Have you ever tried looking for how marketing as a term or a practice even came into existence? Surprisingly on some of the records, it dates back to 3000 BC. I will leave onto you to find it out.
Let’s simply try putting the term marketing into simpler words.
- Understanding the product and for whom it Is designed.
- Thoroughly understanding those consumers, looking into every point of their lifestyle.
- A good market research on what the competitors with similar products/solutions are doing/offering.
- Formulating a strategy on how you will position your product that differentiates it from others.
- Framing a message that helps the consumers recognize your product as the solution to their needs.
- Analysing and distributing the efforts to spread that message through mediums/channels.
- Observing and improvising
Well, though each step mentioned is a big & important task of the overall marketing process. If you agree with the above points on what simply marketing is – you can figure out what is the actual difference between traditional marketing and digital marketing.
Yes, you got it right. Digital marketing as a term shows up way down to the 6th step. Do you see it, though digital marketing is a huge buzzword today, I say the whole term is only a medium/channel/platform to reach out to the consumers. Isn’t it…?
Let’s dive into how digital marketing made a difference. By solving the factors affecting the outcome of marketing. Once the marketing strategy is formed(Points 1-5 for instance), when it comes to sending the curated message to the target audience, brands have faced many limitations. Let’s uncover them to enhance the importance of digital marketing.
- Marketers could only use the mediums of mass media like TV, radio, newspapers, flyers, etc. Moreover, if I want to somehow get the metrics of how many people saw my message/Ad, how they reacted, did the message actually work or not, and many others. I would have to just blind foldly look into my sales graph – if it’s going up that means the advertising is working. (Advertising can be termed as the tactics/mediums used to spread the message).
Think about it for yourself, How will it benefit for you to know all the above metrics after your advertising? Well, the digital medium perfectly solves that. You could develop a dashboard with so many useful metrics. The whole further strategy and techniques can be framed to improvise the marketing effect.
- There was no data available with the traditional mediums on what are the demographics and psychographics of the audience using them. (search it now if you thoroughly don’t know the meaning of those words). I was simply spending money for example through TV or newspapers to spread my message to lakhs of people without knowing how much is my actual audience within them.
You see the problem there, the cost is high for reaching a chunk of my target audience from that huge bunch. And even if there would be some data present, there was no particular way to selectively send them a message through TV or newspaper, etc. (I mean mass media.)
Again, Digitally I can send my message precisely to people who fall between the age of 25-30 years, are married, showing interest in baby-related products, 10kms around my business location. Yeah, I am a baby photographer. (The filters today are numerous which can generate the exact audience for your business). This process increases the chance of the message being acknowledged by a majority of them, and also will cost me much less, isn’t it?
- Even after using mass media to spread the message, I would have to assume, dreaming that my audience is just mesmerized by my product and I am going to be super rich. Yeah, there was no way to record how many of my target audience engaged with the ad and how was their interaction.
Did the whole message I formed after through strategizing, help the audience to consider my product as their solution to the need or not? This question is important to know whether to continue advertising as it is, or some tweaks can elevate its impact or to stop it after testing it for some time if it is totally not working.
Cut the crap, With traditional marketing I had the option of only choosing Mass media platforms without any filtered selection of audience and should not expect any empirical data on its success ratio. There comes the mighty digital mediums providing marketers with full control of their advertising tactics. (And yes eventually it brought along with it many further advancements too).
That’s why Digital Marketing is a super buzzword today. Optimizing the marketing framework to provide the best possible outcomes. However, Let’s not forget that these are two different words: Digital & Marketing. All of the biggest brands we know today are the result of traditional marketing. (But obviously, it was the best at its time). Digital can be termed as the best thing to happen to Marketing, however, the root concepts still stays the same. (Starting from point 1 every time, you remember the list right).
Read further, to enter into an interesting discussion about what is digital marketing as a whole.
Until then, I think so the activity for this blog is already somewhere in between.