what are digital marketing and multichannel marketing?

what are digital marketing and multichannel marketing?

 The use of the Internet and other digital media and technology to support ‘modern marketing  marketing’ has given rise to a bewildering range of labels and jargon created by both academics and professionals.

It has been called digital marketing, Internet marketing, e-marketing and web marketing.

For the fifth edition we changed the title of this text from Internet Marketing to Digital Marketing since it shows the use of a range of digital plat forms to interact with audiences and for other reasons explained in the preface.Of course, what is important within a company is not the term, but the activities that comprise digital 

marketing, which must be prioritised according to their relevance.

So in this chapter we focus on introducing these different digital marketing activities. 

Digital marketing can be simply defined as: 

Achieving marketing objectives through applying digital technologies and media.

This succinct definition helps remind us that it is the results delivered by technology that should determine investment in Internet marketing, not the adoption of the technology! These digital technologies include the desktop, mobile, tablet and other digital platforms introduced.

In practice, digital marketing includes managing different forms of online company presence , such as company websites and social media company pages in conjunction with online communications techniques introduced later in this blogger including search engine marketing, social media marketing, online advertising, email marketing and partnership arrangements with other websites.

These techniques are used to support the objectives of acquiring new customers and providing services to existing customers that help develop the customer relationship through E-CRM .However, for digital marketing to be successful there is still a necessity for integration of these techniques with traditional media such as print, TV and direct mail as part of multichannel marketing communications. 

The role of digital platforms in supporting integrated multichannel marketing is another recurring theme in this text.we explore its role in supporting different customer journeys through alternative communications and distribution channels.

 Online channels can also be managed to support the whole buying process from pre-sale to sale to post-sale and further development of customer relationships.

Paid, owned and earned media To develop a sound digital strategy today involves understanding a more complex, more competitive buying environment than ever before, with customer journeys involving many different forms of online presence.

To help develop a strategy to reach and influence  potential customers online, it’s commonplace to refer to three main types of media channels marketers need to consider today 

1 Paid media . These are bought media where there is investment to pay for visitors, reach or conversions through search, display ad networks or affiliate marketing.

Offline, traditional media like print and TV advertising and direct mail remain important, accounting for the majority of paid media spend. 

2 Owned media . This is media owned by the brand. Online this includes a company’s own websites, blogs, email list, mobile apps or their social presence on Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter.

Offline owned media may include brochures or retail stores. It’s useful to think of a company’s own presence as media in the sense that they are an alternative investment to other media and they offer opportunities to promote products using similar ad or editorial formats to other media.

It emphasises the need for all organisations to become multichannel publishers.

3 Earned media. Traditionally, earned media has been the name given to publicity generated through PR invested in targeting influencers to increase awareness about a brand.

Now earned media also includes word-of-mouth that can be stimulated through viral and social media marketing, and conversations in social networks, blogs and other communities.
It’s useful to think of earned media as the sharing of engaging content developed through different types of partners such as publishers, bloggers and other influencers including customer advocates.
 

Another way of thinking about earned media is as different forms of conversations between consumers and businesses occurring both online and offline

We will see at the end of this chapter that content marketing has become a core integrated modern marketing approach which involves communications across paid, owned and earned media You can show that there is overlap between the three different types of media.

It is important to note this since achieving this overlap requires integration of campaigns, resources and infrastructure. Content on a content hub or site can be broken down (sometimes described as microcontent) and shared between other media types through widgets powered by program and data exchange APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) such as the Facebook API.

The growing range of digital marketing platforms

If you think of the options to reach and interact with audiences when they are online, we have 

traditionally used digital media channels like search, social media or display ads on media sites accessed via desktop or laptop-based hardware platforms.

The old desktop access platform has been dominant for years and remains so for now, but the number of mobile smartphone and tablet visitor sessions now exceed desktop Internet sessions for many consumer businesses.

 Combining with these hardware platforms, there are also different software platforms which marketers can use to reach and interact with their audience through content marketing or advertising, so let’s look at the range of options that are available.