Want to make sense of digital marketing strategy? The London Tube Map can help

The London Underground Tube Map has always been more than a means of getting from A to B. It’s been an icon of design since London Underground employee Harry Beck first realised, In 1931, that the actual physical location of different stations actually mattered far less than the relationship between them. The tube map that Beck drew isn’t a map of London – it’s a map of the integrations within an ecosystem. And that’s why marketers, in particular, are so interested in it. The Digital Marketing Map from Hallam Internet – our Infographic of the Week for this week – shows how mashing up mass transit and digital marketing strategy can produce some very intriguing results.

The London Underground map has been a powerful inspiration for artists ever since Simon Patterson produced his famous lithograph, The Great Bear. This image, which currently hangs in the Tate in London, uses each line to represent groups of famous people and hence throws up thought-provoking connections between famous philosophers, explorers, footballers, film stars and saints, to name just a few. The Digital Marketing Map applies the same principle to the many different disciplines involved in digital marketing.

The result isn’t just a handy reminder of everything you need to be focusing on: from Social Media to Paid Search, SEO, Email Marketing and Emerging Technologies. It also challenges you to think about how these different aspects of digital marketing strategy relate to one another – the fact that Keyword Research links your Content Marketing, your Inbound Links and your Website, for example.

You won’t necessarily agree with all of the relationships that the Digital Marketing Map suggests. I found myself asking why Paid Social and Content Marketing are so far apart – and why Keyword Research and SEO never quite meet. But none of that detracts from the value of this Infographic in encouraging you to debate these connections in the first place. It’s clever, it’s extremely well thought-through, and in bringing order where there could easily be chaos, it’s exactly what digital marketing strategy should be about. Nice one, Hallam Internet!

This infographic was created and first published by Hallam Internet.