Do you really understand what digital marketing?

Nowadays, everyone has heard of digital marketing. It has become a much-used tool to help businesses survive in this new digital era. This article will reveal what digital marketing really is, and how the benefits of digital marketing can help businesses grow. You may have heard or read some of this information before, but may also have missed some important aspects, so let’s find out more together.

What Is Digital Marketing?

Before we explain more about digital marketing, we would like to define the word “marketing” first, and explain why industries and businesses, both big and small, must place importance on it.

Marketing is the method used to make a business recognised, gain profit, or get a return on investment. Therefore, marketing does not only refer to the way one promotes a product or service, but also the internal and external management strategies of an organisation. That is why you’ll often hear marketing professionals suggesting that new businesses pay a lot of attention to marketing from the beginning. Ultimately, marketing is an important foundation that can result in the success or failure of your business.

So now you understand the definition of marketing, let’s come back to the question of: “what is digital marketing?”. The answer is: marketing on a digital channel! Everything on the Internet that can be accessed via electronic devices, such as computers, smart phones, or TVs can be used as mediums for digital marketing.

Digital Marketing Tools

It’s not wrong to say that digital marketing is a challenge for marketers. Especially compared to offline marketing of the past, when there were only a few media options available: print, billboards, magazines, newspapers, leaflets, pamphlets, and mainstream media like television. But since entering the digital era, we now have websites, social media, streaming applications, and platforms like Google, with many digital marketing tools to use including SEO, SEM, Youtube, and Facebook. 

Purpose of Digital Marketing

Of course, what we want from any type of marketing is success, no matter what indicator we use to define it: profit or other factors. The purpose of digital marketing varies according to the requirements of the user. If your goal is to increase profits, then your digital marketing purpose is to gain profits. However, if you’re carrying out digital marketing for a charity event, then your purpose is to advertise the event you are running. Therefore, we define the purpose of digital marketing as having no exact rules, as it depends on your use-case. 

The Reality of Digital Marketing

Whether your digital marketing will be effective very much depends on how you use it. No organisation or brand undertakes digital marketing without expectations, because of course there are investment costs, as with offline marketing.

What People Usually Misunderstand

When we run an offline marketing campaign, using print media, or TV advertisements, our work is tangible. We can see what our money has bought us, and what we will get in return. For example, pay for leaflet printing and you will receive a pile of leaflets for distribution. However, in the world of digital marketing, it’s slightly different. Some things are not as tangible and it may take some time to see the results. Consequently, many people misunderstand and think that digital marketing does not require much investment, or even that you can do it with no budget at all. This is not entirely wrong, but is not the right either! Currently, even on free platforms like Google or Facebook, you still have to pay to run advertisements. If you really want to do digital marketing properly then the investment is no different from the offline method of marketing.

Once you’ve understood what digital marketing is, what its purposes are, and how it can be used, in order to get the best results, the next step is to create a digital marketing strategy that aligns with your business.

What we hope to highlight is that digital marketing is not necessarily better than traditional offline marketing. The best method of marketing for your business is the one that suits your business and meets its demands. This means that offline marketing may suit your business more, or your business may require both offline and digital marketing simultaneously. 

For now, if you want to grow your business, the first thing you need to know is what type of marketing suits your business best, and you will determine this by understanding who your customer is.