“What really decides consumers to buy or not to buy is the content of your advertising, not its form.” – David Ogilvy

You can either wait for customers to find you or you can go to where they are, and where they are, tоdау, is onlіnе.

The good news is that your сuѕtоmеrѕ are lооkіng and waiting fоr уоu online. The bad news is that they won’t wait long.

The COVID–19–related inflection point and social distancing requirements have seen the need for digital transformation and digital marketing hit record demand. This demand has come mainly from small and new businesses that would previously have relied on foot traffic from their local communities.

Personally, I’ve worked with nearly 2 000 SMB’s (Small Medium Businesses) in the past 12 years. And what strikes me, is how little most SMB’s invest in upgrading their knowledge of critical business functions like marketing. For example, according to kinsta.com; only 3 million users (out of the 740 million LinkedIn users) share content on a weekly basis. This means that only about 1% of LinkedIn’s 260 million monthly users share posts, and those 3 million or so users gain the lion’s share of the platform’s 9 billion impressions.

And then the same people who don’t put in the required effort wonder why they don’t get the leads and sales they need to meet their revenue targets. To gain the benefits of digital marketing, as listed below, one needs to truly understand the vast notion of digital marketing. Starting with the basics.

Before we can dive deeply into digital marketing, we need to remind ourselves what marketing is:

Marketing is the collection of business activities that position a company within the public imagination. Many of these activities involve direct interactions between the business and the consumer about a specific product. Other interactions are subtler, involving proactive communication of your brand identity, as well as key product–related themes, in the public domain.

A simpler definition: Marketing is what companies do to promote their products or services to a defined target audience.

This collection of (marketing) activities, conversations and interactions can happen on various platforms, such as at in–person events, on radio and television, and via print media such as newspapers, magazines and flyers (remember those?). The activities are aimed at ‘creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.’ (American Marketing Association – Approved 2017)

Let’s now define what digital marketing is. Wikipedia states that digital marketing ‘is the component of marketing that utilises internet– and online–based digital technologies, such as desktop computers, mobile phones and other digital media and platforms, to promote products and services. Digital marketing campaigns have become prevalent, employing combinations of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Search Engine Marketing (SEM), content marketing, influencer marketing, content automation, campaign marketing, data–driven marketing, e–commerce marketing, social media marketing, social media optimisation, e–mail direct marketing, display advertising, e–books, and optical disks and games have become commonplace. Digital marketing extends to non–internet channels that provide digital media, such as television, mobile phones (SMS and MMS), call–back, and on–hold mobile ring tones.

The extension to non–internet channels differentiates digital marketing from online marketing.’

This means digital marketing is an avenue that provides you with numerous channels, tools and tactics, through which you can find, communicate, interact with, market and sell to a specific audience of people.

It should also be noted that, among many other advantages, digital marketing is:

• –                 Cost–effective (affordable);

• –                 Accessible (has a low barrier to entry);
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• –                 Easy to track and measure (provides excellent reporting capability); and best of all,
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• –                 Digital marketing gives you the power to interact directly with your audience.
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With this context in place, and not to overwhelm you, at least not yet; over the next few weeks I will be sharing a series of posts and articles that will cover a limited set of digital marketing platforms, channels and tools, that include:

• –                Generating websites;
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• –                Effective use of social media;
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• –                Email marketing (inbound marketing);
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• –                Search Engine Optimisation (SEO); and
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• –                Search Engine Marketing (SEM).
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I look forward to sharing with you and hope that you will engage, debate with me and share with your colleagues and others who need to learn more about the wonderful wonders of digital marketing.

For additional reading material and training resources, see links below.

• –                 A-Game Digital Marketing Guide: https://agamebusiness.com/product/digital-marketing-guide-                    pdf/
• –                 A-Game Digital Marketing Online Course: https://agamebusiness.com/digital-marketing-online-                    course/
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Yours in digital marketing

KK Diaz