Name: Shayanta Paul (popularly known as Shay these days)
Job Title: [Enter unnecessary respect] Manager, Digital Marketing
Years of experience: 5.5 years (well, almost!)
Most of you know how I landed a job in Digital Marketing. It was by chance and you can read more about it here. Can I please talk to you today about what I really do?
Let’s start with this graph:
Are you wondering what the hell is this graph saying?
- This is graph is pulled from Google Trends and basically shows how many times the term “digital marketing” has been searched over the past 5 years worldwide.
- What you are able to clearly see is how amazing the trend has been – onwards and upwards!
Let’s look at some stats now, shall we?
- In 2015, the worldwide spend on Marketing (Paid Media) was about $513.7 Billion.
- In 2016, the projection is a 5.7% increase to $542.55 Billion.
- The highest chunk of advertising dollars come from US followed by Asia Pacific
- Out of $513.7 Billion, only $148.66 Billion was spent online (via Digital mediums)!
- Ouch! That’s like less than 30% of overall advertising spent.
Digital Marketing is the buzz word these days. Even though online marketing has existed for a while (Google just turned 18!), the last few years were game changing. From websites being the primary avenue of connecting businesses to consumers, we have now moved to a world full of apps. What has changed the entire ecosystem is the introduction of social sharing. We are now way more connected than we ever were – Facebook, Instagram, Gmail, Whatsapp, LinkedIn, Gchat and many many more mediums are changing the way we interact with the internet.
I remember when I was a child, internet was a thing of the wise or rich (or both). We used Google for our school projects and created yahoo email ID just to enter the chat rooms and be able to chat with random strangers. Today, my 5 year old niece is able to use YouTube and watch her favourite cartoon. This is the extent of digitalisation. Even with the advancements and increasing Tech economy the truth is only 40% of the world has an internet connection today, the remaining 60% DON’T! Can you imagine a world without Facebook or Whatsapp or even a feature phone?
Coming back to what I do for a living, sometimes people come to me and ask if my job is to post the offline content in online mediums. It is natural to think that way specially when
- online video ad formats do the same job as ads on TV;
- static banners ads do the same work as offline hoardings;
- posts on social media do the same job as traditional pamphlets;
- remarketing ads do the same job as what telecallers do when you express interest in a product;
- content ads do the same job as what magazines do when they recommend you similar articles in the same genre
Yes, this is what I do! The only difference is that I am able to track every single view. I can tell you what time my ad was seen and what is the age/gender of the person who viewed it. I can also tell you exactly how many people clicked on my ad and bought a product unlike the TV commercials where the advertising company just hopes that the target audience is able is see the ad and later go to the store and buy.
So, do I think offline marketing is silly? Of course not! 60% of the population still do not have access to internet, they are the ones that watch TV or read the newspaper. Reaching them through mediums that actually reach them is the trick. As the worlds internet population increases, more advertising dollars will move online.
Good times ahead 😀
Marketeer by Chance 