Digital Schmigital - Digital marketing is all the rage. But is it an end-all to be all? Not really.

Should every business be looking at digital marketing? For 90% of businesses, the likely answer is yes.

But is digital marketing enough? For the same 90% of businesses, the likely answer iis not really,

Digital marketing has become an essential element of nearly every organizations' marketing strategy. Websites, online advertising, email marketing, and social media are increasingly important means fo reaching business and consumer cohorts So having a digital strategy in place is really important. But don't confuse digital marketing with a digital strategy, or a digital marketing strategy with an overall strategic marketing plan. A plan that represents an organization's roadmap for achieving growth and revenue objectives.

A digital strategy and marketing plan need to sit nicely under a fully developed strategic marketing plan which in the vast majority of case will include both digital and traditional components. And while it's true that digital encompasses a wide range and ever increasing range of channels and tools to effectively deliver targeted messages to key constituent cohorts. In some cases, traditional channels such as PR, direct mail, live events, billboard and transit advertising may be just as, or even more, effective reaching the right audience with the right message at the right time.

Highly effective, high-quality marketing has always been about understanding your audience and knowing how to reach them. The idea of the “target persona” is nothing new. It's just a new take on an old tool - the "target profile." Strategic marketing has been identifying target markets and building target customer profiles for decades, what’s different today is the factors that go into those profiles, expanding and ever more personalized channels for reaching our target customers have increased the complexity, and if properly used the effectiveness of these tools.

There’s no question that the data that we are capturing today via online interaction and behavior is incredibly valuable to building marketing programs that produce big ROI numbers. But it may very well for some products and services for some cohorts this data is better used when applied to traditional marketing and communication channels.

At the end of the day it’s all about reaching constituents and communicating with them in the way that they are most receptive to. Then delivering products and services that meet or exceed their expectations in the timeframe they anticipate.

This is not rocket science. This is good old fashion strategic marketing.

Whether you are working on expanding your customer base, managing your customer acquisition costs, efficiently reaching your LTV, digital marketing represents a range of amazing tools in a wondrous toolbox. It should be applied strategically and always operate as a component of, and complement to your good old-fashioned strategic roadmap.