I don't believe there is a field suffering from ambiguity and obscurity like marketing in general, and digital marketing in particular, in Egypt. I have always heard since I was young from various professions cursing time and the new generation of workers and employees in their fields. They describe the situation as a profession that has become obsolete. I believe dozens of professions have suffered from this significant deficiency in efficiency and the number of new workers. However, I truly believe that marketing is the most affected profession due to the absence of concepts and their reduction.

Firstly, I fundamentally object to the term "digital marketing." If I have to use it to align with market trends, clients, and companies, and even if I think it is a very funny term, marketing is marketing even before humans invented the term itself. Humans have been using marketing activities since their existence on Earth, with the same skills and regardless of the academic definitions of marketing. I see marketing as all the experiences, activities, and arts that a marketer uses to convey an idea to someone and convince them to adopt this idea by inviting them to do something and being loyal to that idea.

These activities are things humans have been practicing since their inception, from the first commercial activities based on bartering to primitive activities based on control and advancement in their social environment. The idea that someone markets may be a product, a service, a person, or even an abstract idea, but in all cases, it's an idea.
The weaker marketers are those who market products solely based on their material aspects, while the more skilled ones market the idea behind the product or what the product represents. As an example, one of the most famous and powerful companies globally, Coca-Cola, is a prime marketing example. Have you ever seen a Coca-Cola ad describing the product itself? Have you seen an ad saying that Coca-Cola is a carbonated or sweet-tasting beverage? Of course not. The company's marketers always go beyond the product itself. They promote ideas like "As long as there is thirst, there is Coca-Cola," "Coca-Cola is family gathering," or "Coca-Cola, the family drink in Ramadan." In these messages, they always try to connect the brand to the emotions and ideas of the recipient, so that this beverage takes on a social, cultural, emotional, and even physiological dimension when associated with quenching thirst.

Therefore, marketing fundamentally relies on an idea, regardless of what that idea is. Marketing ideas is not limited to commercial activities; all human activities depend on marketing. Even political, religious, and social activities require marketing sciences to the same extent as commercial activities. How did Hitler convince the German people to sacrifice millions for his ideas and dreams if not through marketing those ideas with professional marketers, the most famous being the Minister of Propaganda, Goebbels? How did the prophets convince their followers except through marketing activities to promote those ideas?
So, what is the relationship between all the above examples and the claim of the existence of digital marketing or not? The main idea is that marketing uses the same activities, but with different tools and technologies in each era. As an example, let's consider advertising. We learned that an advertisement consists of a sender, a receiver, a message, a communication channel, and feedback. We learned this in traditional marketing books that reached us before the digital revolution. Did the components of advertising change after the digital revolution?
Certainly not, whether before or after, there is no difference in the mechanism or the science of marketing. Whether a marketer is a young person who writes advertising content and uses one of the social media platforms, let it be Facebook, or adjusts the settings to reach his targeted audience, or an old marketer who rides the streets on a horse holding a small drum to attract people's attention and shout loudly about the arrival of a merchandise caravan, the components of advertising remain the same. There is always a sender, a receiver, a communication channel, a message, and feedback. In comparison to bygone eras, all a user of this technology can do is speak into a microphone in the radio age or click on the street crier's drum without having any other skills that make him capable of performing his tasks.
So, my advice to everyone is to learn marketing before learning the tools of its era because tools and technology change every day, but the fundamentals of marketing science will always remain constant in every era.

Also, Marketing is subject to a reductionist approach, and although this reduction is not exclusive to the digital age, it has been almost accompanying marketing throughout the ages. Whenever all the sciences and skills of marketing are reduced to the science of advertising alone, marketing has always suffered from this reduction, but it has increased significantly in the digital age and the era of social media. To the extent that all the sciences of advertising are reduced to sponsored Facebook ads, as if marketing in this era is confined only to a person creating a sponsored ad. Of course, the more capable they are of creating ads at low prices, the more brilliant and skilled they are considered.
This has, of course, been the cause of the failure of many activities and marketers alike. It amounts to nothing more than a scam with its main characters being a scammer and a greedy one (or often a naive person who may buy snake oil or green threshold in another time). The prevailing idea that drives many people crazy, including myself, is when I encounter dozens everywhere, and when they learn about my profession, the never-ending question follows, "Do you know how to create a sponsored ad?" And, of course, the knowledge they mean is the superhuman ability to manipulate Facebook algorithms and reach millions of customers for ridiculously low amounts, regardless of the characteristics of the target audience, its geographical location, purchasing power, ideological preferences, or the nature of the message and content. Of course, they are amazed when asked about the marketing plan, advertising plan, content plan, or the characteristics of the target audience, market studies, and competitors.
Naturally, they think I complicate things or try to stop the moving ships or even that I am a pretender. In conclusion, marketing is marketing in every era and place, with differences in the characteristics of its components and the technology used. Learning tools does not replace learning marketing.

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