Digital Marketing is dead, long live Digital Marketing!

Long Live Digital Marketing - About Digital Marketing

Why the phrase “Digital Marketing dead, long live Digital Marketing”?

Search volumes show a positive trend of the term ‘digital marketing’. For me this proves my understanding of how ‘digital marketing’ evolves into something bigger.

Nowadays the term ‘digital marketing’ is often used in relation to display advertising, search engine marketing, social and e-mail. In this post I will explain why I consider digital marketing to be used in a much broader context.

Let’s start with a common definition of digital marketing and break it down for there.

Digital marketing is (1) the marketing of products or services (2) using digital technologies.
– Wikipedia.org

(1) The marketing of products or services

Multiple companies have Org-charts in which marketing and sales are placed next to each other. This split is one of the reasons why we also see a narrow definition of the term marketing. One where marketing is defined by activities to create awareness and consideration. 

I define marketing as a holistic term for all activities related to the process of buying and selling in a market.

Sales, e-commerce, go-to-market, pricing, customer service, advertising, distribution. All part of the definition of the term marketing. Note: this doesn’t mean I believe it should always be one department though. 

(2) Using digital technologies

Today’s digital technology platforms play a crucial role in recording, analyzing, understanding and optimizing the full customer lifecycle. From awareness to consideration to lead management to purchase to brand loyalty to brand advocacy. Every step is covered by marketing technology.

For me, digital technology is a holistic term for platforms that automate marketing activities in every step of the customer lifecycle.

In summary

Currently the term digital marketing is used in the context of acquisition marketing using digital channels. However an increasing number of marketing technology platforms are able to capture, monitor and improve the full customer journey. From customer acquisition to brand advocacy. 

As a result, the phrase ‘Digital Marketing’ should be defined as: all activities related to the process of buying and selling in a market, using marketing technology.  And not exclusively to digital acquisition marketing. As such, the rational behind: “Digital Marketing is dead, long live Digital Marketing!’.

Happy to read your thoughts/feedback. 

Additional resources

For your convenience I have added some additional resources with links to marketing cloud platforms.

So, did this blog post trigger your curiosity about my marketing technology projects? You can find several related projects here.

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