05 Feb Digital Best Practices Series – The 4D’s Of Digital Marketing
Matthew N. Kinder
Vice President, Digital
United Landmark Associates
You’ve likely heard of the 4 P’s of Marketing, but have you heard of the 4 D’s of Digital Marketing?
Yes, the marketing mix has evolved, yet again, requiring us to shift our thinking.
Marketers have always been taught that you need to have the right product, price, placement and promotion. With the rise of ‘digital’ further fracturing the consumer journey, having an omnipresent, consistent brand voice across channels, is more important than ever before.
To have an appropriate online presence, we outline the 4 D’s of Digital Marketing below and suggest keeping each front of mind as every marketing decision is made.
The 4 D’s of Digital Marketing
- Digital Data – This is the critical foundation for any marketing effort, online or offline. You must have strong, relevant, reliable data sources or an agency partner who can connect such sources, to your marketing efforts. By tapping into great data sources, you can know exactly who to target for your business, when to introduce them to your brand, how to best nurture them in their decision-making journey and last but certainly not least … you can know what is working best in your marketing mix.
- Digital Devices – Let’s not forget that people spread their time among various devices i.e., desktop, mobile, connected devices and gaming consoles, just to name a few. It’s important that each piece of content you share, whether it be organic or paid, is optimized for every possible environment your prospective audience will find themselves in.
- Digital Technology – From Automation of your marketing efforts that utilizes Artificial Intelligence to optimize your campaigns, to the reporting of campaign success, there’s a full stack of technology offerings in the Digital Marketing realm. It’s important that you fully vet any technology to ensure it fits your needs and business model. One size does not fit all in the digital technology space.
- Digital Media & Channels – This is a two-for-one bullet point; you cannot be present on channels like Social Media, Email, Display Ads, etc., without content. When you’ve come to the decision of what channels to activate on, it’s crucial you have the right mix of media to fully utilize each respective channel and to have a complete understanding of what media works best on that particular channel.
While it does take a new level of dedication toward your marketing efforts, the great news is that these processes can be streamlined and become part of a normal marketing workflow. As with most things in the marketing world, it can be as easy as establishing the right agency relationships for access to pre-vetted data & technology.
2021 and beyond is no longer the age of “including digital.” It’s simply the age of better marketing … a process that now includes utilizing a great mixture of data sources to make decisions of how to connect, engage and convert our target audiences.