The Evolution Of Digital Marketing: A Brief Essay.

The Emergence of Digital Marketing

Discuss about the Digital Marketing Concept And Approach.

In the recent times, the marketing scenario has drastically changed. Plans are modified as per the real time insights of the customers, media, emerging technology and channels. Digital marketing is a very novel and innovative concept that is widely used nowadays (Urban, Gosline and Lee 2017). With the application of database driven online channel is used as the distribution strategy so that maximum customers can be reached in a significant, appropriate and lucrative manner. The digital marketing of any product or services can be well explained through the help of online advertisements, emails, wireless text messages, instant messages, blogging, video streams, broadcast and podcasting (Royle and Laing 2014).

Digital marketing approach was initially applied in the 1990’s. After the advent of the internet and Web 1.0 platform development has increased the number of users (Jackson and Ahuja 2016). The Web 1.0 platform allows its users to access all the relevant information that they need. On the other hand, it does not allow them to share this information on the web. The Marketers throughout the nation were unsure about the digital platform as the internet was not yet  popular.

During the year 1993, the foremost  clickable banner went live. Immediately after this approach, Hotwired purchased banner ads for its advertizing (Taiminen and Karjaluoto 2015). This was the starting of this transition to the era of digital marketing. Due to this gradual shift, in the year 1994, new technologies therefore entered the digital marketplace. In the same year, Yahoo was launched and in its very first year it reached close to 1 million hits. This led to complete changes in the digital marketing space and the organization also optimized their websites so that they can pull in for higher search engine rankings. In the following year, various tools and search engines were launched, such as Look Smart, Alexa and HotBot (Kamal 2016).

During the year 1998, Google was developed and became the game changer for digital marketing (Saini 2017). Microsoft also launched Yahoo and MSN search engine to the Yahoo web search. After two years, small search engines. Were completely wiped out or left behind by the major competitors in the business. In the year 2006, the digital market was its firs steep surge and the search engine traffic was supposed to be grown by 6.4 billion (Kannan 2017). In addition to this, Microsoft has put MSN on the backburners and furthermore launched Live Search so that they can compete with Yahoo and Google.

The Rise of Internet-Based Marketing

The trend for the people receiving the information and purchasing the products and services has shifted from traditional to on-line media. Nowadays, greater numbers of people are accessing the news required from specialized sites and all the mobile devices anytime and anywhere in the world (Confos and Davis 2016). The rapid advent of new technology helps to transforms and affects the distribution and manufacturing and marketing process of the goods and services. It also helped in optimizing the on-line channels so that it can act objectively (Haq 2017). While adopting these major changes the marketers in the recent times have several opportunities to reach to the different audiences through both on-line and mobile applications.

Digital marketing promotes the products and services through distribution channel that are digital in nature to reach the target consumers in very personnel, relevant and cost-effective manner (Leeflang et al. 2014). This strategy of marketing consists of various practices and techniques that are categorized within the internet marketing. Moreover, this extends beyond this as it also includes other channels that can easily be reached by the people that do not need the internet usage. The result of non-reliance on the internet usage leads to market the complete host of elements. This includes mobile phones, display and advertisement banners, SMS and MMS and digital outdoor (Levy and Gvili 2015). Airbnb , the famous airlines company is dependent primarily on its digital marketing strategies for reaching maximum customers. The organization relies on the user- generated videos and images on Facebook and Twitter to retains its customers. 

Recently, blogs are used to market any product or services to the potential audiences. Blogs are known to be very authentic and uncensored source of expressing about the product. This is a newer and integrative concept that displays the shifts of the customers from main sources to get the true or clear idea about the desired product or services (Urban, Gosline and Lee 2017). In addition to this, the better knowledge about the products on the internet, information can be provided to its targeting customers about the best ideas and banned services. Over the years, advertising and entertainment business are overlapping often and the idea has been budgeted for purchasing the mobile content lately. Mobile marketing helps in building up cooperative relationships.

In the year 2104, during the world cup Coca- Cola hosted a virtual reality event that provided the users opportunity to play along with their home teams. The experiences bought immense satisfaction to the fans thus enhanced the products brand values. Digital marketing has become a powerful network for advertizing in a convenient manner. Campaigns are organized for promoting the products and services through internet, which is very cost-effective. Over 170 million of people use the social media on a continuous basis (Haq 2017). In the present time, every working professionals are expected to be familiar with the tenets of the digital marketing. Digital marketing helps in the promotion of products and services to their target customers and businesses. People are also applying digital content on a continuous basis. In the modern times, to survive in the ever increasing competitive market, it is important for the marketers to prepare for the future (Parekh, Kapupara and Shah 2016). The mobile video advertising techniques used by Facebook is affordable and allows the customers to reach their target audiences. Facebook is experimenting with the latest engaging formats through the full-screens advertisements.

The Growing Importance of Mobile Marketing

Traditional marketing will in a no time completely disappear as it would be taken over by the digital marketing. Digital marketing are more affordable unlike traditional marketing and also reaches the maximum number of audiences in a very short time –period. Latest technological innovations have resulted in significant attrition of the consumers for traditional marketing departments and agencies (Stone 2014). People have been encouraged to update themselves with tablets, laptops and smart phones.  The invention and adoption of these innovative methods is increasing at a rapid pace. The mission of the marketers in the current times is to be the hub of digital marketing, where the brand can easily deliver all the contents. To fulfill the mission of the marketers, it is important for the people to power as well as enable immersive online marketing.

Various changes have been taking place, since the past few years and digital transformation is an evolution. The marketers are now more prepared for the wearable technology such as connected devices and smart watches. This helps the marketers to engage themselves with all the targeted customers across its digital channels (Royle and Laing 2014). The opportunity is leveraging the new technology to help in providing an effective and better customer experience. Marketers should be therefore prepared to innovate the products as per the demands of the target market. Digital marketing has enable to maintain a perfect balance between the marketing mix and advertizing (Levy and Gvili 2015). It becomes easier to communicate with the customers and also provides an ample opportunity for the marketers so that they can easily engaged with the desired customers.

The enhance hybrid cloud technology has also helped the marketers to simply store the data in the cloud without any forward moving strategy. The cloud offering has its own various benefits. This includes the advanced processing power, ability to grow rapidly and handle growth, the stability. Through the latest hybrid cloud technology, the customers obtain better customer experiences, which are done in a very streamlined manner (Tiago, M.T.P.M.B. and Veríssimo 2014). The vision of moving forward and customer intelligence is all about the enabling the marketers to leverage the analytics so that they can easily empower every engaged touch point with their customers. Lyft, the rideshare company created its own market and brand through digital marketing. Te cost effective techniques makes transportation easier and the business is currently reaching great heights.

The Power of Digital Marketing in Today's Business Landscape

Brands have already started to embraced personalization, big data and customer experiences. In the near future the marketing technique of serving the right content to the right person at the perfect time will no longer will prove to be exceptional. Online or digital marketing will evolve into great experiences. With the help of audio, tactile and visual content, the immersive marketing will therefore blend the digital and physical life. Since the past 20 years, the social media, mobile devices and web has democratic zed the publishing tools that were once monopolized by all the publishing houses, ad agencies and film studios (Confos and Davis 2016). The tools for the marketing have considerably changed to great extent but the images, videos and contents has still remained focus of marketing. Zappos, well-known leader in the shoes e-commerce business establishes gold standards for its digital customer care services. The company heavily invest in is social media campaign as well as the online marketing (Taiminen and Karjaluoto 2015).

Within a short span of time, marketing has been transferred to a great extent, explosion of audio story telling through audio books and podcasts can be easily obtained within the market. Short videos now dominate the digital marketing and all the present social networks. Due to the advent of Google cardboard, VR headset and Oculus Rift, the commercialization of the virtual reality can be observed. People nowadays want a better combination of both their personal life and digital experience. Online marketing is not only limited to the screens but it serves the people beyond measures. Personalization of the technology has also made to be in the creative driver’s seat. People can easily design or choose their snap chats filters. Moreover, people can speak to Alexa or Siri present in the mobile apps. Domino’s has also been widely known for its marketing strategy. Its recent ‘ Dominos Anywhere’ has made the company more popular as the customers can order their foods via Twitter.  In short people are enjoying the era of digitalization and would gain more popularity in the long-run. Therefore, it can be said that digital marketing is the vision of the future and has hence, proved to be a catalyst in the competitive business environment.

References:

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Haq, N., 2017. Study on Strategies of Digital Marketing Vis a Vis Govt. Initiative. International Journal of Engineering and Management Research (IJEMR), 7(3), pp.264-268.

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Kamal, Y., 2016. Study of Trend in Digital Marketing and Evolution of Digital Marketing Strategies. International Journal of Engineering Science, 5300.

Kannan, P.K., 2017. Digital marketing: A framework, review and research agenda. International Journal of Research in Marketing, 34(1), pp.22-45.

Leeflang, P.S., Verhoef, P.C., Dahlström, P. and Freundt, T., 2014. Challenges and solutions for marketing in a digital era. European management journal, 32(1), pp.1-12.

Levy, S. and Gvili, Y., 2015. How Credible is E-Word of Mouth Across Digital-Marketing Channels?: The Roles of Social Capital, Information Richness, and Interactivity. Journal of Advertising Research, 55(1), pp.95-109.

Parekh, D., Kapupara, P. and Shah, K., 2016. Digital Pharmaceutical Marketing: A Review. Research Journal of Pharmacy and Technology, 9(1), p.108.

Royle, J. and Laing, A., 2014. The digital marketing skills gap: Developing a Digital Marketer Model for the communication industries. International Journal of Information Management, 34(2), pp.65-73.

Saini, R., 2017. Role of Social Media Channels in Promoting Digital Marketing-An Exploratory Study. Asian Journal of Research in Marketing, 6(4), pp.16-23.

Stone, M., 2014. The new (and ever-evolving) direct and digital marketing ecosystem. Journal of Direct, Data and Digital Marketing Practice, 16(2), pp.71-74.

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Urban, G.L., Gosline, R. and Lee, J., 2017. The Power of Consumer Stories in Digital Marketing. MIT Sloan Management Review, 58(4).