As Neil Patel defines it, Digital marketing is any form of marketing products or services that involves electronic devices. Digital Marketing dates back to several hundreds of years back, to the time the radio was invented.

As you can see from the above definition, Digital Marketing doesn’t have to do alone with the internet. But due to the explosion of the www platform, most of the digital marketing people do now is carried out on the internet.
For that reason, marketing can be classified into online marketing, which is digital marketing, and offline marketing.

So what is Digital Marketing? And what is Offline Marketing? Let’s define the two.

Digital Marketing

According to Wikipedia, Digital Marketing is an umbrella term for the marketing of products or services using digital technologies, mainly on the Internet, but also including mobile phones, display advertising, and any other digital medium.
On a simpler note, Digital Marketing is the promotion of products or brands via one or more forms of electronic media.

Digital Marketing could be in many forms, more so as there are many electronic equipments available that could be used to promote products, one of which is the internet, which in turn is a complete entity on its own.

We could say digital marketing involves billboard adverts and radio announcements, but hey, those are almost dead already. The major focus of advertising is on the internet now, so in this article we’re going to just classify internet digital marketing as Digital Marketing.
Digital Marketing is divided into many branches, among which are

• Blogs, Websites and SEO.
• Pay-per-click (PPC) Advertising.
• E-mail Marketing.
• Mobile Marketing.
• Social Media Marketing.
• Online Video advertising.
• Internet Banner Ads.
• And many more…

The full list is longer than this, but these are the most common types, and new forms of digital marketing are evolving from time to time.

Offline Marketing

Offline Marketing, also called Traditional Marketing could be defined as the marketing strategies that utilize offline media channels to create awareness of a company’s products and services. It involves the use of channels that aren’t connected to the World Wide Web, like radio and print advertising (billboards, pamphlets), and television ads.

Advantages of Digital Marketing over Offline Marketing

One of the greatest advantages of Digital Marketing over Offline Marketing is that it is cost-effective. The cost required to reach a particular number of audience through the internet is far cheaper than that required to reach the same number of audience through offline marketing.

With Digital Marketing, you just have to budget for Search Ads and Social Networking Ads, but to reach the same number of people with conventional advertising, you have to budget for broadcast messages on T.V. & Radio, Ads in Newspapers & Magazines, and Direct Mail advertisement, according to infographic by SeriouslySimpleMarketing. Digital Marketing beats Offline Marketing hands down in cost effectiveness.

With Digital Marketing, you can reach a larger audience than you ever could with offline marketing. Think of it, when you place adverts in the bill board in a particular state, can they be seen by people living in another state? Or if you place T.V. Adverts in your country, they can’t be viewed by people living in another country. But through internet marketing and advertising, it is possible to reach different types of people across different countries and continents.

With Digital Advertising, it is easier to track the progress of your advertising. Through various tools available online, you can easily view the metrics of your digital campaigns, in order to know how far or near you are from reaching your marketing goals.

Lastly, the fact that many people spend more time with their smartphones and digital devices means you have a better chance of getting your products in front of them than if you use offline marketing. Statistics have shown that 4 out of 5 mobile phone users use it to shop online, and people spend nearly 2 hours daily on their smartphones on the average.

Though some do not like the dearth of offline advertising, the reality is that digital advertising has taken over, and is not going away anytime soon. It is better to take advantage of the numerous benefits of the digital age and experience tremendous benefits in your business, than to sit in the past moping and recording losses in your business. The ball is in your court.