Digital Marketing: What Is Definition, Strategies, And Evolution

Digital marketing, i’m still remember when I studied marketing, and the first definition of marketing I heard in my life was explained to me. And after 25 years as a professional and being one of the pioneers in DM, things have changed a lot since then, to reach today’s digital marketing.

Stay with me, and you will discover the best definition of digital marketing, and you will discover what digital marketing or online marketing is and what it consists of.

Table of Contents

What is Digital Marketing

Before starting, I think it is necessary to clarify that digital marketing, DM, online marketing, and digital marketing mean the same since they are synonyms, and their use varies according to each region.

Therefore when we talk about digital marketing, we can also find definitions such as internet marketing, online marketing, online marketing, or even e-marketing.

What Is Marketing, A Personal Definition

Marketing is about seeking to promote and serve markets

This philosophy is what defines marketing in the 80s, which is when I studied it, and yet today, it seems perfectly valid to me as well as the philosophy of the product manager.

I’d only trade market research for big data and product marketing for Design Thinking, Prototyping, UX, and Lean Startup so that marketing and product travel at consumer speed. If we also change conventional advertising for digital advertising on the Internet, Buala!

As you can see, we have not yet seen the definition of digital marketing, but I think that to understand its evolution well, you have to take a little trip through the history of marketing. Let’s take another step towards digital marketing through customer-focused marketing, Direct and Interactive Marketing:

What Is Direct And Interactive Marketing

“The most knowledgeable say that direct marketing is that form of marketing whose objective is to seek answers and establish long-lasting and mutually beneficial relationships with the client.”

Direct marketing is a strategic vision of customer-focused marketing that uses all available means of communication and advertising to identify prospects and promote responses and relationships between the company and the customer.

And in this way, we are getting closer to what we define today as digital marketing. In fact, direct marketing found a great ally on the internet, reaching its peak with new technologies, the ability to measure, and the possibility of creating personalized services tailored to the customer but at low cost. Without a doubt, digital marketing emerges from direct marketing and develops a new specialty, Digital Marketing.

Also Read : What Is Inbound Marketing?

Definition Of Digital Marketing What Is Digital Marketing?

To get here, we have seen what marketing is and what is direct and interactive marketing, and now if I ask you what digital marketing or Social Media Marketing is, I am sure you already know the answer.

Marketing or digital marketing is a form of marketing that only uses new media channels and technology and digital advertising as the internet, mobile, or IoT. Thanks to the power of technology, it allows you to create customized products and services and measure everything that happens to improve the experience.

So digital marketing, for me, is a radical evolution of marketing thanks to the technology that leads us to formulate one-to-one strategies with personalized products and differentiated messages thanks to the power of big data and the ability to measure and with a power exponential compared to traditional media that has sparked a revolution in the marketing and advertising industry.

For example, thanks to big data in digital marketing, there are applications like Netflix or Amazon that always know what to recommend. Or, thanks to email marketing and the traceability of the ” Customer Journey ” we can track potential customers to impact them with remarketing.

Advantages Of Digital Marketing

Due to the characteristics that the internet brings to digital marketing, we can clearly attribute the following advantages:

Digital Marketing Is Global

Once you position your product on the internet, anyone in any part of the world can access it.

Digital Marketing Is Interactive

The Internet is a two-way communication channel; therefore, DM is also. In this way, communication between companies and consumers has been maximized, especially since the disruption of social networks with social media marketing.

Digital Marketing Is Perfectly Measurable

The data is no longer based on market studies, slow to perform, and high cost, but is collected immediately by monitoring the actions that the user performs directly on the internet. It allows obtaining personal, preference, and usability data that is analyzed and properly managed, allowing the creation of increasingly efficient actions.

Digital Marketing Is Hyper Segmentable

Thanks to this measurement and a large amount of information collected about internet users, it is possible to diversify marketing actions much more, aiming at increasingly well-defined and defined objectives. Nowadays, we segment the campaigns incorporating new geographic, time, and function variables depending on the access device.

Tools, Strategies, And Tactics In Digital Marketing

Although I am sure that I forgot some and that you will tell me in the comments, I have tried to compile the main areas in which I work to generate digital marketing strategies and tactics:

SEO or Search Engine Optimization: SEO is the natural positioning in search engines such as Google or a web Directory. It consists of optimizations to appear as high as possible on these pages
SEM or Search Engine Marketing: In this case, it is also to position our page in search engines or directories but paying for it. It has become one of the most important digital marketing tools because the consumer uses these mechanisms at the end of the purchase funnel.
Inbound Marketing or Content Marketing: consists of inverting the marketing pyramid. Instead of going looking for clients with advertising, what it does is make it easier for them to find and know you. Doting Word Solutions provides content creation services as they offer unique content, which is easy to understand without any technical jargon and attracts the users.
Email Marketing or Email Marketing: It is like the old postal mail, but electronic mail is widely used as a communication tool with clients and also to find new clients.
Display And Video Advertising or Digital Ads: consists of making ads on the internet. A banner would be like a banner ad and a video ad just like a TV ad but always segmenting the audience that I want to see.
Mobile Marketing: or the adaptation of digital marketing to mobile devices ‘Mobile First.’
Social Media Marketing: brands now have a digital identity and a voice, and social networks are their greatest exponent.
Affiliate Marketing or Digital Partners: The best way to grow is through agreements and collaborations with third parties. On the one hand, some networks concentrate affiliates, and on the other hand, there is the business development work with alliances.
Remarketing or Retargeting: the ability to impact people who have visited your page, store, or app has changed digital marketing strategies.
Native Advertising or Native Advertising: it is advertising integrated into the media in such a way that it does not even seem like advertising.
e-Commerce, Electronic Commerce, or Online Sales: the transfer of traditional commerce to the digital world. It involves transnational websites or apps where online purchase or service occurs.
Programmatic advertising: programmatic advertising is a way of buying audiences through technologies such as a DSP that allow you to segment the people you want to reach by changing the buying model in traditional advertising. In this way, you bid for the medium where it is cheapest to impact them. One of the most typical ways of buying is through Look Alike audiences, which are users who are most similar to the users who buy my product or service.
Digital Analytics And Web Analytics: behind all this, web analytics allows us to measure and know how the user behaves through graphics and data. In recent years, it has evolved a lot from a mere profile of visual data analysis that generated ” dashboards ” to a highly analytical and scientific profile that uses data to create models and predict the future.
UX / UI Design: it is about designing the interfaces with which the user interacts, that their experience with the use of the web and the app is friendly and ultimately satisfactory.
CRO: which means Conversion Rate Optimization, and which is nothing more than actions aimed at optimizing the conversion of the objective of visits to our website or app.
Customer Experience: it is about building experiences from start to finish on the journey map of a potential customer until he becomes a customer both on social networks and on the web or app.

To learn about digital marketing tools and techniques in detail, you can enroll in an online digital marketing certification program.

How To Make A Digital Marketing Plan: Strategies And Tactics

To develop a DM Plan, we must start by knowing what objectives we want to achieve in these media and distribution channels without forgetting that the objectives must be SMART. When formulating strategies, I think it is necessary to start from an internal and external analysis to know your company, product, environment, and competitors. Also, there is never a SWOT (Weaknesses, Threats, Strengths, and Opportunities).

When formulating strategies, it will be useful to study Porter’s generic strategy formulation matrix and look for your blue ocean, especially if you are looking for strategies to start a new project. Above all, do not forget that you must know what your unique sales or value proposal is ” Unique Sales Proposition. “

If you don’t have a competitive advantage to compete better, don’t compete

Strategies are global actions aimed at achieving objectives. For example, our objective is to double traffic on the web, and therefore we will increase our presence on social networks, and we will improve search engine positioning.

Now that we know our objective and the fundamental strategies let’s see what tactics we are going to use.

And this is where we must present a breakdown of actions with their budget and calendar and what digital marketing tactic will be applied.

For you to have an example in the case of SEO, we would choose to develop a blog and generate content to link and get links to our website. Of course, we would have to hire an SEO or an agency to execute the online marketing plan.

Also Read : What is A Digital Marketing Plan, And How Is It Done?