The Fundamental Digital Marketing Formula : Digital + Marketing

Intro

Here’s a fundamental formula to follow for how most businesses should approach Digital Marketing.

Digital Marketing = Digital + Marketing

Breaking down these activities into the two categories of digital and marketing sets up businesses to approach digital marketing activities without an over reliance on one or the other.

Let’s break it down with some examples.

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Digital vs Marketing

Take a company with fantastic marketing practices. Everything product and or service related is steeped into a cohesive marketing approach. Value for their said product/service is well communicated and their branding resonates well with the target market. This company has a finger on the pulse when it comes to the target market problem, and is always on top of it when it comes to how they provide the solution. In a nutshell, just all round great marketing. However they lack on the digital side.

This means their marketing is missing out on leveraging the power of online technologies and distributing their wonderful marketing at scale. They’re missing out on massive opportunities to find new audiences and educate them with their product and service solutions. A lack of utilising digital also means they’re missing out on cost-effective functions and abilities these digital marketing technologies present, such as utilising campaign objectives, tracking, remarketing, analytics, and so forth.

Great marketing not leveraged by digital technologies is a big opportunity loss. We all have that one friend who’s super talented at xyz but just doesn’t apply themselves. Well the two are similar.

Now let’s flip it, consider a company heavy into the digital category that’s lacking in the marketing department. Typically what happens is they can force impressions or eyeballs on digital platforms but a lack of marketing fundamentals runs the risk of little to no engagement. There’s no understanding of product market fit or of the market itself and therefore chances of engagement is low. Even if some engagement were to creep through, missing marketing fundamentals such as value giving can be missed and can keep conversion rates down.

If you’re gonna talk a big digital game, you gotta be able to walk the marketing game. To use a fishing analogy, you have to fish where the fish are and use the right bait. In this instance the digital component will get you to where the fish live, the marketing component will ensure you’re using the right bait.

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Using The Digital + Marketing Formula

When using the Knightlab digital marketing formula in the approach, it’s getting pretty apparent that balance is key. But also it’s not to over rely on one or the other.

When engaging with a specialist agency like an SEO agency for example, they’ll proceed with an SEO lens and fix any issue with it. Cue the saying ‘to a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail’. Over reliance on digital in the equation runs the risk of missing out on the bigger picture, which is marketing.

With good marketing at your disposal, you’re naturally going to want to understand your target audiences, build personas around them, mimic their pain points, and center content around how your products and services best fixes their issues. By fundamentally understanding this, your chances for engagement are increased and so is your SEO value.

Following this fundamental digital marketing formula also allows for businesses to reverse engineer where they are going wrong in their digital marketing pursuits. Doing well in impressions and distribution of content but not converting? Look into your marketing. Doing great with servicing existing clients and have no issues with converting prospects but aren’t growing at suitable rate? Look into leveraging digital channels to amplify your marketing.

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Conclusion

Knightlab is a big advocate of taking a step back and seeing it for what it is. With digital marketing, you need to excel in both digital and marketing as the combination of both will transcend either individual component. In conclusion the formula is a means to approach the digital marketing game differently and view it in a different lens.

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