Digital Marketing – The New Form of Advertising

Digital marketing is a word that has been thrown around a lot over the last few years. Its power and capabilities are misconstrued. Many traditional marketers and business owners think that it’s a fad or phase.

The sad thing is that they couldn’t be more wrong! See, the number one form of advertising for a long time was television. Television advertising is still a very popular format today, however, in 2017 digital ad spend finally surpassed TV ad spend. Suddenly marketers and business owners were finally starting to take digital marketing seriously.

In fact, most of them are scrambling to adjust their strategies. Some only now are starting to understand why they have been losing market share to smaller competitors. The main reason bigger brands are having a tough time adapting and developing their own digital marketing strategy is because they were slow to adapt to the digital marketing movement. This allowed smaller brands to start evening out the playing field.

DIGITAL MARKETING IS HERE TO STAY

Technology and the Internet are advancing at a rate that we cannot comprehend. With the Internet and digital marketing being closely intertwined, this type of marketing is evolving at the speed of light.  As that digital marketing piggy backs off of technology, it’s safe to say that it’s here to stay.

WHAT IS DIGITAL MARKETING EXACTLY?

Digital marketing, in a nutshell, is basically any form of marketing that is connected to the Internet. This includes:

• Having a website and trying to drive more visitors to it
• E-mail marketing
• Social media marketing (whether it’s paid or free forms of marketing)
• Search engine marketing (for example advertising on Google)
• Search engine optimisation (improving your website for improved rankings in Google and other search engines)
• Programmatic advertising (form of display advertising)

SHOULD YOUR BRAND BE UTILISING DIGITAL MARKETING?

Some might argue that online or digital advertising is not for everyone. Well, we disagree. The reason for this is because there is always a good chance that the audience or person you are trying to reach has connection to the Internet and most probably spends time on Google or social media at some point during the course of a week.

SELLING A PRODUCT DIRECTLY TO THE PUBLIC

Digital marketing is the ideal marketing tool for brands selling products directly to customers. This would include retailers, clothing and fashion brands, health and beauty brands, restaurants and the like. The main reason for this is because the average South African spends up to three hours a day on social media. This means that these brands can reach them quite easily on their mobile devices.

SELLING A PRODUCT OR SERVICE TO BUSINESSES

Most B2B companies feel that online marketing does not suit their business model. To an extent one can understand why they might think this as the key decision makers they might want to try and target consists of a handful of individuals.

Knowing this they feel that social media might be a waste of money as the majority of people who will end up seeing the advertisement might not be their target audience. This is where LinkedIn. LinkedIn is the fastest-growing professional social network. This means that CEOs, Managing Directors, and other key decisions makers most probably have a LinkedIn profile. With that said, nothing stops a business from targeting these decision makers on the platform and educate them about your specific product or service.

Now do you start to understand the power of digital marketing?

DIGITAL MARKETING IS EVER EVOLVING

As mentioned above, digital marketing is changing and quickly. It is almost like an organism that just keeps growing and evolving every year. That is why websites, social media, search engines like Google and e-mail marketing are standard frameworks for digital advertising. New frameworks today include marketing automation, conversion-focused marketing, omnichannel marketing, chatbots and inbound marketing.

And who knows what kind of digital marketing trends will exist tomorrow?

Get in touch with the Digital School of Marketing

The Digital School of Marketing’s Digital Marketing Course will give you the underpinning knowledge to grow yourself within the digital marketing field. This digital marketing certificate provides a solid platform to assist any business operating within the marketing sphere. Find out more here.