Traditionally, marketing refers to a series of activities carried out by one party persuading a second party into paying money for the first party’s goods and services.
Thus, marketing activities might include:
On the other hand, digital marketing replicates the characteristics of traditional marketing by employing internet-based digital technologies. The Internet perspective to marketing implies the inclusion of other side attractions not possible with traditional marketing.
Other names used in describing digital marketing include Internet Marketing, Online Marketing, Search Engine Optimization Marketing, E-mail Marketing, Social Media Marketing, etc.
This article focuses on the indispensability of digital marketing to contemporary businesses.
Technology and the Ubiquity of Marketing
One distinguishing feature of digital marketing is the fact that the marketing function for any particular product no longer needs to be local.
For example, a local Nigerian ‘adire’ fabric can now be displayed all over the world for interested non-Nigerians to access and make purchases.
How is this?
The technology behind the Internet facility traverses every part of the world, making the world one global village for instant interfaces between marketing interests and activities. This feature then makes it possible that marketing campaigns leveraging the internet can be seen by everyone on the internet. This scenario aptly describes online marketing as a decentralized variant of traditional marketing constrained by single locations.
Channels for Prosecuting Digital Marketing
Traditional marketing presents different outlets through which marketing and sales of products and services take place. For example, marketing and sales can occur through local markets, shops, boutiques, supermarkets, bookshops, etc.
On the other hand, marketing decentralization has given rise to digital outlets known as channels. Thus, marketing channels can be:
It is instructive to note that each of the above devices and platforms parades some unique rules and features that must be learned first before employing them for marketing. The pervasiveness off digital marketing has disenfranchised both individual and corporate marketers. Buyers and consumers no longer need to depend on the cajoling whims and caprices of marketers to influence them into buying stuff only to regret later.
5 Ways Digital Marketing Turns Everyone and Everything into Marketers
Marketing is no longer an exclusive tool in the hands of marketers. Buyers and consumers have also come to enjoy an undue advantage over marketers based on uninfluenced buying decisions they can make either on the fly or from the comfort of their bedrooms. Individual and corporate marketers are now forced to sit down and qualitatively evaluate their marketing content. Knowing that buyers are now more than ever before equipped to patronize only those goods and services that truly and completely serve their needs.
This is the beauty of digital marketing!