Digital Marketing - Zero to One

 

“You can never fill a cup which is already full”. We all know what it means. It applies to marketing as well. So, if you want to know about Digital Marketing, you need to first un-know all that you feel you know about it. So, let’s start our process of learning, now.

What is digital marketing?

Digital Marketing is nothing but marketing. Did you read that right? Yes, you did!

As we know, marketing is that intermediate effort which we do in order to take our products or services to the relevant customers. It could be either a television advertisement, distribution of samples, free counselling etc.. Even a job application is a form of marketing. You are basically marketing your own skills to the potential employer.

The means in which we do marketing are as broad as marketing itself. It simply means that there are a lot of medium through which marketing can be done. One such method is Digital Marketing.

Digital Marketing is using the digital means to market your offering. In simple words, any marketing campaigns that are run through digital mediums like television, FM radio, social media etc. is known as digital marketing.

How is it different from traditional marketing?

To understand this, we need to go in to history a little. When kings were still ruling the world, trading happened across the globe, on a large scale. In the markets, some merchants would offer a low price, while some others offered excess items. A few others would give a credit to the buyers and so on. Though it may not seem so, each one of these is a marketing effort. 

Kings would get temples and monuments built. Some of them would even go to the extent of building the biggest, widest, tallest things on the planet. It made the kings popular. This too was a form of marketing. As we now see, marketing existed in the world always, only that there was no fixed form or theory to it.

In the modern world, traditional marketing is the use of mediums like newspapers, pamphlets, banners etc. for marketing. Digital marketing is different from it due to the fact that you can see both these types of marketing efforts, but you cannot physically touch or feel a digital marketing effort. There are many things that differentiate traditional marketing from digital marketing.

What medium of marketing should you then use? 

You cannot scale up your traditional marketing activities quickly with traditional marketing due to the vast area of land as well as due to high population. You cannot stay in a single place and do your marketing at other locations unless you have a dedicated workforce. Moreover, traditional marketing involved a hugh expenditure basis the product or service being offered. Along with huge budgets, you cannot be sure if you are going to get a return on it. 

So, all in all traditional marketing is more useful for a branding point of view, whereas if you want to drive sales, digital marketing is your go to. By considering all the points above, you will be able to take a decision, based on what your expected outcomes are.