We live in a world that circles around the internet. So, it is natural for shops and other businesses along with their marketing strategies to turn towards digitalization. Many can say it to be an up-gradation or revolution in the fields of commerce and marketing. Due to this upgradation, they are now known as eCommerce and Digital Marketing. These two actually walk hand in hand during their application. In spite of that, they are fundamentally different and are actually two very extensive concepts of their own. That is the reason why people often misinterpret the two.
Of course, it’s not blasphemy to confuse the two. But when you have an online business to run, it’s important to know the dissimilarities. Before understanding the difference between the two, let us make out what they are individual.
What is an eCommerce
The process of buying and selling through electronic devices via websites and other platforms is referred to as E-commerce. It can be said as digitalization and advancement in the field of commerce.
If we go back a decade or two, when people needed some groceries or fruits or vegetables or clothing or even any other equipment for general purposes, they had no other choice but to go to a store. Sometimes, while at the store there could be items that were sold out. Sometimes the bags were heavy. Often during shopping people change their opinion on an object that they brought home from the market, especially on the occasions of clothes and appliances shopping.
E-commerce brought a second choice to our lives for these hectic works. They have made it easy with the internet to transfer and handle money across e-comm. websites in order to make purchases. Nowadays, if we need anything from toothbrushes to air conditioners, we can just get it delivered to our locations. From buying to selling to renting there are many different types of e-commerce websites. Returning a product for any reason is not at all tedious.
What is Digital Marketing
In the same way, eCommerce brought commerce into the world of electronic media, digital marketing has brought marketing into the context of the internet. To put it simply Digital marketing is marketing for items and services through online-based promotions. It helps to gain good remarks and faith from your consumers. Users normally check reviews and watch videos to know more about the product they are about to purchase.
Digital marketers focus on putting their market channels to good use and try to make it easier for E-commerce enterprises to make purchases.
Difference between eCommerce vs Digital Marketing
General Difference
If we ought to explain the difference between Digital Marketing and E-Commerce in laymen’s terms, we can say that digital marketing tries to highlight the focus on your brand and its products while e-commerce is considered when you actually make a sale.
For example, if you have a website that sells sports kits, the promotions and other methods you apply to draw people’s attention for the purpose of selling the products will be referred to as digital marketing. When through these marketing means a user purchases any equipment from your website, then its ordering, shipping, and payment procedures will be referred to as e-commerce.
Beneficial Differences
Differentiating these two by their aspect of benefits, we get
Benefits of E-commerce
Some benefits offered by E-commerce are:
- Ecommerce websites, in general, remain open throughout the year. Its purchases are also done at any point in time in the day.
- It is guaranteed to cost less. Maintaining the website requires cheaper prices. This ensures the low range of the products.
- Since we can check many different websites through our phones with minimal effort, it becomes quite easy for drawing price, review, and quality comparisons against different websites.
- It also saves up quite an amount of time.
- It is easier and more convenient to find and order the necessary or required items.
Benefits of Digital Marketing
Some benefits of digital marketing are:
- Digital Marketing can help make do a lot of things by spending way less money if your idea is worthy to hold people’s attention.
- Personalization helps suggest appropriate items that a particular person is in need of. This has been made easy by social media platforms.
Difference in categories
Categories of E-commerce
Different types of E-commerce modes are as follows:
- Selling an item directly to the customer without any mediator or middle man, is known as Retail.
- Selling an item that is made and delivered to the customer by a third party is called Dropshipping.
- A large number of purchases are made for cloud products, software tools, e-books, templates, brochures, etc. can be bought online. These are referred to as digital products.
- Marketing, coaching, and other courses or writing, etc. can also be bought digitally. These are summarized as e-commerce servicing.
Categories of Digital Marketing
Different types of Digital Marketing options are as follows:
- Search Engine Optimization is the procedure of updating the quality and quantity of a website so that it is easy to find amid the mass of its counterparts.
- Pay per click is a model that takes payment to show the contents of your webpage or website in the search engine.
- Social Media Marketing is the way of marketing by using the platforms of social media.
- Email marketing like it sounds is sending commercial emails to a bunch of people in hopes to advance a website’s number of dwellers. It is kind of the oldest form of marketing.
- Affiliate Marketing is meant to receive payments from other e-comm. enterprises to promote their products on your website.
Reason for misinterpreting the two
This confusion regarding digital marketing and e-commerce being the same is somehow related to the fact of how they are used. The same tool can be used both as a digital marketing tool and a tool for e-commerce. But their process of consideration is where the difference lies. Suppose, you are using Facebook or YouTube to promote and advertise the products you have. Then we can consider these platforms as a tool for digital marketing.
If on the other hand, you use these platforms to make a sale directly to your customer, their platforms will then be considered an e-commerce tool.
Conclusion
Ecommerce and Digital Marketing are kind of complementary procedures that is they are related. Ecommerce is considered the point where digital marketing has fulfilled its purpose. To know both their similarities and dissimilarities is equally important when running a website that sells products. If you know the distinctions between them you will know which aspect you lack skills. This will help you to strategize and emphasize your resources in a proper manner to overhaul any complications that become apparent.