What is the difference between digital marketing and internet marketing, what is the latest trend in the industry, and how do big companies allocate their digital marketing budgets?
Digital Marketing
Digital marketing is a broad term that describes a set of marketing processes that encapsulates all available digital channels to promote a product or service or build a digital brand.
Digital marketing has come to replace traditional marketing and the transition from paper and newspaper ads to Facebook and PPC campaigns.
The channels that make up digital marketing include Website marketing, Social media platforms, Banner placement, email marketing, mobile marketing, SEO, pay per click campaigns, Web TV, SMS, billboards and anything else with a digital foundation.
Resources to Learn More about Digital Marketing
- Digital marketing courses – The best online courses for beginners to digital marketing.
- How to learn digital marketing – a step-by-step guide to help you learn digital marketing from home.
- Digital Marketing Course Bundle – an online training course that covers everything you need to know about digital marketing.
Internet Marketing
Internet marketing is a subset of digital marketing. It is, in fact, the most important component since the majority of digital marketing activities falls within the boundaries of Internet marketing.
We will see below how digital marketing budgets are spent and their relationship with Internet marketing.
The major channels of Internet Marketing are:
Web site – Either a personal website or a corporate website or even a personal blog hosted on a shared platform (like WordPress or Tumblr).
For many campaigns, a website is the starting point and the destination i.e. you run a digital marketing campaign to promote a website (starting point) with the purpose of getting more visitors (destination).
Search Marketing (SEM) – Search Engine Marketing is the basis of Internet Marketing and consists of two important activities, SEO and PSA. There is a lot of confusion about these terms that’s why I wrote separate posts explaining the difference:
In a nutshell:
SEO has to do with optimization techniques for the purpose of achieving higher rankings in Search engines. It has two major components: On Page SEO and Off Page SEO.
Paid Search Advertising (PSA) is about getting visitors by placing ads on search engines. The most popular approach is the Pay Per Click (PPC) and the most well-known tool is Google Ads which lets you advertise on the Google and partner network.
So, search marketing has to do with promotion methods related to Search Engines.
Social Media Marketing – Social media marketing is another component of Internet marketing and one that is gaining a lot of attention in the last couple of years.
Millions of users spend a considerable amount of their on-line time on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, LinkedIn, and other SM platforms. This fact alerted digital marketers to take SM seriously and make it a part of the digital marketing campaigns.
Content Marketing – In the past when we talked about SEO we essentially meant link building but this trend has changed since 2011 and content marketing has become the new SEO.
This simply means that good content has become again the foundation of SEO and it is through content that you will build a better Internet presence and not through cheap link building techniques.
Email Marketing – Email is not dead but on the contrary, it is one of the most important tools in every digital marketing campaign. Despite the influence of social media, email is still the most efficient way to convert visitors or readers into customers.
In terms of marketing, email marketing is the process of gathering email addresses from people interested in your products or services for the purpose of sending them newsletters or offers.
Mobile Marketing – More and more users use their mobile phones to search the web, engage on social media, or find products or services to buy.
In fact, it is estimated that 60% of the traffic coming to a website is from mobile (this holds true for my websites as well, check your Google analytics reports and you will be surprised).
Mobile marketing is about creating content or ads that is viewable and suitable for a mobile device. For example, websites should have mobile-friendly versions and an advertisement shown on a mobile device may take into account the location of the device and show the nearest shops that sell a particular product.
Banner Advertising – You can find banners in almost all web properties i.e. websites, mobile websites, mobile apps, search engines, newsletters, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc.
Digital marketers try to promote their products or services through different types of banners (static, text, animated, images, videos, clever banners) in different platforms.
SMS Marketing – SMS is not dead. Despite the rise of online marketing channels, a lot of companies combine internet marketing plus SMS to reach more targeted customers. In fact, many CRM/email marketing platforms offer SMS campaigns as part of their automated workflows.
What’s the latest trend? Where does the money go?
Perhaps the best way to understand what is the latest trend in the digital marketing industry is to find out how big companies allocate their marketing budgets.
This is exactly what Gartner did in a recent report.
The findings of this report are very interesting and they show without a doubt that the majority of digital marketing budgets are spent on Internet marketing components.
In particular, the most important findings are:
- Marketing budgets represent 12% of total company revenues and this is expected to grow even further
- Digital marketing represents 14% of overall marketing spend
- 50% of digital marketing activities are outsourced (if you are thinking to outsource, make sure that you do it correctly without spending a fortune)
- The most important digital marketing activities are: Web presence (website), digital commerce and digital advertising
- Top digital marketing investments will be made on eCommerce, social media marketing, content creation, and mobile marketing.
Conclusion
It is important to understand that Internet Marketing is a subset of digital marketing and not something different. When we talk about digital marketing, in essence, we mean Internet marketing plus SMS, WebTV, and digital advertising.
It is clear that companies are starting to appreciate the importance of social media as a marketing tool and there is also a clear turn to content and mobile marketing.
So this means after you master internet marketing, there’s still more to learn? Thanks for explaining this thoroughly.
Ah.!! Good and very detailed article on digital marketing vs internet marketing need a more information about it and thank you for this nice and informative article
“Internet marketing is a subset of digital marketing.” Just exactly the concise explanation that I need. I was in the state of determining the exact correlation of these two in regard to my field of work. Now after reading this, I think I’ve switched from the state of clearing things out to determining my solid role as a marketer in general.
Wow, I had no idea that marketing budgets for companies is usually around 10%; that’s pretty large! If that’s the case, then it is really obvious to me that it is a really important part of advertising. However, if you had to choose just one area of marketing to invest your money in, it would probably be a good idea to work on your website. Since that will be visited by potential clients, you need to be sure that the site looks as polished as possible!
Hi,
You mentioned Webtv as a part of digital marketing. What is the definition of WebTV? is it smart TV?
If this is Smart TV with apps, then doesn’t that come in internet marketing itself?
Would love to get some insight.
In my experience, many business owners don’t realize that internet marketing is a subset of digital marketing. This is important to the success of any digital/internet marketing plan! Fantastic content in your article.
I just started a internet marketing company and I came across your article while looking into current trends; as they are constantly changing and evolving.
I appreciate you for taking the time out to clarify any misconceptions between digital and internet marketing
Internet marketing and its strategies are not an easy topic to discuss. The jargon alone confuses business owners and deters them from perusing any digital marketing strategy. Thanks, again.
Thank you Earl, All the best with your Agency.
Alex
Hey Alex,
Thanks for sharing this bunch of knowledge that covers almost all the important elements of Digital Marketing. Recently I am trying to collect information on Progressive Web App SEO (PWA SEO). Can you just help me get this?
Hi
Check out this guide from Google: https://developers.google.com/web/progressive-web-apps/
Thanks
Alex
Hi Alex,
I am interested in digital marketing and your text helped me a lot. Still, I am new in this area. Can you please explain me the place of viral marketing in this “digital marketing story”?
Thanks,
Olja
Do you think SEO will continue to grow and be as popular over the next 5 – 10 years? Google has certainly changed a lot (and fairly quickly).
Hi Steven
I believe it will be even more popular as more and more people are using search engines to find answers/solutions to their problems. It is true that Google is making a lot of changes but the benefits of achieving high rankings are a lot and every important for all kinds of businesses.
Thanks
I like the way you are writing. Your Article covers many area of marketing which includes seo, ppc, email marketing and many other prospects.
Hi thanks for the great read, where do you see SEO and digital marketing going in the future now days it seems like there every one I meet is doing digital marketing in one way or another
Hey man, thanks for breaking down the differences in digital marketing and internet marketing. I have some clients that are unclear about this and think it’d be wise for me to just forward your article to them! It’s clear enough for the average Joe, but informative enough for those involved heavily in the field. Thanks for the article.
“50% of digital marketing activities are outsourced”
Wow! This sounds like a lot of opportunity for smaller marketing consultants to do work for large companies.
I’m working toward offering my clients an inbound marketing approach as opposed to direct marketing.
The number one problem my clients come to me with is lead generation. I’ve used direct marketing but the results don’t hold over time.
I believe a well planned inbound marketing plan that’s put in place, monitored, and tweaked is a better approach to sustainable lead generation.
As stated in this article, both direct and inbound are effective. So it’s a matter of understanding client’s needs and expectations and offering the solution that gives them the best ROI.
Hi thanks for giving such a great break down of the difference between the two various aspects of online marketing. Got a lot of takeaways to use next time I have to explain this to a potential customer. Cheers
Thanks for this wonderful masterpiece , Saved me a less talking time with a client. Some people confuse digital marketing and social media marketing
I have no idea where you find the time to do as much article writing as you do but thanks for it. Internet vs Digital Marketing is an important distinction to make.
A wonderful post for all beginners who want to learn the differences between digital & online marketing. Thanks for the info Alex 🙂 Appreciate your efforts. Also, the SEO Guide is a great resource for everyone!
Thanks for explaining between internet marketing and digital marketing. I like it.
Thanks, Alex for this great content, I have been in Digital Marketing from 4 years and I know how important is Content marketing in 2019 where cheap link building techniques don’t work
You have cleared my doubts on digital marketing very efficiently. Thank you, Alex.
Hello Alex, As you said, Digital marketing is one big ocean which has many phases, While internet marking is one of the subset in digital marketing that any one can profit from. Thank you for this awsome article. Will be looking forward to read your new posts.
Hey, I just wanna thank you for this wonderful article. It really helped in understanding the difference between internet and digital marketing. Keep posting these kinds of articles.