What Is Digital Marketing?

One of the first questions that business owners ask me when they schedule meetings with me is: what is digital marketing?

This post is the first part in a series targeted at business owners that need a primer.

With this in mind, I write this post to direct you to it when necessary. We can move on to more challenging issues and not spend too much time at meetings covering the basics. Time is money, as they say.

Therefore, I’ll briefly cover the definition of digital marketing, what it entails, what it is not, what a digital marketing strategy is all about. Let’s get started.

Definition of Digital Marketing

Digital marketing, like any other type of marketing, is a way to connect with and influence your potential customers. However, internet marketing differs from digital marketing.

Internet marketing is the advertising of your product and services solely on the Internet whereas digital marketing covers mobile phones (both SMS and MMS), smartphone apps, email marketing, social media marketing, display advertising, search engine marketing, video games and so on.

Digital marketing, like any other type of marketing, is a way to connect with and influence your potential customers. However, internet marketing differs from digital marketing. Click To Tweet

Digital marketing is a broad term that encompasses various inbound and outbound tactics. It is the act of promoting and selling your products and services to your target audience by leveraging various marketing channels such as social media marketing, search marketing, content marketing, mobile marketing and email marketing.

If the marketing of your product or service involves the use of electronic devices, that’s digital marketing!

Even though according to these stats, radio still reaches 85% of the US population every week. Listeners listen 2 hrs per day, on average 40% of all radio advertising expenses worldwide comes from the US.

The same article mentioned above observers that in a world where 9% of all drivers are on the phone one way or the other (texting or calling), during daylight hours, how can we think billboards have a future?

With digital marketing, the number of potential customers found online is a much larger group of people than you are likely to attract locally.

Besides creating a website, you can also introduce search engine optimization, content marketing, mobile marketing or affiliate marketing as a strategy to help you create brand awareness and move ahead of your competitors.

If you’re not familiar with the last two terms mention above, mobile marketing is about reaching your target customers in the various mobile app stores e.g. Google Play, Apple app store or Amazon marketplace.

Regarding affiliate marketing, this in its simplest form is about getting people to post affiliate links from their social network account is a superb way to drive traffic to your website.

It is the act of promoting and selling your products and services by leveraging tactics such as social media marketing, search marketing, and email marketing. Click To Tweet

It helps if you think of digital marketing as a way to make yourself accessible to the people your business is trying to reach to offer your products and services.

Your business can attract a much larger audience than you could by just catering to local prospects.

As the number of Nigerians spending more time on their digital devices increases, so too will the need for internet marketing increase.

These days, savvy business owners in Nigeria are moving away from traditional marketing tactics that involve billboards, posters, flyers, and so on to online marketing.

The major difference between digital marketing and traditional marketing is that we execute campaigns only through digital channels, and this gives marketers more control, tools, and data to analyse the effectiveness of a campaign.

Although we can divide digital marketing into online and offline digital marketing, at Mauco Enterprises our focus is on online marketing aspects such as

• Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
• Social Media Marketing (SMM)
• Pay-per-click Advertising (PPC)
• Email Marketing / SMS Marketing
• Content Creation / Content Marketing

What Digital Marketing is Not

When meeting with a business owner for the first time over a 15 minute call, it’s a familiar story, and it usually goes like this:

I’ve tried everything! Fliers, posters, handbills, brochures, newspaper adverts, magazines and so on but nothing seems to work.

I’ve been there. I know the feeling. However, this is not about marketing through traditional means like fliers, brochures, television, newspaper or the radio.

Listen: this distinction is significant because you can run an ad on television, newspaper, radio or billboard. However, can you accurately quantify how many people watched, listened to or saw your ad?

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With digital media and digital marketing, you have the data to prove the performance of your inbound marketing campaigns.

Some digital marketing activities such as display advertising, search engine marketing and social media marketing require payment.

Digital marketing does not mean that you should go and market through every digital and social media channel under the sun. Click To Tweet

Others like content marketing and influencer marketing sometimes do not require payment depending on your strategy.

Digital marketing does not mean that you should market through every digital and social media channel under the sun.

It entails your being strategic about the digital, social media and any other marketing channel you use. It would help if you also were sure that you partner with a digital marketing agency that is the right fit for your brand.

What can such an agency do for your business? They can help you draw up an integrated marketing strategy for your brand and also help you implement it too.

This intelligence helps you to prioritise which marketing channels to spend more or less time on. Thus maximizing the potential of all your marketing channels to reach your target audience.

What Is a Digital Marketing Strategy?

Your digital marketing strategy is a roadmap to achieving your marketing goals through your paid, earned and owned media channels.

Your earned media, according to this article, refers to the exposure you earn through word-of-mouth marketing. Whether that’s content you’ve distributed on other websites (e.g. guest posts), PR work you’ve been doing, or the customer experience you’ve delivered. Earned media is the recognition you receive because of these efforts.

According to this article, if you’re focusing on inbound techniques like SEO, social media, and content creation for a preexisting website, you don’t need a huge budget at all. With inbound marketing, the primary focus is on creating high-quality digital content that your audience will want to consume, which unless you’re planning to outsource the work, the only investment you’ll need is your time.

According to this article, you need to identify the right digital channels that will help you achieve your business goals and create better online user experiences.

For instance, PPC advertising is a splendid way to reach internet users on various networks through paid ads.

According to this article, many businesses choose either to hire an agency to oversee their digital marketing strategy and tactics or pay for an in-house marketing team and marketing automation software to cover their marketing needs.

Do You Have a Strategic Marketing Plan?

Some business owners in Nigeria might already use SEO, PPC, email marketing, social marketing, content marketing, sponsored content or marketing automation software and see some benefits in the form of brand awareness, etc.

However, ask yourself: Are you using digital marketing strategically? Can you calculate your ROI on any of the above digital marketing practices and marketing automation software?

If your answer to the above questions is No’; then, you’re leaving money on the table.

Hire a marketing agency to help you to either refine your existing marketing plan or create a new and solid marketing plan.

Do You Want to Learn More about Digital Marketing?

Mauco Enterprises can help you derive more joy from your marketing efforts. Do you want to learn more?

These days, savvy business owners in Nigeria are moving away from traditional marketing tactics that involve billboards, posters, flyers, and so on to digital. Click To Tweet

Click the button below to schedule a consultation. You’ve got nothing to lose and everything to gain. Schedule a meeting with me now to learn more. Trust me. It’ll all be worth it.

Related Article(s)

• How to Make Your Marketing Campaigns More Appealing
• Digital Marketing Questions and Answers
• What Is Digital Media, and How Can It Help My Business?
• How Digital Marketing Can Help Your Business

 

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