Wednesday 21 March 2018

Defining the scope of digital marketing using the '5Ds of Digital' and the Smart Insights RACE planning framework.


 This is important since for some in business, particularly more traditional marketers or business owners, 'digital' is simplistically taken to mean 'our website' or 'our Facebook page'. This thinking limits the scope and opportunity of what's managed and it means that activities that should be managed may be missed.

The 5Ds of digital marketing

To understand the importance of digital marketing to the future of marketing in any business, it’s helpful to think about what audience interactions we need to understand and manage. Digital marketing today is about many more types of audience interaction than website or email... It involves managing and harnessing these ‘5Ds of Digital’ that I have defined in the introduction to the latest update to my Digital Marketing: Strategy, Planning and Implementation book. The 5Ds for which we need to assess consumer adoption of when and how our business can prioritize their use are:

  • 1. Digital devices – our audiences interact with businesses using smartphones, tablets, desktop computers, TVs and gaming devices
  • 2. Digital platforms – most interactions on these devices are through a browser or apps from the major platforms or services, that’s Facebook (and Instagram), Google (and YouTube), Twitter and LinkedIn •
  • 3. Digital media – different paid, owned and earned communications channels for reaching and engaging audiences including advertising, email and messaging, search engines and social networks
  • 4. Digital data – the insight businesses collect about their audience profiles and their interactions with businesses, which now needs to be protected by law in most countries
  • 5. Digital technology – the marketing technology or martech stack that businesses use to create interactive experiences from websites and mobile apps to in-store kiosks and email campaigns

Tuesday 13 March 2018



Defining digital marketing

Digital marketing is the marketing of products or services using digital technologies, mainly on the Internet, but also including mobile phones, display advertising, and any other digital medium.The use of the Internet and other digital media and technology to support ‘modern marketing’ has given rise to a bewildering range of labels and jargon created by both academics and professionals. It has been called digital marketing, Internet marketing, e-marketing and web marketing and these alternative terms have varied through time...