BY Staff Writer 3 MINUTE READ

Entrepreneurs, top executives, company directors and the like have been interviewed about what makes them productive. What makes them tick? Yes, it is vital to know what the driving force behind these key individuals in a business is, as without them giving the organisation the impetus it needs the company would not go very far. But what keeps the organisation in motion once the leaders have fired off the starting gun? We would like to propose that it’s marketing. Here’s why.

Marketing is the skill of the future

Marketing gurus Philip Kotler and Kevin Lane Keller – in the twelfth edition of their seminal marketing work entitled Marketing Management – cite the definition of marketing that the American Marketing Association (AMA) proposes:

“Marketing is an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating, and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stake holders.”

With the infiltration of digital into our daily lives, no marketing strategy is complete without a digital marketing element as the way our customers, and potential customers, buy is through digital channels. For example, according to e-commerce platform Shopify, by 2021 global e-commerce sales are set to reach US$4.5 trillion (which is – approximately – R638 trillion).

People are making big purchases online. Instead of spending money in bricks-and-mortar shops they favour e-commerce. This means that if you want to make a success of your business, you need to be showing people, online, what you offer.

A change in mindset

As the digital space is constantly evolving so is digital marketing. Digital marketing is not just about setting up a Facebook Business Page, posting a set of content and hoping for the best. Yes, a component of digital marketing is indeed social media, however, it’s so much more than that.

Digital marketing is about so much more than merely the marketing channels that we use to communicate with our customers. It has transformed the way we need to think about marketing. The ever mercurial digital environment has enabled us to gain insights into customers’ behaviour. This means that we can use these insights to communicate with them more effectively.

The toolkit of a digital marketer

Globally, the market is saturated. Jobs in ‘traditional’, well-established companies are at a premium. There are countless qualified candidates vying for an ever-decreasing set of jobs. This, unfortunately, leaves the people who did not get the job out of work.

Entrepreneurial concerns – which create new jobs – are the way to go in terms of how we can get ourselves out of this quagmire. South Africa, in particular, is taking the entrepreneurial mandate seriously. According to Global Entrepreneurship Monitor’s (GEM) 2017/2018 Report, entrepreneurial activity in South Africa is at 11.0%. This is 4.1% higher compared to 2016’s score of 6.9%.

With the proliferation of smart devices into South African society, consumers are spending their time on social media, amongst other platforms. This means that to reach their target markets businesses need to be marketing and communicating with their digitally inclined audience.

To be truly successful in digital marketing, you need to know what you’re doing. As we said previously, digital marketing may involve the fundamental principles of traditional marketing however the execution thereof is totally different. Yes, experimenting, via trial and error, on digital platforms is one way to go however this is time consuming and – if you do not hit on the magic formula straight away – could be very expensive.

This makes upskilling yourself – or a person/team in your company – in digital marketing the best option. Online digital marketing courses – a great variety are available from the Digital School of Marketing – are, in our opinion, the way to go as you can learn on your own time and the provide you with the best quality education that money can buy.

The future is digital. There’s no getting away from it. You need to be ready.

To find out more about the Digital School of Marketing visit their website: https://digitalschoolofmarketing.co.za/, call them: 0861 428 710 or e-mail: [email protected] and join the conversations:  https://www.instagram.com/digital_school_of_marketing/, https://www.facebook.com/digitalschoolofmarketing/ and https://twitter.com/DigitalSchoolo1