So, what is the difference between digital marketing and traditional marketing?
Do we still need both of them?
Hippos to Horses Marketing is very passionate about the use of the marketing concept as a means to grow your business. The marketing concept places much emphasis on putting the consumer/customer at the centre of all activities. In theory, this should give you, the business owner, a razor-sharp vision into your customer’s psychology, a concept that places you above competition in meeting your target audience’s needs and desires. It will be a position that will guarantee that your business will be a going concern for a very long time to come.
We have seen first-hand the power of brands and the value Brands can bring to a business. It is also evident to us that marketing as a discipline is evolving. Everybody is now a marketer, some armed with the proper knowledge, whilst others pick up a few keywords and principles along the way. Our mission here is to equip all small-business owners with the right know-how to integrate traditional and digital marketing. And thrive.
What a customer is to the Marketing concept the Buyer Persona is to digital Marketing
We have established the significance of putting the customer/ consumer at the heart of all your marketing activities. Is the customer also important when you start incorporating digital marketing into your business?
If you run an online business, you have come across the term Ideal customer avatar (ICA) or Buyer Persona (BP).
What is a Buyer Persona?
The buyer Persona is fundamental in helping all online business understand or build their digital marketing strategy. The BP is your bread and butter, specifically if you are an online entrepreneur. The Buyer Persona is your tribe, customer, consumer, audience, potential influencer. I hope you can start to build a mental picture of the BP’s importance to your business.
Buyer Persona helps you know your customers better than they know themselves
A Buyer Persona helps you to dig deep into the psychology of your potential customers. Buyer Persona helps you to describe and speak to your tribe collectively. The buyer persona recognises that you are not just talking on a one-to-one individual basis for each customer. Instead, you are communicating with a definite group who share similar qualities, attributes and attitudes.
In developing your buyer persona, it is also imperative to recognise that your customers are never the same. Their combinations of interests and motivations vary ever so slightly between themselves overtime.
The art and science of the Buyer Persona
There is an art and science to developing your Buyer Persona. On the one hand, it’s a collection of many individuals with similar interests (the science is easy; you just need to group people). On the other hand, your BP enjoys and appreciates being spoken to as an individual. The art part of the equation is always the challenge; you must know and voice your BP needs, fears, insecurities, desires, joys. To truly understand them, you must spend time engaging with them. Aaah! The delights of Marketing.
The end product user – Consumer, audience, tribe is the focus of all Marketing and digital marketing activities.
It is safe to say that, as a business owner who wants to succeed in the digital space, you have to make the Buyer Persona the focus of all your digital marketing activities. As mentioned above, this can only happen by building ongoing positive relationships. In traditional marketing, the consumer is at the centre of all the activities. Likewise, with digital marketing, the focus has to be on the person you want to buy your products.
The Buyer persona is your perfect buyer with imperfect needs
The Buyer persona that you create should be a representation of your optimal buyer. It is an identity that is recognisable to your consumers and customers. The buyer persona is an essential recognition that successful digital marketing requires you to work with all those who ‘engage with’ you rather than ‘solely‘ those who buy your products.
What has digital technology done for us over the last 25 years?
Disruptions in all spheres of life
Change is the only permanent thing in this world. In our previous blog, we talked about agility in practice. We gave an example of Wanderlust Creamery, an artisanal ice cream shop in Los Angeles County that had to adapt quickly to stay afloat.
Innovation, adaptability, perseverance, grit [ Full disclosure this is an affiliate link for Amazon], mindset [ Full disclosure this is an affiliate link for Amazon], attitude are the prevailing words we live by these strange times. Listening to the Ultimate Jim Rohn Library Audiobook[1], Jim mentions in one of his lectures that it’s only in the last fifty years that people have forgotten what it is to live in a pandemic. Jim Rohn message was very positive. First, it shows that as human beings, we are resilient, that pandemics do happen and that as a race, we do come out on the other side stronger.
Disruptions in the digital world and how we have pivoted to this change
Digital disruptors: These are innovations in digital media, data and marketing technology that change the way of conducting business and sometimes wholly change competition rules. Disruptors are referred to as start-ups or existing companies that are good examples of impacting competition through disruption through their agility.
Digital Disruptors Hall of Fame
Amazon was launched in 1994 and changed our lives forever. Is it safe to say that amazon is the google(verb) for things? In 1995 Yahoo (March) and eBay (September) were launched. It was the same year we ditched our Hotmail account. The digital innovations continued in 2009 Airbnb, 2010 Uber. In February 2017 Google launched, its home voice control devices, joining Amazon Echo, Apple Home Kit devices and home hub. And you know, who knows what the future will bring, but we can see what digital disruption is.
Digital marketing is exciting because it poses new opportunities and challenges. Innovation is a given in digital marketing, and every day, new technologies come into the business, new business models, and new communication enhancements. There will never be a dull moment in digital. Anybody ever stayed away from a platform for six months? You know that you now need a course to teach you how to use it! That’s how fast thing change!
Digital Marketing the definition
Digital Marketing is achieving marketing objectives through applied digital media, data and technology.
In practice, Digital Marketing focuses on managing your company’s online presence, and this would include business websites, mobile apps, social media pages, Email Marketing etc. A crucial part of this would be search engine optimisation (SEO) which helps your customers find you on the WWW.
The success of Digital Marketing still relies on traditional Media
Digital marketing’s success depends on its integration with traditional media, such as print, TV, direct mail, face-to-face sales, workshops, conferences, and webinars.
Digital Marketing and Technology
Digital marketing has transformed how businesses connect with their audiences. It has made it possible to directly communicate with your customers without going through a third party and seeking permissions. Your consumers can also directly communicate with you without having to go through many gatekeepers.
More choices all around
People generally now have access to a much wider choice of entertainment, products, services, and prices from various suppliers and a more convenient way to select and purchase them. Small Business now can expand into new markets, offer new services, interact with audiences in new ways and compete on an equal footing with larger businesses.
Personal investment in digital technology to be competitive.
Entrepreneurs can develop new skills and use these new tools to improve the competitiveness of the company. Simultaneously, the internet and related to digital technology platforms give rise to many threats to traditional organisations, for example, on like companies such as ASOS.com and Zalando, Amazon, iTunes, Spotify Booking.com.
These companies have captured a significant part of the traditional offline market and have radically changed the consumer journey. The changing of the consumer journey and, at the same time, consumer behaviour should act as a source of motivation for any online small business owner.
Social Media a game-changer
Your tribe now regularly uses social networks, such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Snapchat, and Twitter, as part of their daily lives. The majority are accessing their social media through their smartphones. Engaging these consumers is an ongoing challenge; companies that have taken advantage of these opportunities to interact with consumers have helped developed worldwide brands; TikTok is a great example. It has the whole world dancing.
Management of digital marketing.
It is a prerequisite that all organisations have an effective online presence to prosper or possibly survive! “The question is not whether to deploy internet technology. -Companies have no choice on that if they want to stay competitive, but how to deploy it.” Michael Porter[2] in 2001.,
Every marketer should be a digital marketer and vice
Digital marketing transformed marketing. 12-14 years ago, nobody talked about digital marketing. Way back when we were working in the corporate world, we had to get approvals from a Marketing President seated in an office 5000 miles across the pond to run any form of a digital campaign. Still, now years later, if you’re not doing digital marketing, you are not marketing. Most companies now have a digital marketing team and a marketing team. We propose that all Marketers should be digital marketers.
PS.Hippos to Horses marketing have recently completed our CIM Diploma in Digital Marketing.
[1] Full disclosure this is an affiliate link for Amazon. I get a teeny tiny commission if you use this link to buy this book at no cost to you. You will only benefit by enlarging your knowledge by reading the great content.
[2] Michael E. Porter From the Magazine (March 2001), Strategy and the Internet,https://hbr.org/2001/03/strategy-and-the-internet.