Digital marketing. Just another one of those new, fancy buzzwords you should use to sound smart in meetings or is it the real deal?
Maybe a better question is: What is it?
This digital marketing guide will show you what’s what.
First popularized as a term in the early 2000’s, digital marketing has actually been around much longer.
Like, WAY longer. About 100 years longer, to be exact.
Here’s a pic of the first digital marketer in history:
His name: Guglielmo Marconi.
What? Marconi?
Yup. In 1896 he was the first human to demonstrate a, “public transmission of wireless signals.”
This dude invented the radio.
Shortly after his little demonstration in England, morse signals were transmitted across open water.
And, while it would take another 10 years for the radio to reach the general public, it sure didn’t take the creators long to realize they could use it to sell stuff.
The first live broadcast was from an opera performance at the Met and guess what people did after it?
They bought show tickets!
Digital marketing strategy was born.
I bet you’re surprised. I didn’t mention smartphones, apps, Facebook ads or blogs at all.
That’s because digital marketing has nothing to do with the internet.
Definition
As usual, Wikipedia does a crappy job at explaining: Digital marketing is an umbrella term for the targeted, measurable and interactive marketing of products or services using…
Ugh!
I want an easy definition that I can remember! Here’s one: Digital marketing is any form of marketing products or services that involves electronic devices.
That’s the reason it has been around for decades (because electronics have) and why it doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with content marketing, Google ads, social media or retargeting.
Digital marketing can be done both online and offline.
And, both kinds matter for a well-rounded digital marketing strategy.
Why digital marketing matters
Remember billboards?
I do.
As a young kid in California, my experiences from the back seat of our car mostly alternated between: “Mom, when are we there?” and “Uh, look, McDonalds, can we go?”, whenever one of those 10 foot billboards popped up on the side of the road.
Growing up with Indian parents, the answer to both of those would, most times, be the same: “Not yet.”
Sometimes, big brands would even start a billboard war, like this one between Audi and BMW, which got quite a few laughs:
Unfortunately or fortunately, it’s dead.
The reason why billboards, like the ones above, die, is perfectly illustrated in a single picture of a Volvo.
Because, frankly, the future of driving will look like this:
Not a single passenger will spend their time looking at the road.
Do me a favor, the next time you drive and are giving a friend a ride, take a peek at the passenger seat.
Just for a second.
Even now, chances are they’ll be looking at their phone.
Heck, in a world where 9% of all drivers are on the phone one way or the other (texting or calling), at any given moment during daylight hours, how can we think billboards have a future?
If not even the driver is looking at the road any more, who’s supposed to see those advertisements?
And, that’s not even considering self-driving cars, on which both Apple and Google are working (you know it’s going to happen).
Elon Musk suggests that they’ll be here around 2020. That’s in only a few years.
That means you don’t have much time to figure out this digital marketing stuff before you can power down your old school printing press and close up shop.
The share of people spending more time using electronic devices is only going up from here.
With Americans spending 11+ hours on electronic devices, every single day, there’s not much left. That is, until we spend ALL of our time in the digital world.
And, while yes, online marketing is the reason that 25 year olds can now sit in their living room and earn 2 million dollars a year playing video games, offline marketing still has its place.
Let’s take a helicopter and circle around to get an overview.
Overview
The 2 main pillars of digital marketing are online marketing and offline marketing. That said, since I’ll talk about online marketing in a separate guide, I’ll only mention the different areas of online marketing here, for the sake of completeness.
The 7 big categories of online marketing are:
- Search engine optimization (SEO)
- Search engine marketing (SEM)
- Content marketing
- Social Media Marketing (SMM)
- Pay-per-click advertising (PPC)
- Affiliate marketing
- Email marketing
Unbounce created a great infographic that sums up all kinds of online marketing in one neat chart.
The beginner’s guide to online marketing, on Quick Sprout, is a great place to get started.
Okay, that said, what other digital marketing is there? There’s plenty, actually.
Here are the 4 big categories of digital offline marketing.
First, there’s what I call enhanced offline marketing. This is a form of marketing that is entirely offline, but enhanced with electronic devices.
For example, if your restaurant uses iPads for your customers to create their orders on, then the offline experience of say, eating Thai food, is enhanced with this electronic device.
People have been using digital media to enhance their marketing for decades (you’ve only forgotten in what ways, as you’ll see).
Next, there’s radio marketing. The next time you hear an annoying, over-enthusiastic car dealer shout every word of his or her commercial, thank Mr. Marconi.
Of course, we can’t forget television marketing. TV ads have been around for more than half a century (and since 1953 also in color, nationwide – Yes, there was a time before color TV).
Finally, the biggest and fastest growing area of offline marketing, with admittedly also a lot of flops, busts and failures: phone marketing.
Let’s look at the 4 areas in more detail.
Enhanced offline marketing
What’s the difference between a billboard somewhere in the desert of Arizona and a billboard in New York City’s Times Square?
The size? The product?
3 letters: LED. Light emitting diodes.
All of the billboards in Times Square are electronic!
Why? Because in the desert of Arizona, no one’s competing with you for people’s attention. If you have a billboard at all, you win.
But, in Times Square, attention is probably more valuable than anywhere else in the world. Over 330,000 people cross through it each day.
If you want to be distracted, there’s buses, taxis, promoters shouting and then, of course, the electronic billboards.
Some of them are even interactive, showing live feeds of the people on the square or pictures of customers.
Renting a billboard space on Times Square, for a year, will set you back a whopping $1,000,000 to $4,000,000.
Sounds expensive? Wait until you hear the prices for Super Bowl commercials.
What other forms does enhanced offline marketing take?
What do you see when you walk into an Apple Store these days?
People leaning over iPads, Macbooks and iPhones.
If you have any type of electronic product, any product demo is an important part of your digital marketing strategy.
Okay, the next one’s a good one. If you remember this, you can consider yourself an extremely lucky kid:
(Image source: Emuparadise)
This is a demo disc for the original PlayStation and several of these were handed out with other games or sometimes even magazines.
It was the same with PC magazines. Remember when they came with CDs (and later DVDs) and you couldn’t wait to throw them into your disk drive and see what samples were on them?
A little different than a demo, these are product samples in digital format.
People still do this. Think of all the wannabe rappers or rockers in your hometown, handing out mix tapes and CDs and now probably USB sticks, to get you to listen to their music.
Alright, time to take a look at the category of digital marketing that’s probably been around the longest.
Radio marketing
Over 100 years have passed since that original first live broadcast of the opera performance at the Met and guess what – radio is still here.
Since radio did fairly well in transitioning to the internet, it hasn’t taken as big of a hit as TV. And, even old school radio still matters.
- 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
- About half the population of the US listens to internet radio at least once a month
Now, while profits have shrunk, radio isn’t dead. Thanks to Pandora’s 80 million users, there are still about $4 billion in profits made each year.
But, aside from creating a kick ass, creative radio commercial that will do well, what else is there?
Recently, internet radio made a good move, doing what most podcasts do: advertise at the beginning of shows.
If you host a show revolving around a certain topic, like coaching, you can plug programs and products in, right before and at the end of the show.
Since social media is the marketing darling these days, it should be fairly easy to find a local radio station, get on a show, be interviewed or negotiate a deal with them.
Once you do, be sure to get some sponsorships, to make sure that you’re a prime candidate for the station and that they give you the premium slot and the best air time possible.
In most cases, doing well on the radio means being entertaining.
Cadillac and Dairy Queen are two brands that come up with solid radio commercials on a consistent basis.
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