I recently attended a Digital Conference in Bury St Edmunds organised by @inDigitalEA. The presenters and new world digital evangelists provided plenty of useful insight and ideas in terms of digital and its use in marketing.

Digital marketing is the delivery of marketing material and content via websites, social media, apps and email. Digital has opened a host of new marketing opportunities for businesses and individuals that would have been difficult to imagine in a previous era of traditional marketing.

Perhaps as an electronics engineering graduate I am a little uneasy with the word digital, which perhaps more traditionally refers to binary i.e. ‘ones’ and ‘zeros’, binary, bits, 10011101 etc., being used to described all that is new and exciting in marketing these days. Social, mobile, online, content, video, yes, it’s definitely new media marketing but is it really digital? The proliferation of electronic devices used to receive the marketing message undoubtedly employs digital technology: smartphones, tablets, laptops, smart TV.

For many businesses it is becoming increasingly important to consider the amount of business activity that has and is moving online. This activity may include the search for information, the management of business operations, the buying of services or the marketing of products. A business that considers and takes action to engage in conversations with its digital audience can only aid and enhance its brand image and reputation.

The online OED definition of digital shows the current scope and breadth of use for the word digital.

For the electronics engineer in me, digital will always be binary and 0’s and 1’s, but I’m happy to embrace the many other definitions of digital even when it precedes marketing.