Digital Marketing is Truly Here to Stay
By Tracey Presume
- The Revolutionary History of Digital Marketing
- The Increasing Popularity of Digital Marketing
- Digital Marketing Today
The best way to reach someone is through technology. What took days and months to contact someone from across the country now takes less than a minute. Technology has made it more possible to get huge amounts of information at your fingertips. As a result, many businesses rely on technology as a means to promote their services. This is called digital marketing. And because of the increased use of technology, digital marketing is not going anywhere. But now let’s identify how digital marketing started in the first place.
The Revolutionary History of Digital Marketing
Where did digital marketing come from? Well, the term itself was first used in 1990. This is when the internet started to become more popular and more accessible to society. According to an article by Avantika Monappa, a digital marketing knowledge manager for Simplilearn, “marketers worldwide were still unsure of the digital platform. They were not sure if their strategies would work since the internet had not yet seen widespread deployment.” During this time, the first search engine called Archie was created. In the next few years, that’s when digital marketing started to become more popular.
In 1993, the first clickable web-ad banner went live, and several companies started using it to buy ads to promote their company. Then in 1994, Yahoo was launched and became the first e-commerce transaction over Netscape, which is, according to the Digital Marketing Institute, “the first successful mass-market browser” and was also released in the same year.
Then we start to see many digital innovations throughout the next several years. By 1996, smaller search engines such as Alexa, LookSmart, and HotBot had launched. Then, by 1997, we started to see the launch of the first social media site called SixDegrees.com
Then Google came into the picture by 1998 along with the launch of MSN by Microsoft. While we see new digital media innovations, we also see current companies taking new approaches in their business such as Yahoo, who launched Yahoo! web search.
Entering the new century, we see the Internet blooming with more information than ever, but we also see smaller search engines failing and some digital companies shutting down such as SixDegrees.
The Increasing Popularity of Digital Marketing
But you may be asking, when did digital marketing become more popular? Well, in 2001, we saw our first mobile marketing campaign called Universal Music. Then we saw new ways for people to connect such as LinkedIn which launched in 2002 and WordPress and Myspace being launched in 2003.
Then by 2004, Google went public and launched Gmail while Facebook also came into the picture of the digital world. All these platforms started to be used by companies to market their products or services. As a result, “internet advertising and marketing in the US alone brought in around $2.9 billion” according to Avantika Monappa. By 2005, we saw the birth of Youtube and in 2006 we saw Twitter being born.
Moreover, we also see current businesses becoming more prosperous such as Amazon’s e-commerce sales crossing $10 billion. And we also see split testing in marketing, which allows a company with an online presence to track and analyze different versions of their webpages to see which one is more effective.
Then, we also see new technologies such as iPhone launching and new services such as Tumblr and the web-streaming service called Hulu being found. In 2008, we saw the existence of Spotify and Groupon while in 2009 we saw Google launching more services and the birth of WhatsApp.
By 2010-2012, Google launched more things and social media budgets went up to 64%. From 2013 to today, we see many more digital innovations such as Facebook Messenger, Snapchat and businesses taking over other businesses along with the rise of predictive analytics, content marketing, and wearable tech. To this day, many companies have a variety of ways to practice digital marketing.
Throughout the years we also saw cookies being used in many ways to help companies track what people like so that they can also promote their product to those target people. Through the increased use of digital marketing, companies can now allow their products to be accessible to their customers and target audiences.
Digital Marketing Today
New digital innovations never seem to stop, and we have access to the digital world right in our homes. Therefore, companies have to find new ways to keep up with what’s going on in the digital world. That is why their digital marketing strategies need to be updated frequently to adapt to the new changes. Therefore, digital marketing is here to stay. A company without a digital marketing strategy will not survive very long in this digital world.
If you’re a company or person wanting to improve or learn more on how to create an effective marketing strategy to become more successful in the digital world, Audients Digital offers a variety of courses and certifications to help you wherever you are in your journey of learning about digital marketing.
References
The History and Evolution of Digital Marketing [Updated] (simplilearn.com)
What is Split Testing? Everything You Need to Know In One Place (abtasty.com)
