Digital Marketing definition

“Digital marketing” is one of those terms we hear about every day without really mastering the definition. Which doesn’t stop anyone from giving their opinion. So, what terminology to use to describe the so-called “digital” marketing? Here are our explanations.

What is the Definition of Digital Marketing

Strictly speaking,digital marketing and digital communication are not completely interchangeable terms even if the formal distinction between these 2 terms is not very great.

Internet Users’ Searches go from Digital to Digital

It’s not very significant either, but we have to admit that Internet users’ searches are shifting to this new term of “digital“. At the expense of the old term digital. This one is now a bit dated.

In English, the accepted term is “digital marketing” (hence the English title of our 2013 book “managing digital marketing like a boss”. “Communications” in English refers, in this context, to telecommunications.

If we do a search on the term “digital communication” and compare it to “digital communication,” Google Trends returns the image of a clear inflection from 2013.

The occurrence of “digital communication” and “digital” searches in France

I. The differences between digital marketing and digital communication

II. Definition of digital marketing

III. A simplified definition of digital marketing

What is the Difference Between Digital Marketing and Digital Communication?

The boundaries between digital communication and digital marketing are quite blurred

While communication can be said to be encompassed by marketing, the evolution of digital communication in recent years, driven by social media, has intertwined digital communication and marketing.

E-retailers, for example, use blogs and social media as well as word-of-mouth marketing quite commonly. Facebook, Twitter and forums serve as the backbone of CRM for service companies, in telecoms for a long time, and more recently in banking.

These borders are becoming diluted.

We wanted to provide here the lexical material necessary to understand this field. In order to make this knowledge available to all.

How do We Define Digital Marketing?

Definitions of digital marketing are numerous and sometimes complex. See this example provided by the analytics firm Gartner. By the way, you have to keep your wits about you when it comes to these definitions, because the boundaries in this digital world are always shifting.

A conference as a starting point

As we demonstrated in this article, which is based on a conference held at ESSCA in Angers in early 2013, it is possible to define digital communication by emphasizing that digital…

Is a matter of culture … and transforming organizations;
Is a topic that is talked about because the communication agencies have taken it over, which makes it visible (without limiting it to an advertising action);
Is also a matter of computer technology and dematerialization, this in particular in the area of payments;
Is the 5th P in the marketing mix that adds the “person” dimension, especially through social media;
It’s also a matter of price … becausedigital business models have brought a dimension that breaks with the rules that traditional markets knew, as in the context of cloud computing for example;
Is different (because digital has its rules), and that at the same time, it’s the same thing! The consumer no longer makes the difference between real and virtual world and brands must be present on all channels … including Facebook;
Is the connection of all terminals, anytime and anywhere, the ubiquitous computing“;
Is the end of classical forms of work. See our many blog posts on this theme of reinventing ways of working;
…

A Formal – but Understandable – Description of Digital Marketing

In view of the complexity of definitions such as that of Gartner above, we have decided to simplify the debate in order to make it understandable and useful for action.

How important is it, before you grasp the subtleties, to understand all the minute details of technical disciplines like SEO (Search Engine Optimization)?

And what consequences if we don’t understand the major issues of branded content and its importance in the digital value chain. And that’s all the way down to lead generation (or contacts).

Here we have created a more formal, but understandable, description of digital marketing. This allows us to delimit – even if it means oversimplifying – its boundaries.

This description gives a more precise idea of the scope of this digital marketing revolution. If you combine it with the qualitative and cultural explanations above,

simplified diagram to define digital marketing — attempt to define digital marketing (intentionally not exhaustive)

We artificially split the digital domain into 3 parts. This allows us to better grasp the domain issues by reducing their complexity:

the first area is platforms;
the second is modes of communication;
the third area is that of measurement.

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Yann Gourvennec

CEO & Founder at Visionary Marketing

Yann Gourvennec created visionarymarketing.com in 1996. He is a speaker and author of 6 books. In 2014 he went from intrapreneur to entrepreneur, when he created his digital marketing agency.
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Yann Gourvennec a créé visionarymarketing.com en 1996. Il est conférencier et auteur de 6 livres. En 2014, il est passé d'intrapreneur à entrepreneur en créant son agence de marketing numérique.