 You are reading this newsletter because you are a professional in a certain market space. As a marketing professional you probably care about areas such as email marketing, search marketing, mobile marketing, social media, Web analytics, and Web site optimization among others. We can all agree that these are some of the fastest growing, highest ROI, most measurable and rapidly changing elements of the marketing industry today.
What we can’t seem to agree on is what to call it.
Forrester uses the term “interactive marketing” most often to define the industry as a whole. But it also frequently uses “digital marketing” and “online marketing”. Gartner tends to use “online”. IDC uses “digital”. “On demand marketing” and “engagement marketing” are terms that are used by various other players as well.
Then there is the question of how to describe the fact that these marketing channels continue to converge, interact, and synergize with each other. This behavior is captured by the terms “integrated” and “multi-channel”, and is also possibly covered by the “interactive” term previously mentioned.
So what we are left with is a list of different terms to describe the same market space, including:
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Online
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Digital
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Interactive
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On demand
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Engagement
And some modifiers such as:
Combine all these terms together and you can create market definitions such as “Integrated online marketing” or “Multi-channel digital marketing”, and so on. Most certainly there are even more ways to describe our space that I haven’t thought of above.
So how do you distinguish between online marketing, digital marketing, interactive marketing and the like? Do you define each one separately, or are they interchangeable terms that all mean the same thing to you? What term do you like the best, and why?
Help clear the confusion - take a moment to comment below with your arguments about what term best defines this industry in which you are marketing with tools such as search, email, social, mobile, landing pages, Web analytics and the like.
Let the debating begin!
Regards,
Blaine Mathieu
CMO, Lyris, Inc.
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About the Author
Blaine Mathieu is chief marketing officer for Lyris. Blaine is responsible for Lyris' brand and product strategy, including driving marketing initiatives for the company's Lyris HQ™ integrated-marketing suite and its Lyris ListManager™ email-marketing software.
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