Digital marketing is the use of internet connected devices to engage a customer with online advertising in order to promote products and services. Internet connected devices are those such as web browsers, smart phones and game consoles. As technology develops more devices become able of internet browsing and the digital marketing potential that comes with it.
Digital marketing – Pull versus Push
Two different forms of digital marketing exist
Pull digital marketing in which the consumer must actively seek the marketing content often via web searches or the recipient has given permission to receive content that is sent to the consumer by email,text message and web feed. Websites, blogs and streaming media (audio and video) are also examples of pull digital marketing. Articles with specific target / topic are a great source to pull interested viewers. In each of these, users have to link to the website to view the content. Only current web browser technology is required to maintain static content. However, additional internet marketing technologies (search engine optimization) may be required to attract the desired consumer demographic.
Research by Martin et al. (2003) found what permission email marketing content consumers find useful such as special sales and new product information, whereas suggesting interesting hyperlinks was not seen as useful.
Push digital marketing technologies in which the marketer sends a message without the consent of the recipients, such as display advertising on websites and news blogs. Email, text messaging and web feeds can also be classed as push digital marketing when the recipient has not given permission to receive the marketing message. (This is also known as spam). Push technologies can deliver content immediately as it becomes available and are better targeted to their consumer demographics, although audiences are often smaller, and the costs of creation and distribution are higher. Push digital marketing technologies are more proper when done with the prior permission, the concept called as permission marketing. This is also more ethical. Permission can be obtained either through subsciptions, or consent to send email etc.
Digital Marketing and Multi-Channel Communications
Push and pull message technologies can be used in conjunction with each other. For example, an email campaign can include a banner ad or link to a content download. This enables a marketer to benefit from both types of digital marketing.
Digital marketing is a term that has been around for quite awhile but hasn’t been very well defined, encompassing things like banner advertising, search engine optimization (SEO) and pay per click. Yet, this is too narrow of a definition. What about email, RSS, voice broadcast, fax broadcast, blogging, podcasting, video streams, wireless text messaging, and instant messaging? You get the idea.
To clearly define what digital marketing is let’s talk about what it is not. For starters, it does not include more traditional forms of marketing such as radio, TV, billboard and print because they do not offer instant feedback and report. Sure, some people may respond to a call to action from an advertisement in one of these mediums but there is no way to know the exact number of people who saw or heard it. Such data is collected (and still then just educated guesses) long after the initial ad impression is made. Yes, convergence has made television at bit more interactive, with devices such as TiVo able to record viewer statistics like those for Web sites, but there is still a long way to go. With digital marketing, however, we’re already there.
At its heart, digital marketing centers around the Internet, which has become both a communication vehicle and a very powerful marketing medium as the recent Doubleclick acquisition by Google demonstrated. The Internet can be used both to push a message to someone like email, IM, RSS, or voice broadcast, as well to “pull” content serving a banner ad and Pay Per Click search terms. Digital marketing, therefore, can be thought of as the combination of push and pull Internet technologies to execute marketing campaigns.
Because it is digital, a reporting engine can be layered within a campaign allowing the organization see in real-time how that campaign is performing, such as what is being viewed, how often, how long, as well as other actions such as responses rates and purchases made. Please note that each digital marketing technology is different and they cannot all provide the same types of reports. Also, digital marketing is constantly evolving and new technologies are being created all of the time.
