Better Digital Marketing in 10 Easy Steps – Step 1: What is it?

Better Digital Marketing in 10 Easy Steps – Step 1: What is it?

Better Digital Marketing is a phrase many of us are hearing these days. And there are a variety of companies offering to help you with your effort to capture the trillions of dollars consumers spend each year. Hey, we’re one of those such firms! With the world changing so fast, we are seeing new technologies, new products, and even cures to new diseases, each and every day. (Did you hear that there is a doctor that may have found a cure for a select few food allergies? I know… things change so fast!)

It may seem impossible to keep up with all the changes in your business, much less all the changes in the world. Don’t get overwhelmed though, there are some easy steps you can take to help keep yourself in the know. The first step is beginning the path to Better Digital Marketing. In this day-and-age bad or subpar Digital Marketing can really kill your business. Consider this, retail sales were projected to reach $22.492 trillion in 2014 with 5.9% of those taking place online (about $1.3 trillion). By 2018, eMarketer, an online marketing research service, expects total retail sales to reach $28.3 trillion with online sales jumping to 8.8% (about $2.5 trillion). That’s a 2.9% increase over the next 4 years.

So, to help you capture your slice of that $2.5 trillion pie in online sales and to help you capture more digitally-driven sales and marketing leads, we have generated a 10 part series on how Better Digital Marketing can help you do just that…Let’s Begin!

Step 1: What is it? To start, let’s look at the over-all theme, Digital Marketing.

What is Digital Marketing? You may be thinking that sounds simple, it’s marketing that is digital. I know that was my first thought, but unfortunately, it isn’t that simple. The literal definition according to Business Dictionary.com is “The promotion of products or brands via one or more forms of electronic media.” What a great definition, but what is considered electronic media? Let’s see, well that’s TV, most things related to the internet, mobile phones, electronic billboards, and even our cars will fall into this category soon. Wow, our definition suddenly got a lot more complex! Below, we’ll dive in to how each type of electronic media fits into Digital Marketing.

How each type of media fits into Digital Marketing?

Television (TV) – TV advertisement is generally considered traditional marketing, so within the context of Digital Marketing, there must be a slight difference.  And there is. YouTube, Hulu, and other ad supported video/TV networks offer ads within their free video services as a way to “pay the bills.” This is where TV advertisement moves from traditional marketing to digital marketing. The ads you see while watching your favorite show on major cable networks through a TV and cable box generally won’t fall under the umbrella of Digital Marketing. But the ads you see while watching a replay of your favorite show on a major cable networks website, do fall under Digital Marketing.

The Internet – This is by far the largest puzzle piece of Digital Marketing. This includes things like Social Media Advertising and Social Media Pages, Search Engine Rankings, E-Commerce, Online Ads, Blogs, and even your own website. We’ll spend a lot of time on this section in later steps.

Mobile Phones – According to the Pew Research Center, 58% of American Adults have smartphones, that’s about 185 million people. Marketing on mobile phones is increasingly becoming the method of choice for many companies. We are starting to see ads on most mobile apps. Likewise, Apple and Google are working to provide push notification ads and discounts when you enter a store or simply pass through a barrier. Read more about iBeacon here.

Electronic Billboards – You see many of these while driving around or maybe in  your local transit stations. These billboards look like giant TVs and can display many ads in a short period of time. There are many different forms of these type of billboards which range from large roadside billboards to smaller versions you see at bus stops or in the mall. This type of billboard is beginning to be the dominate version of billboard advertising and since these billboards feature several different ads per hour, you need to make sure your ads grab as much attention as they can!

Why should you care about Digital Marketing?

Now that we know what Digital Marketing is and what types of media it encompasses, it may be easier to determine how and why we would use it. Utilizing Digital Marketing can help you in the following ways:

1. Reduce your lag time – Digital Marketing allows you to see, in real time, how successful your marketing campaigns are. Using tools like Google Analytics, you can see who is visiting your site and how they got there. Did you sponsor an event and get your link on the event’s page? With Digital Marketing, you can see exactly where your customers are coming from. You can also see how many users came from the event site and, better yet, if they performed the steps you wanted them to on your site after they got there. So, you can use this to effectively analyze your return on investment (ROI) of your marketing budget.

2. See Your Results – You can see the results of any campaign 24/7/365. Did you just launch a new Google AdWords campaign? You can see how effective that ad has been and if your budget is just right. With traditional marketing methods, you run a TV or radio commercial and hope you get new business. Chances are you will, but you will have no idea if people saw/heard your ad. You could simply ask them, but many times consumers will assume they heard it on TV or the radio if they are unsure. With online analytics, there is no guesswork.

3. Focus on the Data You Need – It is true that Digital Marketing requires time, effort, and data. In the past, you could have been overwhelmed by the amount of data you had to wade through to find what you were looking for. However, recently, online data collection tools have become much easier to use allowing you to see the data you need and filter out all the rest. With any luck, this can make your analysis that much easier. In the coming Digital Marketing series, we’ll go over what tools you can use and how effective they are.

I imagine you may be quite intrigued, wanting to know more about Better Digital Marketing and how to leverage it for your business. Don’t worry we’ll get there this is only step one in Image In A Box’s “Better Digital Marketing in 10 Easy Steps.” By the time we finish step 10, you’ll be a very knowledgable Digital Marketing connoisseur and realize the value this marketing subset can bring to your business.

Interested in the other steps? Follow our blog or Facebook page for the latest updates. You can also follow the RSS feed of our blog to see our latest posts.

Look for “Step 2 – Where to Begin” in mid-April.

Thanks for reading and I welcome your comments, concerns, and /or questions below! :)

-Zach