In a world where hundreds of millions of people regularly use social media, every working professional should be familiar with at least the basic principles of digital marketing. Simply put, digital marketing is the promotion of products over the Internet or any form of electronic media. According to the Digital Marketing Institute, “digital marketing is the use of digital channels to promote or market products and services to targeted consumers and businesses.”
People consume digital content every day. Very soon, traditional marketing platforms will disappear and the digital market will take over completely. Digital marketing has a number of advantages. Unlike traditional marketing, digital marketing is more accessible. You can reach a larger audience in a shorter period of time. Technological advances have led to a significant reduction in the customer base of traditional marketing agencies and departments. People have moved to tablets, phones and computers, which have become the areas where digital marketers have been most successful.
What is Digital Marketing?
Any digital channels used by a business or company to market or promote products and services to consumers are called digital marketing.Various websites, mobile devices, social media, search engines and similar channels are used in digital marketing.
How successful is digital marketing?
With the advent of digitalization, it has been noticed that the crowd of shoppers in the markets has gradually decreased, and now you see more people shopping online for themselves and their families.So there are many benefits in promoting your business online as you want to reach the right audience and your audience is online.
Benefits of Digital Marketing
You can reach a larger audience in a shorter period of time. Technological advances have led to a significant reduction in the customer base of traditional marketing agencies and departments. People have moved to tablets, phones and computers, which have become the areas where digital marketers have been most successful.
The History of Digital Marketing
The term «digital marketing» was first used in the 1990s. The digital age began with the advent of the Internet and the development of the Web 1.0 platform. The Web 1.0 platform allowed users to find the information they needed, but did not allow them to share this information over the Internet. Until then, marketers around the world were still uncertain about the digital platform. They were not sure whether their strategies would work, because the Internet was not yet widespread.
In 1993, the first clickable banner was launched, after which HotWired acquired several banner ads for its advertising, which marked the beginning of the transition to the digital era of marketing. With this gradual shift in 1994, new technologies entered the digital market.
Yahoo, also known as «Jerry’s Guide to the World Wide Web» after its founder Jerry Young, received about 1 million visits in its first year.This caused a massive shift in digital marketing as companies optimized their websites to get higher search engine rankings. In 1996, several more search engines and tools were launched, such as HotBot, LookSmart and Alexa.
In 1998, Google was born. Microsoft launched the search engine MSN and Yahoo brought the search engine Yahoo to market. Two years later, the internet bubble burst and all the smaller search engines were either left behind or destroyed, leaving more room for the giants in the business. The digital marketing world experienced its first dramatic spike in 2006, when search engine traffic reportedly rose to about 6.4 billion in one month. Unwilling to fall behind, Microsoft sidelined MSN and launched Live Search to compete with Google and Yahoo.
Then came Web 2.0, where people became more active participants rather than passive users. Web 2.0 allowed users to interact with other users and businesses. Labels such as the “superinformation highway” were applied to the Internet. As a result, the flow of information, including channels used by digital marketers, increased dramatically, and by 2004, Internet advertising and marketing in the United States alone had generated about $2.9 billion.
Social networking sites soon began to emerge. MySpace was the first social networking site, soon followed by Facebook. Many companies realized that all these new sites that were emerging were opening new doors of opportunity to promote their products and brands. It opened up new avenues for business and signaled the beginning of a new chapter in business. With new resources, they needed new approaches to promote their brands and capitalize on the social media platform.
The cookie became another major milestone in the digital marketing industry. Advertisers began looking for other ways to capitalize on the young technology. One such method was tracking common browsing habits and usage patterns of frequent Internet users to tailor promotions and marketing materials to their tastes. The first cookie was designed to record user habits. The use of cookies has changed over the years, and today cookies are coded to offer marketers different ways to collect literal user data.
Products sold digitally are now available to shoppers at any time. Statistics compiled by Marketingtechblog for 2014 show that social media posting is the most popular online activity in the U.S. The average American spends 37 minutes a day on social media. 99% of digital marketers use Facebook for marketing, 97% use Twitter, 69% use Pinterest and 59% use Instagram. 70% of B2C marketers have attracted customers via Facebook. 67% of Twitter users are much more likely to make a purchase from brands they follow on Twitter. 83.8% of luxury brands are represented on Pinterest.The three most popular social media sites used by marketers are LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.
