Ever heard of digital marketing?

It’s the thing gurus are branding the sh*t that you must know by heart, it’s the thing that small business owners hold as some sort of floodgate holding back a stream of customers just waiting for the gates to open to your business.

It’s also one of the most wrongly understood forms of marketing.

Because it is still marketing.

And because it’s dead.

Why am I saying it’s dead then?

I was watching this video from Noah Kagan and realized most of these marketing strategies are digital, although he didn’t brand them as “Biggest Digital marketing Strategies for 2017”, just marketing strategies. Which is good.

Oh and by the way if you like tacos or great advice for starting and growing a business, I highly recommend the guy’s videos and blog at okdrok.com

This made me realize that digital marketing in itself isn’t dead, but as a concept living its own life without being thought of as a subset of marketing, it is dead.

A lot of those annoying gurus these days say you need to buy their online course or check out their webinar which for a limited time only is now priced at the super low price of 297$ and you too can master the magical art of digital marketing.

Those online courses and webinars themselves are products which are often surrounded by some pretty solid  marketing, but honestly, they were always planning on selling the courses for 297$ anyways.

As long as digital marketing is thought of this magical concept, separated from traditional marketing, there’s an opening for people to push product that promises amazing results with digital marketing – but only if you buy their online courses.

Many of the courses offer good insight, tips and tricks on how to use digital marketing to your advantage, which is great and I’m completely supportive of people who wish to learn digital marketing, I honestly am.

Just don’t think of it as a whole different ball game from traditional marketing, because it’s not magic, it’s marketing – pure and simple.

What am I saying then, exactly?

If you want to discuss digital marketing, forget the word digital when you introduce the subject.

Marketing is the top level concept which then divides into multiple different ways and strategies to do marketing – including digital marketing. Digital marketing then further divides into social media marketing, influencer marketing, content marketing and so forth.

Then, let’s take a look at the division of content marketing. Content marketing can be divided into blog posts, podcasts, videos, infographics and the list goes on. But companies have been making videos for ages, promoting their products with cool commercials.

Therefore you could say that content marketing shares common practices with more traditional forms of marketing, such as press releases and TV advertising. And here comes the problem.

If you see marketing and digital marketing as two separate concepts, you’re going to have a hard time managing your marketing efforts as efficiently and successfully as possible.

Sure, you could have a marketing team that consists of digital marketers and the “good old fashioned” marketers, but what’s the point? Modern  day marketers must know, and most of them do know, how to do all the varieties of marketing at their basic level.

Allowing yourself to accept the fact that marketing is the parent company and digital marketing a subsidiary you’ll make it a whole lot easier for yourself and your business.

Digital marketing might have been a totally different species and thus thought of and executed independently of traditional marketing 10-20 years ago, but these days digital marketing has become an everyday part of a marketer’s life and should be categorized logically as a form of marketing.