Much like finance and research, the world of b2c marketing (and b2b marketing too) has taken a digital upgrade since the advent of the internet. Digital marketing is the use of digital and computerised platforms to communicate with potential buyers in the form of site adverts, email lists and social media (though social media marketing can also be an entirely different form of marketing itself).
If you know what I mean by my question "wanna learn how to pin a tweet", then you probably don't need to keep reading. But if you're not sure what a 'pin' nor a 'tweet' is... then this blog post is perfect for you. Enjoy!
There are two main types of digital marketing – ‘pull’ marketing, which needs a customer to actively look for the marketing content, and ‘push’ marketing, which does not require the customer to do anything – it’s like the high-tech equivalent of junk mail.
These two methods of marketing can also be used in conjunction with one another – an unsolicited email (‘push’ marketing) can include a link (‘pull’ marketing) to the company’s website, for example.
While most companies continue to use a mix of traditional and digital marketing, the digital marketing field has expanded far beyond the means available to traditional marketing, due to the many avenues available for marketing on the internet, ensuring that the marketing campaigns reach a much wider audience (this may also be intentional on the part of the advertisers – since more and more people are switching from traditional reading formats for newspapers and books, among other things, having marketing take place via non-traditional means may be a way of retaining access to customers they may otherwise have lost).
While digital marketing – particularly the ‘push’ variant – may at first seem like an ideal way to inundate customers with adverts and deals, the downside is that more and more ways of circumventing said marketing are being invented every day. Apps are invented to bring marketing to people’s phone and inboxes; apps are invented to block them. Companies buy advertising space on websites; people design programmes such as Adblocker to block them out.
This series will take in depth looks at the various types of digital marketing that exist – content marketing, movement marketing, cross channel marketing and engagement marketing, among other approaches. Delving further into the different forms of marketing, I will highlight the differences between the different forms of digital marketing and perhaps make direct comparisons between the various formats, with a focus on the variations in advertising and sponsorship which can be offered by each of the different marketing strategies.
This new line of marketing may also have the effect of ‘burning people out’ when it comes to the company involved – by the time the sale actually comes up, people may be so tired of hearing about it that they ignore it entirely. If that is the case, is digital marketing really as helpful to companies as people believe it to be?