Over the last seven decades, a lot has changed regarding publicity and advertising. The first half of the 20th century was marked by two revolutions in communication: the arrival of radio and TV. Although marketing has existed since before. The evolution of marketing in the media as we know it is fundamentally through them.
This revolution has continued apace over the past seven decades until we reached the internet age. Again, it caused a real revolution in concepts and in the way companies started to interact with consumers.
Although there are similarities, the digital marketing and online marketing practices that we put into practice today are very different from those that were used by specialists when TV arrived in the beginning of the ’50s.
The 50s: the magic of television
The possibility of using video to advertise products and talk to consumers was considered “magical” by many. Advertisers saw on TV the possibility of reaching customers in ways never imagined before and proof of this was its rapid growth.
In the United States, for example, TV debuted in the early 1940s and less than 15 years later, in 1954, TV advertising revenue was already greater than that obtained from radio and magazine advertising.
However, one problem faced most businesses: advertising on TV was expensive and therefore inaccessible. It was up to marketers to seek strategies to reduce these costs and, at the same time, expand their reach.
In search of personalization
Strategies to reduce costs in the production of TV commercials culminated in a kind of market segmentation. If at the beginning it was interesting to “reach as many people as possible”. Over time the idea became to reach defined groups.
This also impacted the broadcasters’ programming. If a company wanted to dialogue only with women, for example, it chose to advertise in programs that had their audience predominantly made up of women.
In other words, even with a smaller number of insertions, the results were better, as the dialogue took place only with potential consumers. Pursuing market segmentation strategies resulted in demand for cable TV channels in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
The Internet Age: The Beginnings of Online Marketing
With the arrival of the internet, at the beginning of the 90s, communication possibilities multiplied. If before a message was targeted to groups of users, now they can be created for specific people. This possibility of even more refined segmentation gave birth to digital marketing.
Search engines have become the gateway for many to search for information. Thus, strategies that made content easier to find grew. There was born the so-called Search Engine Optimization ( SEO ) – Optimization for Search Engines, in direct translation.
To accommodate this personalized content, corporate blogs have become the main vehicle. Later, with the popularization of social networks, they became the best dissemination channels for everything that was produce. A new ecosystem was forming.
The multiple strategies of inbound marketing
Attracting the right consumers so that they know better about a service or product. In general terms, The role of digital marketing today is to find dissemination strategies that allow companies to find people interest in their products.
However, the conversion factor has never been more in evidence. With the possible segmentations can do on the internet, quantity became less and less important in relation to quality. In other words. It is better to reach a thousand people, of which five hundred buy your product than to reach ten thousand people and see only a hundred interested in your items.
In the digital age, in which technologies such as big data, machine learning and artificial intelligence are use to analyze and predict consumer behaviour, being efficient means investing less and getting more results. For this, it is necessary to understand the reasons that lead a consumer to buy and follow the same paths as him.
Digital marketing is an ongoing revolution. New tools emerge every day that aim to further improve segmentation in search of maximum efficiency. In addition to them. It is necessary to have specialists in the segment, who are able to analyze the most different scenarios and propose creative solutions to solve problems.
Elisa Goldstein is an experienced writer at financemag7.com, where she’s credited with more than 200 articles covering everything from entrepreneurial stories to mental health at work.
She also oversees the Comment&Questions, which poses important admission questions to experts in the field, and regularly hosts webinars on various aspects of the business school experience.
Prior to joining financemag7.com, Elisa honed her skills as a freelance writer, tackling a wide array of topics from petcare to car maintenance.
Elisa holds a Master’s degree in Business Administration from the University of Sydney, Australia.
