For example, a billboard would not classify as digital marketing in the eyes of many people, however, the increase in technology usage in out of home (OOH) marketing spaces means that even some billboards can be classified as part of digital marketing.
