As you can tell from the title, I don’t have a clue about SEO optimization yet. Not creative, nor keyword inducing but is exactly what I want to write about. What do you call the marketing part NarWalter is looking to understand.
The NarWalter project focus is on learning modern techniques for content, digital, and social media marketing, along with coding. If we are totally honest, we lean heavily towards marketing at the moment. The coding is simple and straight forward, we just code right? Well at least try and learn. The goal isn’t to become the best at coding but to have just enough knowledge to understand the conversations and do tweaks ourselves.
What about Online presence and marketing part? There doesn’t seem to be a good answer. At this moment in time, digital marketing is the catch all phrase. As mentioned in the last post, I am very intrigued by Mitch Joel’s utilitarian marketing concepts and how they effect all business. However, it goes too far into a specific subject and falls under the general umbrella of being digital, or does it?
The most simplistic definition I can find for Digital marketing is:
The promotion of products, services, or brands via one or more formats of electronic devices and media
Simple enough, but this doesn’t seem to capture the changes digital or electronic media has effected upon all other areas of business. For any business, digital is a single aspect of what is happening. One of the working theories at NarWalter is that digital has changed all the other areas also. Not just the electronic device part. Most importantly, how customers digest and react to outreach. We aren’t sure traditional methods work so well anymore and many aspects (even 3 years ago) aren’t effective.
For example, billboards. Next time you are in the passenger seat of the car, take a look around at the other cars and riders. How many are looking at their mobile device? Is anyone really looking out the window much anymore? Pretty scary but how effective is this media? More importantly, Can you remember, right now, the last billboard you saw? Okay, you say that is just one old example.
Okay, how about QR codes for digital to digital changes? Ignoring the arguments that they never took off in the US, (below is a huge reason why) When was the last time you took the time to actually scan one? SnapChat doesn’t count as it may be the only saving grace in the US. Before SnapChat, if you scanned a QR code, it always brought you to some stupid (a la 80’s) push marketing video. It was worthlessly deployed. People didn’t want to see crap on there devices. Unlike the TV, they had/have a choice and are not passive participants anymore.
People want something of value for their time. This hasn’t changed. This isn’t the new thing we keep pretending it is for marketing. It is just a forgotten concept as, in the USA at least, companies were able to force feed the audience what they wanted for years if not generations. Either way, the QR code died for a bit because it was just a digital portal to push marketing. Advertising and marketing professionals, for the most, part are changing in a reactionary way not a proactive way. The basic definitions of marketing seems to be lost. The entire point of marketing isn’t to make a sale, it is to provide value so that the sale is a natural reaction to the process. You help people solve problems not create them.
Digital Marketing, perhaps we just stick with this for the time being. It doesn’t cover all the changes that it has brought to the business world. And we are looking for a better answer here.