It may sound trivial, but knowing the difference can help you shape your overall marketing strategy.

It can also help you analyze your current strategy by categorizing in which type of marketing your efforts fall. Are you making sustainable long-term efforts that will yield results consistently or are you simply playing by ear with each of your outreach efforts?

The Umbrella Term: Digital Marketing

Digital marketing refers to using digital channels, devices, and platforms (regardless of whether they are online or not) to build or promote your marketing message.

In other words, with digital marketing you don’t limit yourself to using the internet, and in this way digital marketing can serve as an ‘umbrella’ term because it encompasses many marketing techniques.

For example, let’s say you want to run a mobile campaign where you send SMS texts to your customers offering upcoming promotions from your business. Again, technology was used to create and send the message, but the was no need for a live Internet connection for your users to receive it.

I guess you could say that as long as technology keeps evolving so will digital marketing. But it is safe to say that anything that has a digital foundation can be considered digital marketing. And as of now you have plenty of strategies to choose from: E-mail Marketing, E-books, Games, Content Marketing, Video Marketing, Mobile Marketing (SMS text campaigns), TV ads, Digital OOH ...etc...

Get the Action Live with Online Marketing

Online marketing also commonly referred to as ‘internet’ marketing is a subset of digital marketing. The main characteristic of online marketing is that it requires a live internet connection to work, so, for instance, if you run a PPC campaign for your business you are doing a form of online marketing.

Another example is if you run pop-ups on your website to advertise and offer or service. Same goes for display advertising of any format whether it be banner ads or text ads.

Like digital marketing, online marketing evolves with technology. However, I would argue that online marketing is so fast paced that sometimes it can be difficult to keep up. Also, for a newcomer it can seem more overwhelming because of the terminology and skillset that some efforts require.