Digital Marketing And What It Means To You
If you're one of the many businesses who believe you don't need to be on the internet, we seriously encourage you to reconsider.
Perhaps you're a graduate who's struggling to find a traditional job – we wish to open your eyes to the opportunity of being a digital entrepreneur since you're well placed to embrace the digital age.
Maybe you're stuck in a rut at work, or facing redundancy in a dwindling job market, or due to retire in the next 10-15 years – and need an alternative source of income. Please pay attention – read then re-read this article carefully.
In our opinion, this is a serious wake up call because if you don’t get with the digital age now, you're not going to thrive, let alone survive as your competitors push forward and harness the power of digital marketing.
We know because Fiona's a ex-Chartered Accountant and Greg's an ex-Web Developer and we've been in the industry, full time, for a number of years.
We're a bit long in the tooth, one being a Baby Boomer and the other being Gen X, [actually we're in our prime 🙂 ] so we haven't always used the term digital marketing. But that's changed! It's the new buzz word, although it's been developing for some years now.
So What Is Digital Marketing Exactly?
On a high level, it simply means using the internet to connect with your customers via online advertising. So, nothing new there. You'll be well used to seeing ads on Google and Facebook by now.
If you believe you don't have customers and don't haven anything to promote online then you need to think more expansively.
Digging a bit deeper, digital marketing uses all internet receiving devices like computers, tablets/ipads, smartphones and game consoles to engage consumers in your products, offers, and brand.
To clearly define what digital marketing is, it's easier to first talk about what it's not!
For starters, it doesn't include traditional forms of marketing like radio, TV, billboards and print, because they don't offer instant feedback or results data.
We recently promoted Living A Laptop Lifestyle for sale on Amazon via a print campaign (don't ask us why! It's our generation! Or maybe didn't think through our strategy properly). We had a spike in book sales, but we have no idea of the exact result of the campaign because there's no way of knowing who bought our book after seeing our ad. Therefore, we can't tell if it was worth it or not!
Same goes for advertising on telly – there's no way of knowing the exact number of people who bought a product after seeing an ad on telly. There are ways of collecting viewer statistics, but they're not instant or exact. With digital marketing, however, there's precise metrics available.
So if you're are struggling in a jobs you're no longer passionate about, or maybe you fear being made redundant, or maybe you simply can't find a job (clever graduates), perhaps you will retire shortly and don't have sufficient savings to live on – then you need to understand the digital age. Period.
People who understand the digital age are thriving – whether or not they have their own offers to promote online.
You've got a fair idea of our ages (we just celebrated our 28th Wedding Anniversary) but we fully appreciate where the world is heading – THE FUTURE IS DIGITAL.
Take a look at the infographic below to see the progress of the internet over the last 10 years. It's not surprising that billions of marketing dollars are shifting from traditional channels to digital marketing campaigns. As marketers, we're very excited about the future given the power of digital marketing.
Convincing, isn't it? That the internet is a HUGE part of our lives and it's the future of growth, connection, community and business.
That's how important digital marketing is!
So every day you're delaying embracing the digital age, means you're fast heading in the same direction as Blockbuster, Borders and Tower Records – not to mention Blackberry (RIMM) and AOL who've had all value stripped out their share prices recently – but we won't dwell on that.
When you decide to take action, click through to watch this video or read part 2 of this article on this blog to discover even more about digital marketing.
Thanks for your interest – we look forward to helping you further 🙂
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