Digital marketing was born with the growth of Internet technologies around Y2K. This, in many ways, is still a new and developing way to connect technology and marketing. People are still learning what this means. When someone says that (s)he does digital marketing, it is not always clear what this means, as it represents different things to different people. My mom often tries to understand if my job is to be on Facebook all day. My friends think that I have the coolest job where people pay me to tweet stuff and like other people messages.
I build awesome buyer journeys.
This is what I do, and I embrace every pain point that the person who is making a decision is having. I identify all challenges they face, and afterward I map these complex emotions to the personal decision process (Why we do what we do: The dynamics of personal autonomy.(1995)). In the digital world, each interaction counts as one, and services/products like the Apple Watch or Google Home go further because they tie to the direct and continuous activity of the user. Each action counts as one input. Today’s digital marketers use their calculator as often as financial people do. They score data and improve scoring models to get to clear predictions models. What happens if a marketer knows what message to send based on the number of heartbeats per minute? What if the breakfast restaurant, based on your Pinterest pins, knew that after your morning run, you always come in front of their place craving a piece of bread?
Gartner published a map of digital marketing, and it is precisely the complex way I view the subject. It is so much broader than the Internet and grew to absorb traditional marketing as well. Digital marketing becomes a way to get people to a website, an app, and other technologies that allow users to interact with their favorite brand that has a clear understanding of their wants and needs. All of this thanks to a very complex network of connections between apps and software.
When you ask me what I am doing, this map goes through my mind, and I love what I do:
