Digital Marketing Has Different Meaning to Different Sectors

The primal nature of connectedness ensures it crosses all boundaries

Digital Capitalizes on Connectedness

When you are running your own small business, understanding demographics, mindsets, finances, and culture all affect how you can reach people. Digital marketing budgets are continually increasing, but in terms of reaching specific sectors digital won't be pinned down. Digital marketing embodies the whole shift from outbound interruptive marketing (TV, print ads, radio spots, billboards etc.) to inbound, customer-focused marketing (online ads, blogs, wikis, social media, websites, e-marketing, video etc.). Knowing how your customer views connectedness can make or break your ability to draw people in to find out more about your offering. If people engage, they will probably buy later - and it's all coming from the fact that connectedness is natural, it's primal. Marketers can use it, but connectedness came before marketing.

Embracing the Coolness of a Millennial Mindset Has a Lot of Appeal

In my view there is no real digital divide when trying to promote your products and services, just infinite new ways of understanding and reaching your customer. Millennials invented and own digital, but boomers may remain a large target market that they'll continue to mine data on. A 2013 report recently released by Pew Internet and American Life Project, Demographics of Internet Users, wrote that internet use among boomers has increased, and 77% of 50-65 year olds are online. For baby boomers who spent their teen years in the early 70s dancing en masse in public parks with bongo drums in the background, embracing the coolness of the millennial mindset has a lot of appeal. The inherent connectivity within the digital world feels familiar, like a lingering unconventionality.

Getting Up to Speed by Learning Digital 

Since I run my own part-time business and came to marketing at a late age, I decided to get up to speed on the field "for real" by upgrading my education. This Digital Marketing Management program is one of the best resources available, and these instructors are fantastic, to say the least: Michelle Pellettier, Tyler Calder, Jean George and Dan Mariani.

Digital Media Defies Generational Boundaries

Learning Digital as a Tool of Communication

A new dawn of digital media would happen when everyone can use it expressively

Digital media, like a language, is a tool of communication and expression. What you say within it is still central to its value, and substance is still all. Although 'the medium is the message' to the extent that technology influences how messages are perceived, you still need to start with the message - and content is never dominated by one particular generation.

Is Learning Digital an Advancement or Conformity? 

Can digital marketing only be properly understood and managed by millennials because they been raised in a digital world? Just reading titles like this make we wonder whether learning digital is an advancement or has just become another way of being a conformist:

• "The Disconnect Between Aging Management and the Younger Workforce"
• "New Digital Influencers: The Coming Youthquake"
• "Meet Generation C: The Connected Customers"

Managing Digital and Social Not a Competition Between Generations

Being connected and getting involved in social media doesn't have to be defined by age. Some studies indicate that it seems to be defined more by income and education than by generation. In a study published in the May issue of Poetics, a Journal of Empirical Research on Culture, the Media and the Arts, sociologist Jen Schradie found that "college graduates are 1.5 times more likely to be bloggers than are high school graduates; twice as likely to post photos and videos and three times more likely to post an online rating or comments." The digital divide isn't about millennials and boomers; it's more about the haves and have-nots.