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Guest post by: Satyam Gambhir Become an Author

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Simply "Digital Marketing" = Marketing through "mobile devices" + "Internet". If blogspot allows a few GBs of space for a post, then we can probably think of expanding the latter two quoted words. Mobile devices may include a basic mobile phone, blackberryz, iPad etc and Internet includes Email marketing, Affiliate, popups, referrals, social media and so on. The effectiveness of communication through these mediums depends on how innovative one is, there are no limits in ways one can use these mediums. Digital marketing is a term that has been around for quite sometime but hasn't been very well defined, encompassing things like banner advertising, search engine optimization (SEO) and pay per click. However, 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?

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. At times, a marketer doesn't know that the revenues he is reaping today is due to his which efforts.

The hype that digital marketing has had in last couple of years is tremendous. The hype over hype over hype has brought the two terms "Digital" and "Marketing" together. No doubt about the objective of marketing is still the same which revolves around consumers and to bring a smile on their face, the word "digital marketing" is nothing but a fancy name given to a new way / medium to communicate with potential and existing customers.

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.

To help promote this new concept of digital marketing, people are still updated the Wikipedia entry for the term. In the true collaborative spirit of Wikipedia, you may also add your own thoughts and ideas. Currently the definition is:

Digital Marketing is the practice of promoting products and services using database-driven online distribution channels to reach consumers in a timely, relevant, personal and cost-effective manner.

However, as always, the marketers define things their own way without understanding the consequences. Please refer to the earlier post "Advertisement = interruption?" where in we saw how consumer behaves when marketer forces a purchase or interrupts. The above definition directly indicates their mal intentions of disturbing consumers. This scares me as a marketer myself pondering over what might happen when marketing and promotions are everywhere on social media.

My definition of Digital Marketing does not exist because I do not believe in the fancy name which seems to be a major branch of marketing. I take it as a new medium to carry out my marketing activities and which gives us an extra button somewhere in our minds where in we can think of switching off the restrictions that we used to face in traditional activities of marketing. This channel helps us communicate and hence understand the consumer better which ultimately helps us better understand their needs.

Broadband Internet, WiFi and phone Web access are also spurring growth worldwide. Not surprisingly, billions of marketing dollars spent on traditional channels is already starting to shift to digital way of doing campaigns and this will continue to increase as the Web matures. As a marketer, I am very excited about the future and what "digital marketing" will look like in the years ahead. I mean, we just got to Web 2.0 so who knows what will be coming next?

If you haven't already started, you need to build a database of customers or potential customers and find out how they wish to be to be followed and then reached (whenever required). You can do this through the digital marketing technologies I've mentioned in this article. Make sure you are ready to take full advantage of digital marketing, as they say it.

However, I still would like to remind -

Don't use this channel of communication to interrupt or reach out to your potential and existing customers with a message / promotion / advertisement. (This might get you sales)

Use this channel to understand them better, develop your services/products to the optimum and best fit to needs. (This will get you loyalty, repeat business and lengthy customer life cycle). Keep this in mind, when you tweet, you write out your heart, your customer is no different.

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