Digital marketing, online marketing, internet marketing… They are all the same thing.
Before the 21st century, brands used to advertise in newspapers, television, billboards, etc. They used these mediums to connect with their target audience and make them aware of their brand.
As the internet came along, another medium for marketing was created.
Now, digital marketing is like any other type of marketing – it’s a way to connect with and influence your potential customers. The real difference is, you connect with and influence those customers online.
Basically, digital marketing refers to any online marketing assets or efforts. The digital marketing industry is very huge and has a lot of moving parts, but the basic concepts of marketing remain the same.
The sub-categories of digital marketing include:
- Paid advertising
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Social Media Marketing
- Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)
- Content Marketing
- Email Marketing
- SMS Marketing
- Affiliate Marketing
- And a lot more
Each of the subcategories mentioned above is a specialization in itself. Each concept is very vast and you need to constantly keep learning if you want to stay ahead of the curve.
The truth is, digital marketing is a constantly developing sector. As technology changes, the marketing methods change. Right now, a majority of the audience spends time on digital platforms hence digital marketing is booming, but you never know what other thing technology might come along.
Marketing depends on the audience completely. The marketing needs to adapt to where the audience spends the most time. Hence, I would recommend you to first learn about the core concepts of marketing (since those won’t ever change) and then you can dive deeper into digital marketing.
Most companies spend about 50% of their overall marketing budgets on digital marketing. Considering that digital marketing has only started blowing up in the past 20 years, that’s a very huge increase.