I think it was 2002 when my colleague Alessandro and I were discussing what the name of our function should be. We mainly dealt with the collection of personal data from the internet, web design and sending newsletters. Among the various options, the one that seemed most in line with our work, but at the same time sufficiently authoritative was the Digital Marketing combination.
Very well you will say. Too bad that as you can see from the graph above and taken from Google Trends, digital marketing in 2002 practically did not exist. And who, like me and Alessandro, professed to be a professional in the digital marketing sector at the time, was quickly classified as an irrelevant subspecies in the field of business communication.
Almost 20 years later digital marketing is the thing that keeps companies going, those that decide to use it and those that don't just don't stay on the market.
What does a digital marketing professional do?
Basically it does something called acquisition, which means acquisition, where by acquisition we intend to bring traffic, therefore users, to your site or other property, in an organic or paid way.
Clear?
The 90% of all retail sales are influenced by the Internet.
market data
This means that 9 out of 10 people who enter your store and buy your brand have first seen your site, consulted your products online, read a newsletter, looked at your instagram account or searched for your store address on Google Maps. In other cases they have searched for a specific product on Google and found your store, for example when I was looking for a fishing lure called Slow jig to give to my father. Or they have read reviews about a particular product or service, such as a hotel rather than a restaurant.
If you are not on the Internet you do not exist
dura lex sed lex
All business activities that in any way generate information content, images, data must be involved in the great organizational machine of digital marketing.
Digital marketing does not throw anything away, it uses everything. A sketch, an idea, a sentence, an event, a social, humanitarian, solidarity initiative, even better if in support of nature it can play a role in the toolbox of the digital marketing professional.
You cannot manage what you cannot measure
Nonaka Takeushi, philosophy behind modern management
The KPIs of Digital Marketing
From the somewhat idealistic phase of the early 2000s, Digital Marketing passes to a phase in which instruments have become more and more performers, the competition leaves no room for improvisation and technicalities they make a difference.
We no longer speak of online advertising but of Data Marketing Platforms, Real Time Bidding, Performance, Dynamic Retargeting, Multivariate Analysis and AB Testing. The results are now measured with the Cost Per Click, the ROAS and the Cost per Acquisition. The quality of the ads, the quality score, determines the cost per click.
In conclusion
Digital Marketing includes
- Performance marketing, online advertising activities measured per click;
- Content Marketing - creation of digital content including text, images and videos;
- Direct Email Marketing - Newsletter, SMS, Push Notifications
- CRM - Customer Relationship Management
- SEO - Search Engine Optimization
- Social Media Management: organic and paid communication on social media
- Digital PR, reputation management, seeding, placement, influencer management