The Evolution of Digital Marketing Since its Origin

As far as the core definition is concerned, digital marketing refers to promoting a product online or through any form of electronic media. Considering that around 170 million people make use of social media across the entire world daily, experts of a digital marketing company have to keep their eye on the changes that are taking place in the online world. Anyone working in that particular industry is expected to be well-versed with the tiniest intricacies of digital marketing.

Digital content is not only a trend in the present time, but it has somewhat become a need for a majority of the population. This has happened more because of the phase we all went through in the last two years. The presence of COVID has forced us to lock ourselves in our homes, and at that time, digital content was all we could consume to pass our time. According to experts, the day is not far when marketing platforms will not be used, and everybody will prefer digital media. This is going to accentuate the already booming digital market further.

You must have already understood that digital is a far superior medium of promotion and advertising. Still, to provide you with a more straightforward, we need to elucidate the advantages.

Advantages of Digital Marketing

• Boost Customer Loyalty

When you are in the process of marketing a product digitally, it goes without saying that you and the experts of the SMO agency you hired are going to have a lot of conversions with your clients and customers, as that is a part of the process. Creating a sale with potential customers is more manageable than retaining them in the long run. Keeping customers is going to do two things. First of all, it will allow future sales and build brand loyalty. Secondly, the particular customer will most likely recommend your brand to other customers that he knows.

According to reports in the United States, around forty percent of the total percentage of sales comes from repeat customers. To successfully retain your existing customers, you need to make sure that you continue to remain in touch with them, and digital marketing will make it easier for you.

• Target Appropriate Audience

When you are doing digital marketing to sell a product, remember that all your efforts in marketing a particular product will go to waste if you are not attracting the right audience. Right audience refers to potential customers. If you do not plan and don't invest money in a top-notch SEO company, then you will simply be throwing away your hard-earned money. 

Digital marketers will have access to premium digital marketing tools, and they will also be aware of how to make use of them. They know how to track the activities of your buyers online, and the same will provide you with an idea about who your target audience is and what they want. Information about your buyers will help you create a curated audience base, which will boost your sales. It will also give you an idea about what kinds of newsletters you need to send them and what kind of discounts you need to offer. 

• You, Will, Have a Bang for Your Buck

There is a common misbelief that using digital marketing strategies will cost you a lot of money and the returns in that care are not good enough. This, however, is not true. Spending money on PPC services will not cost you as much as you think. Many small businesses do not attempt to hire a marketing agency because they feel they will be at a loss.

No matter how much you spend on an agency, the money you earn with the agency's help will make up for the same. Digital marketing, if done correctly, in most cases is going to yield a lot of ROI. Remember, digital marketing does not mean that you need to do everything by the book. There is no fixed process. Digital marketing can get affected by your online presence. Even if you do not have enough money to promote your business through search engine optimization or pay-per-click advertising, you can still reach your target audience and grow your brand. Yes, the progress may be slower, but it will progress whatsoever.

After talking in detail about the three most significant benefits of digital marketing, let's take a deeper look at the history of digital marketing and a bit at the direction towards which it is all going to go.

A Deep Dive into the History and Future of Digital Marketing

For the last thirty years, people worldwide have been trying their best to advertise products through a variety of mediums. The era in which the marketing process originated was done with billboards, and since the time digital marketing agencies opened, it was first done with the help of a telephone. This was followed by a phase when marketing was done through television, and finally, that process evolved into marketing as soon as personal computers became available.

What idea does that give you about the future of digital marketing? While marketers in different positions were asked about the future, they had to say that for the next two years, digital marketing will play a crucial role in how brands are promoted. Whereas, when a survey was done in the United States and the United Kingdom, most of the professionals have observed that even after thirty more years pass, the core process of digital marketing is still going to exist in its current form.

Marketing Changed With the Advent of the Internet

As the internet got introduced, everything changed, and marketing took a massive leap into a different spectrum altogether. Marketing and advertising took a whole new form. Even though the introduction of computers marked a radical evolution of marketing in the eighties, it was still a form of print marketing. Computers without the internet felt just like an upgraded version of a typewriter.

It all began in 1991 when Tim Berners-Lee launched the World Wide Web Project. That was the point that is edged on the pages of history, but even a more profound mark was created in 1994, when Netscape, the first-ever web browser, was introduced. People now had a convenient way to access the internet, and marketers had a more straightforward way to display advertisements to potential customers. In the next two years, the use of The Internet experienced a truly gigantic boost. The number of people using the internet soared from a mere sixteen million, all the way up to 70 million.

Developers and marketers around the world noticed this rise in users. This era was marked by the invention of popular search engines, which is still as significant as when they were introduced. Yahoo! was introduced in the year 1994, followed by the release of Google in the year 1997. Ecommerce stores like Amazon and eBay were released in 1994 and 1995, respectively. These websites were nothing short of a gold mine for business owners and digital marketers.

After this, the whole marketing process saw a giant leap, as emails also got added to the list of mediums of marketing, after TV, radio, print, and telephone. Additionally, people then could search for their desired products and their information from the comfort of their homes.

Initially, the marketers of different kinds used traditional marketing products methods, including excessive tagging, backlinks, and keyword stuffing. These methods were the only options at that time to generate high rankings. At that time, Razorfish was a company known among the digital marketing experts and people in business for its aggressive marketing. Today everybody who is in the digital marketing game is aware of the name of this company.

Integration of the Big Data

All the online activity that has taken place over the years and all the data accumulated throughout that period are currently stored digitally. In the year 2000, a study was performed in which it was observed that digital information is the most rapidly evolving text-based information. Since then, this kind of information started to be known as big data.

You must be wondering what the origin of this particular term? Well, the simple reason for it for the overall volume of the information. In the year 2000 itself, digital media have already started to replace its counterparts like optical CDs and DVDs, film and paper.

As this particular piece of technology got more developed, it gradually became a powerful resource for digital marketers worldwide.

Thanks to big data, it has become possible for marketers of various agencies to improve their performance by tracking the customers' behavior. Over time, it has become so helpful that new companies have emerged to specialize in using this technology. A few examples of such companies are Domo, Optimove, and Oracle.

Introduction of Smartphones

You are already aware that the term technology goes hand in hand with smartphones. We would not have been talking about marketing today if smartphones were released at one point in time. In the last decade, the growth and usage of smartphones have boomed Enormously. Smartphones have even dropped marketing agencies behind as far as promotion is concerned.

"The growth of mobile automation will lead the pack among next year's hottest trends. Mobile is a dominant force with its global expansion and pervasiveness. Marketers can no longer blanket their customers with information or communication. Mobile will become even more a part of the marketer's day-to-day focal point for the complete customer picture.

Brands must understand how to strategically connect with customers personally and encourage engagement based on customer behavior to transform them into long-lasting users. Mobile marketing automation will allow companies to collect and use data in a more actionable way and deliver personalized and timely messages to their customers." It was stated by the co-founder of Appboy, Mark Ghermezian.

Even today, if you consider a video marketing company in any part of the world and compare the viewers it receives through smartphones versus other forms of media, you are bound to notice that smartphones bring drastically higher traffic than any of their counterparts.

According to statistics, the use of mobile phones in the United States has gone up from 46 minutes per day in the year 2011, all the way to around 258 minutes in the year 2017. This is because technology is constantly evolving. In the present time, many smartphones are released each year, with different operating systems and brand new camera features and specifications, which instantly attract customers.

Demand for Transparency

This is perhaps one of the most radical changes noticed in marketing; according to the VP of marketing of Unilever, Marc Matheu, marketing in its early stages used to be giving rise to a myth and then selling it to customers. However, marketing is all about finding the truth and sharing it with the world.

Presently, customers have become more intelligent. They can find out any information about any product in a matter of seconds. Most customers are already done with around seventy percent of the research before thinking of sales. It is why small brands are having difficulty selling their products for increased transparency. People are now paying more attention to the quality of the product.

Evolution of Digital Marketing is Unstoppable

From the above article, you must have already inferred that digital marketing is growing every year in various ways, be it changes in the process or introducing new forms of media. If you are currently the owner of a small business, it is high time you give attention to your online presence. Technology does not slow down for anybody, so do not waste time and invest money on web design services for small businesses.

Digital marketing is always going to stay a constant and significant part of any promotional process. With the passage of even more time, digital marketing is gradually growing to be a superior and more effective form of marketing.