The one thing businesses need to know about digital marketing

Respected leaders of many organizations are still trying to wrap their heads around what digital marketing is. I frequently have to remind some that online marketing is not just ‘social media’ or ‘SEO’.

Throw in content marketing, inbound marketing, user experience design, CPC/CPM, digital re-marketing, and marketing automation and the eyes glaze over. The mind can take only so much change in a decade.

So let’s keep this simple – the one thing that any organization needs to know:

Digital Marketing is about the customer experience.

In this era of the hyper-digital customer, online touch-points play the leading role in customer-brand relationships.
Digital marketing allows brands to nurture and grow customer relationships as the customer journeys through the process of:

Discovery: Where digital marketing helps the brand get ‘found’ online.
Research: Where businesses nurture trust and credibility by providing content that customers need to make an informed decision about the product, service or brand values.
In the digital era, the opportunity for customer service exists before any transaction.
Commitment: Where the brands secure a friction-less buy in due to the value they have been able to demonstrate.
Advocacy: Where organizations have the opportunity to ensure that the customer lifetime value extends well beyond transactional elements. At this point your engaged customers can drive sales and even business ideation.

All your marketing efforts should focus on the ability to deliver on the above, at the time and channel chosen by your customer; be it on a Google search, YouTube video, blog or one of the many social media outposts.

This digital marketing thingy allows you to forge that one-to-one relationship with your customers, at scale. It allows you to target your customers and measure your efforts. You can now efficiently and continuously optimize, personalize, and nurture your customer relationship in almost real-time.

When you do it right, your customers will thank you with an exponentially growing customer lifetime value. These brand advocates take on the role of helping other customers through discover, research, commitment, and advocacy.

As it has been said: