‘Digital marketing’ may sound pretty self-explanatory, but let’s break it down a bit, starting with a basic definition, then expounding on the concept.
In a nutshell, digital marketing is using internet-connected devices like computers, tablets, and smartphones to engage consumers.
What is Digital Marketing, done the Kaleidico Way?
Kaleidico Digital Marketing crafts effective online identities and campaigns for brands, products, and services using various Web tools and platforms to heighten their visibility and foster greater ROI (return-on-investment) for their marketing dollar.
The digital marketplace is a large and growing world of commerce. There was a time when traditional brick-and-mortar businesses either maintained an online presence or they didn’t, based largely on whether they could directly benefit from such a presence. For many, the Web was merely a 21st Century answer to the mail-order catalog.
But these days, even those companies who, once upon a time, might’ve perceived only a minimal need for a digital marketing component to their advertising are finding it an absolute necessity. The internet is simply where everyone is these days.
Even if you’re a tiny, mom-and-pop ice cream stand with no direct online sales to speak of, you have an interest in garnering attention for your business. Even in that randomly chosen example, if kids like ice cream, and they’re online all day—shouldn’t you be there, too, in various ways?
Digital marketing consists of two main branches: ‘pull-’ and ‘push marketing’.
In ‘Pull’ Digital Marketing, your company is like a magnet attracting customers.
Your goal, as a business, is to enable search traffic (and potential customers within) the easiest online path possible to finding you. If someone is doing a Google search (the dominant search engine these days) for “ice cream”, you want your company to be as high on the ranking list as possible. After all, how often do you find what you want on page seven of your search results? Rarely, we suspect.
With a proper digital marketing strategy, you’ll be able to maximize your SEO (Search Engine Optimization.) This makes life easier for the searcher…and more lucrative for your business. You wouldn’t open a storefront with six sets of maze-like sliding doors for customers to try to navigate through—they’d get discouraged, try to leave, and then probably have a heck of a time getting out.
Further, with good content marketing, you’re ensuring that, once inside your doors (or even before that, with proper ‘storefront signage’), customers know what they can expect to find inside. They don’t have to guess what’s stocked in the back room, they see your ‘inventory’ right up-front—as well as the value you’re offering them.
In this regard, content marketing—equipped with the right CTA (call-to-action)—is a little like your store circular, but better: you’re enticing them with the best deals on products they need and getting them more involved in the overall ‘shopping’ experience.
In ‘Push’ Digital Marketing, your company’s like a shepherd guiding customers to you.
This practice often consists of a more active outreach effort—email marketing, text messaging, social media campaigns on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, etc. Now, these can cross-apply, of course. Some of these platforms can serve purposes (depending on their usage) in pull marketing as well.
Content marketing, also, can work in both a push- and pull marketing effort, it’s more in how you use it. In a more pull capacity, the material and topics you include as content can draw attention while people search for similar keywords; in a push capacity, you can use these same content-based keywords in more proactive ways—it’s really just a semantic difference.
But the point is, in push marketing, you’re not passively waiting for a response as you would with, say, a well-placed ad on a popular website—you’re actively pursuing customers.
Digital Marketing—both Push and Pull—are two roads leading to the same place: a higher-visibility online identity and a network, or ‘community’, of customers made comfortable involving themselves with, and buying from, your brand.