Then and Now: The Evolution of Digital Marketing

How digital marketing has changed from its humble beginnings in the early ’90s to the present day...

Early 1990s. Before the advent of the first search engine, Archie, in 1991, the Internet was a rather static realm where users could only access and read information. Social sharing did not exist at the time and seemed improbable. In 1993, the world clicked on the first web banner and digital marketing became the next big thing.

[Source: Simplilearn]

Soon, new search engines came about, such as InfoSeek, AltaVista, Lycos and WebCrawler, making significant strides in bespoke search queries. Yahoo! was launched, e-commerce became a major trend, and companies started establishing their online presence through websites. An important breakthrough of this period was the creation of the first social media website, SixDegrees.com, in 1997, which ushered us into a new digital age that transformed social interactions at its very core.

1998 to 2007. The golden years of the digital marketing revolution, however, did not occur until the birth of Google in 1998. With the development of new technologies such as Google AdWords in 2000, and content targeting services (AdSense) in 2003, digital marketing took a quantum leap. Search engine optimisation (SEO) became a major buzzword. The social scene exploded with sites such as MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest and Tumblr, among others, and by the end of 2005, more than one billion people were connected to the Internet. The influence that this seismic shift had on brands and businesses across the globe was immense. 

[Source: Innov8tive]

Savvy marketers soon learned how to utilise these sophisticated tools to improve their ranking on search engine results, as well as create powerful digital marketing campaigns based on their audiences’ search patterns. Website enhancement became key – it was no longer about creating a web presence, having a user-friendly interface with exciting and sharable content became the need of the hour. Brands also realised the inspirational potential of social media – chatting and messaging were not its only functions, more and more people were increasingly spreading news and views, sharing product/service usage experiences, shopping, and even influencing others through its platforms.

2007-2015. The ubiquitous popularity of smartphones, tablets, phablets and even wearable tech, after 2007, around the world saw a growth in the number of people using two or more devices to stay connected.

[Source: HubSpot]

As a result, video marketing and mobile marketing took off in a big way. YouTube (2005), WhatsApp (2010), SnapChat (2011), Video on Instagram (2013) and Vine (2013), for example, made marketing quicker, increasingly real time, and location based. Cross-screen, cross-format marketing were all the rage, along with mobile commerce (thanks to ApplePay, Venmo etc.). ‘Mobile first’ superseded ‘mobile friendly’; in other words, mobile become a priority.

The year 2015 marked an important milestone, in that brands and businesses experimented with less aggressive and subtler marketing methods. They attempted to humanise their branding communications in order to make consumers want to stay on their websites/apps, so as to improve conversation rates and leads. Content marketing was used as a means to stand out: for example, companies that blogged generated more leads than those that didn’t.

[Source: HubSpot]

Current trends. While the good ol’ basics of SEO, Google AdWords, mobile optimisation, website enhancement, and content marketing are all essential cogs in the wheels of digital marketing, this year, the focus has shifted from simply generating traffic and leads, to creating meaningful digital experiences through marketing automation, social relationship marketing, hyper-personalisation, ephemeral marketing and virtual reality.

 [Source: ACT-ON and Gleanster 2015]

Today’s digital marketing calls for real-time personal engagement with users/consumers through integrated data-driven marketing. People who use websites and social media platforms, for instance, leave behind a whole gamut of data. Accessing this information can allow brands and businesses to micro target their audience by segmenting them to smaller, more homogenous groups. The usage of videos will also rise – quality videos equal quality content – as visual storytelling has gone wild.

More importantly, digital marketing is not long and generic anymore: can you communicate your product/service in less than 15 seconds? Can you make the buying process an engaging experience for every user on your website? Can you customise your messaging to tell 360-degree stories?

If you, as the head of your company, are struggling to communicate your brand/company’s voice on the Internet, we, at Arrow Digital Marketing, have put together an interesting workshop for you, Digital Marketing For Today’s CEO, in Melbourne, Australia.

The digital landscape never sleeps; it is bombarded with new technologies and tools every day that many go obsolete even before we have utilised them fully. The time has come, now, to earn the attention of a customer, not just attract.

Anup Batra is a digital industry leader, futurist and keynote speaker based in Melbourne, Australia. He is also the Group Chairman of Arrow Digital Marketing. Follow him on Twitter at @BatraAnup. 

 References

1. ACT-ON and Gleanster, Rethinking the Role of Marketing, 2015
2. Dave Chaffey, ‘Marketing trends for 2016 – Will we be in a post-digital era?’, Smart Insights, 13 May 2016, retrieved from smartinsights.com
3. Google Think Insights, ‘Redefining advertising: How 2013 transformed digital marketing’, retrieved from google.com/think
4. Hubspot, The Future of Marketing, 2016
5. Innov8tive Design and Development, Evolution of Marketing, 6 April 2015, retrieved from innov8tivedd.com
6. Meaghan Moraes, ‘7 Game-changing Marketing Trends to Tackle in 2016’, HubSpot, 25 September 2015, retrieved from www.hubspot.com
7. Simplilearn, History and Evolution of Digital Marketing, retrieved from simplilearn.com