Digital Business Models
Digital marketing strategy begins with the business model a firm actually runs on. Digital business models fall into three broad families: traditional pipeline business models, platform business models, and network business models — each with variants within it. Which family a firm belongs to shapes how its digital strategy should link to overall business strategy: a linear pipeline business uses digital differently than a platform that exists to connect two or more customer groups.
Key takeaways
- Digital business models fall into three broad families: pipeline, platform, and network (each with internal variants).
- Digital strategy must be tied to which business model the firm runs, not applied generically.
The Digital-Age Customer Journey
The customer journey — how a customer moves toward a decision — has been reshaped by digital. Customers are exposed to far more communication than before, and they no longer form judgments only from what a company says: friends, colleagues, relatives, and the groups they belong to (college networks, workplace networks) now shape a decision alongside brand messaging. Firms use customer journey frameworks to map this path and identify where they can influence it.
Key takeaways
- In the digital age, the customer journey is shaped as much by peer and social influence as by direct brand communication.
- Mapping the journey lets a firm identify where and how to intervene in the customer's decision process.
Digital Outbound Marketing: The Six M's and POEM
Digital outbound marketing covers the communication a company pushes out through digital tools and channels. The course structures this using the Six M's framework for communication planning, and analyzes media choice through POEM — Paid, Owned, and Earned media. Paid media itself spans several formats: search ads, shopping ads, display ads, and native ads (advertorial-style placements, similar to what appears in newspapers). Because campaigns cost real money, outbound marketing also requires metrics that can demonstrate what was achieved.
Key takeaways
- Digital outbound marketing communication is analyzed through POEM: paid, owned, and earned media.
- Paid media includes search ads, shopping ads, display ads, and native ads/advertorials.
- Every paid campaign needs an effectiveness metric, since it involves spend the organization expects justified.
Digital Inbound Marketing and the Shift Toward AI Search
Digital inbound marketing — a term with no equivalent in traditional marketing communication — is the practice of creating content and using it to attract customers to a company's own properties (website, social media handles) rather than pushing messages outward. It relies heavily on search engine optimization (SEO).
A significant current shift: as generative AI grows, search behavior is moving from conventional search engines toward AI platforms. Inbound and content strategy must adapt to this — understanding why and how customers will find and visit a company's properties when they begin their search on a generative-AI platform rather than a traditional search engine.
Key takeaways
- Digital inbound marketing attracts customers through content rather than pushing messages outward; its core lever is SEO.
- Generative AI is shifting where search begins, from search engines toward AI platforms, forcing inbound and content strategy to adapt to this new discovery path.
Social Media Strategy and Brand Communities
Social media began for many companies as just another communication channel, but it now plays a larger strategic role, captured under social strategy — using social media deliberately to create business impact rather than just broadcasting. Its applications include:
- Leveraging social platforms for innovation — engaging customers for insight and new ideas.
- Amplifying positive user-generated content (reviews, videos, images, comments about the brand) using social listening tools.
- Measuring ROI on social media campaigns, since spend requires justification.
- Influencer marketing — using influencers to endorse brands and communicate positive brand messages.
- Building brand communities: a set of customers, typically heavy users, that a brand deliberately brings together and engages with. Harley-Davidson's owner group is a successful example. Brand communities are used by both B2B and B2C brands.
Key takeaways
- Social strategy treats social media as a business-impact lever, not just a broadcast channel.
- Core applications: innovation/insight-gathering, UGC amplification via listening tools, ROI measurement, influencer marketing, and brand communities.
- Brand communities (e.g., Harley-Davidson's owner group) bring heavy users together around the brand and appear in both B2B and B2C contexts.
Customer Insights, Co-Creation, and Market Development
Digital gives firms direct access to the customers and users engaging with their platforms, brand, website, and social handles. These interactions generate customer insights — about the marketplace, competitors, and emerging trends — that feed directly into product and service development.
Customers play defined roles in this process:
- Lead users: heavy users of a product or service who are willing to engage directly with the company.
- Customer panels: more structured, contemporary groups (e.g., developer panels in the software industry) used for co-creation.
Digital also sharpens a distinction in growth strategy:
- Product development: creating a new product or service.
- Market development: taking an existing product to new markets, identified using the online behavior of users not currently served by the company.
Key takeaways
- Digital platforms give firms direct, first-party access to customer and user behavior, which becomes a source of market and competitive insight.
- Lead users and customer panels (e.g., developer communities) are the main mechanisms for co-creation.
- Market development (existing product, new market, found via online behavior data) is distinct from product development (new product/service) — both can be pursued through digital.
B2B Digital Marketing and Marketing Analytics
Digital marketing is commonly associated with consumer (B2C) markets because of the sheer number of individual buyers, but it applies equally to business markets (B2B) — reaching corporates, small and medium enterprises, institutions, and governments. In B2B, digital marketing serves two goals: acquiring new business customers, and retaining and growing revenue from existing ones, the latter organized under account-based marketing (ABM).
Digital platforms also generate data automatically with every interaction: clickstream data, market-basket data from purchases on the company's e-commerce properties, and communication metrics such as impressions, clicks, and conversions. Analyzing this data to assess the return on digital marketing spend is called performance-based marketing.
Key takeaways
- B2B digital marketing targets corporates, SMEs, institutions, and governments, and serves both acquisition and retention/growth (via account-based marketing).
- Every digital interaction automatically generates data: clickstream data, market-basket data, impressions, clicks, and conversions.
- Performance-based marketing uses this data to assess the actual return on digital marketing spend.