Digital Marketing- The Past, Present, and Future

Digital Marketing- The Past, Present, and Future.

 All you need to know about the Evolution of Digital Marketing and what the future has in store for this fast-rising industry.

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Have you ever wondered how digital marketing has come to take the forefront in the world of advertisement? 

How did this industry morph into what it has become today?

Then you have come to the right place, This article would provide an answer to your questions.

Digital marketing, like every other industry, continues to evolve with the conception of new technologies. It is expedient to keep up with innovations to stay in touch with your audience, but also to understand the history of the field to fully appreciate modern-day techniques and strategies.

Before Digital Marketing

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Traditionally, The goal of any form of Advertising is to create awareness of your brand and products among the general public.

  Before the emergence of digital marketing practices, We had what was known as ‘Traditional Marketing’,  Businesses depended solely on offline strategies. These included avenues such as billboards, TV and radio ads, newspapers, Post Mail, phone calls, postcards, catalogs, brochures or other print materials, and so on. 

Traditional marketing is not just known to be one of the oldest forms of marketing, but also one of the most investigated. Marketers incline toward this medium because it has been proven to be reliable. Everyone encounters some sort of traditional marketing in their everyday lives, whether it’s getting your post-mail or your daily newspaper.

Traditional marketing plays a key role in reaching local audiences. Ads can be kept for a long period if they’re physical. Plus, there’s an audience that’s easier to reach through traditional marketing than online marketing.

The Advent of Digital Marketing.

Digital Marketing has been around for a long time. As a matter of fact, it's been around for more than 20 years now.

 It began to take shape in the 1990s when two things happened: search engines were invented, and people started using them. The first use of digital marketing was to advertise products and services on search engines like Google.

 One of the first digital marketing campaigns was launched by IBM in 1989 and was known as the "Think Blue" campaign. This campaign was designed to promote their mainframe computers and encourage people to buy them. The company also used it as an advertising platform to introduce new products and services that would help people work more efficiently.

The first major website for digital marketing was launched in 1994 by Amazon when they created their own website where customers could order books online directly from their computers without going through any other retailers like Borders or Barnes & Noble who had brick-and-mortar stores where customers could go after ordering books from Amazon's website.

These forms of advertisement were the ones that laid the bedrock for digital marketing as we have it now Because slowly it began to gain ground until the late 2000s.

The Current Shape of Digital Marketing

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A few things are certain in the world of digital marketing. First and foremost, it's growing at an incredible rate. Second, it's an industry that has become one of the most important parts of business today—and for good reason: digital marketing offers more opportunities than ever before for companies to reach their customers with relevant content and ads.

Keep reading if you're interested in learning more about what this means for you or your organization!

Nowadays, digital marketing is more accessible to all businesses and can be done on an individual level with minimal financial investment or effort—and even free! With platforms like Google AdWords and Facebook Ads, you can reach your target audience in ways that were impossible before.

Also, digital marketing has expanded into many other areas such as email marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), content marketing (blogging), social media management, etc.

Recently, digital marketing has helped businesses make more money in the past decade than ever before. But it will continue to change over time as technology continues to progress. New advertising techniques will emerge and old ones will become obsolete.

Digital Marketing is The Future.

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The future of digital marketing will be all about optimizing the web to its full potential. With new trends emerging, These trends are being driven by companies who want to make money, and we’re happy to help them use the tools available to make sure their efforts are successful.

Today, with increased connectivity and established digital infrastructure, changes are happening much faster. The traditional digital marketing landscape of paid media, SEO, content marketing, Social Media, community management, and more, is experiencing dramatic developments and changes as innovations in technology develop development.

Below we outline innovations happening within the traditional digital marketing track, and explore why digital marketers need to evolve for a high-tech digital marketing evolution.

Paid Media- 

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Paid search, often known as search engine marketing, is a marketing strategy that involves purchasing adverts on search engine

Programmatic advertising is a means to drive traffic to websites. Marketers can choose to pay either when their advertisement is displayed or when it is clicked on (pay per click, or PPC). A specialized team typically chooses which platforms to invest in based on where they think the advertisement will gain the most momentum.

It is a form of paid media that uses artificial intelligence to automatically buy advertising space and uses data to identify which audience the adverts should target, which is likely to be distributed alongside this traditional method of paid media.

In 2020,  About 86 percent of all digital display advertisements were delivered autonomously, with programmatic advertising expenditure reaching about  $46 billion. With decreased consumer acquisition expenses, this move toward AI automation offered a paid media strategy that was more smooth, effective, and precise.

SEO( Voice Optimization)

The popularity of voice search, in which a user speaks directly to their device instead of typing a request or manually executing a job, is growing thanks to the launch of Siri, Alexa, Cortana, and Google Assistant. Marketing professionals working with SEO should think about improving their websites to recognize voice search as consumers adapt and start using voice assistants more frequently.

“Owners of voice-activated speakers report that their gadgets are frequently utilized as a part of their daily routine in a staggering 72% of cases”.

This amount is sure to grow as the technology becomes more widely used, and the concept of a constant, hands-free helper will start to seem natural.

Google's speech recognition digital assistant has a 95 percent accuracy rate as of 2017, and as the technology advances, so will its user base.

 In 2020, voice searches were calculated to make up 50% of all queries, hence its growth rate was rapid.  Long-tail keywords and organic material using conversational language scored highly in voice search.

Automation Of Influencer Marketing

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Today, influencer marketing is the equivalent of word-of-mouth advertising. Hearing positive information or comments about a product or experience from an influencer frequently has more weight and validity than when it comes from the brand itself since consumers generally trust people more than brands.

To identify the most suitable people to promote their brand and message, brands in this business encountered some issues in prior years. These challenges are presently being addressed with AI by largely automating the influencer marketing process. AI can quickly scan through millions of photos to target specific influencers based on predetermined criteria. This is known as an influencer-brand affinity analysis. After an influencer posts or shares content, AI can examine the data of that post or share.

In terms of the influencer-brand connection, AI may be taught using the data that is already available to anticipate what incentive will best motivate an influencer to post and then go on to implement this incentive at the appropriate time.  These developments make it possible for influencer marketing to be faster, more data-driven, and less resource-intensive for improved consumer and business relationship experiences.

Conclusion.

Following the Trend of Digital Marketing over time and how it has been progressively advancing the Process of Marketing.

From the Breakout in the 1990s to the emergence of social media in the early 2000s. Digital Marketing is an ecosystem that is growing at a fast pace.

With Statistics showing the massive positive effect digital marketing has on small businesses, it is indeed a field that is here to stay and is not going anywhere anytime soon.

We should look forward to interesting innovations in the coming years.