Evolution of Digital Marketing and How it Helps to Grow Your Business

Perhaps one day or the other, you asked yourself how one came to know the evolution of digital marketing? Perhaps it's ancient, but something like this is ever so important to your business strategy which has never been spoken of. One of the strongholds that began to establish its hold in businesses everywhere is digital marketing and consequently, really, this is big news-it's something important to know about this journey and the impact it had. 

What is Digital Marketing? 

Therefore, the collection of all marketing approaches that use the internet or electronic devices can be referred to as digital marketing. For many years, it was referred to as online marketing, and in this regard, covered the full process of advertisement or marketing of any product or service via digital media. The contribution of digital marketing to modern economies cannot be regarded as a lesser matter since the world is constantly changing and developing in terms of its digital makeup. 

Types of Digital Marketing 

For a few practices only but complete of the following: 

• SEO 
• PPC 
• SMM 
• Content Marketing 
• Email Marketing 
• Mobile Marketing 
• Marketing Analytics 

The 5 Ds of Digital Marketing 

Fewer would envision this in the five basic elements: The Digital Appliances: computers, hand phones, pads, and any other machine that is smart; The Digital Channels: media like Facebook, websites, and search engine; The Digital Media: online advertisements, social media, and email marketing; The Digital Data: the data that people collect via apps, surveys, or contact forms.

Digital Technology These include inventions such as Artificial Intelligence, Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality. 

Advantages of Digital Marketing 

Digital marketing provides the organizations with a number of benefits: 

Offshore With traditional marketing, an organization would be confined to a particular geographical domain. However, in some space, electronic marketing enables them to reach markets at the international level. Online, small localized businesses in companies can now be massive exporters on international markets-that previously unexplored scopes for growth 

• Local Reach 

Further and further digital marketing stretches all the way to the grassroots level of local fields of visibility. More businesses would be able to reach the level of the local customer base in a manner more efficient than has always been traditional modes. 

•  Cost-Effectiveness 

As the strategies of e-marketing can make any small business compete with the largest corporation, one may change them according to one's budget. Most of the techniques are free or low cost, like SEO and social media marketing, which are relatively very easy to implement. 

•  Ease of Learning 

But going into the digital market is not that tough. Of course, it takes a while to get things right, but after the trend starts playing, then the business learns and, hence, can adapt and thrive quickly on this dynamic landscape. 

• Target Identification 

They use pinpoint target identification as a tool-from search engine optimization to pay-per-click and demographics on the social media. That means if I am a business owner, I should know my message would reach the right kind of people through those channels. 

To say there are quite a few strategies would be an understatement. Of course, every business is different and so is the need of digital marketing there. For example, for a B2B firm lead generation would be more relevant whereas for a B2C retailer conversion-oriented ads will make more sense. Ease in digital marketing also opens up the option to measure and shift strategies at any point in time. 

• Content Forms 

Digital marketing is the engagement of interaction of numerous kinds of content, like blogs, podcasts, infographics and many more forms of meditations. As a result, this also means that businesses can now address their customers through more than one medium too. 

•  Level of Engagement 

Also, it provides an interaction right from the customers directly. That means people liked or disliked the post, commenting on posts, or even clicking the ads; whereby businesses may try interesting content and strengthen their relationship with their customers. 

• Analytics and Optimization 

Let's start with the concept of digital marketing to understand the difference in approach that this brings forth in marketing. The simple words for digital marketing are that it is a kind of marketing that uses digital technologies. It provides real-time analytics such that whenever the company realizes its mistakes in the campaigns, then it judges those campaigns and adjusts them if needed. This gives the companies a position to control better what happens in marketing. 

Origins and Evolution Over Time of Digital Marketing 

The term "digital marketing" goes back to the 1990s, when the internet was taking shape. Internet manifestations or, as it is also called, Web 1.0, was basically informational and not interactive. However, the dream started before that with the clickable banner ad printed in 1993 that kept everything rolling with digital advertising . 

Search engines, basically Yahoo, gained much prominence early on in the 90's.  Then, high tide came once again in the year 1998 with Google's entry, which totally changed the flavor of online marketing. Earliest 2000, and along with Internet, grew into Web 2.0, and with a focus on user-generated content and social media, there was the generation of user-to-sites and specific sites like MySpace and Facebook, which opened new channels for brands to interact with its audience. 

When maturity in the digital marketing field came with cookies that let people notice other's behavior, the new chances for even advanced marketing strategies came into view and got molded to fit the target user. Social media started depicting a paradigm shift when nearly half of the marketing efforts channeled toward engagement through those channels took an entirely new turn. 

This changes over time and goes along with technological development. As it is an offshoot of the digital marketing field, it becomes highly responsible for any business to be abreast with the trend that is ongoing in the latest. This, in particular, becomes a catalyst in getting along with one's target audience. Join hands with the top-class digital marketing agency and make your business take off.

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That's it! Come and dive deeper into the trend dominating the world in this much-talked-about online marketing revolution. Get a peep peek into tomorrow's future trends that'll shock your business strategy! 

Digital Marketing Timeline 

1993: The first clickable banner ad was placed. This marked the very first time that an advertisement marked the real turning point in history and placed advertising on a new pedestal. These banners were bought by the site, HotWired, to advertise their magazine and gain subscribers. This signified some kind of beginning for advertising digitally. 

1994: Yahoo! was launched and pulled over 1 million visitors within its first year of operations. This allowed business individuals and marketers to ensure their Web sites became search-friendly, putting all efforts into this new marketing space. Lou Montulli also invented cookies. These are small packets of information stored in devices every time a person visits different Web sites. They have enabled businesses to be able to know what users' preferences are and, subsequently, offer them personalized offers. 

1996: These were the new tools and search engines like Alexa, LookSmart, and HotBot even though they expanded digital marketing. 

1998: Google was launched. However, the beginning of MSN's search engine from Microsoft and Yahoo's web search also took place this year, hence kick-starting the digitized world that we are experiencing today. 

Finally, Web 2.0 finally came into being with the Internet allowing people to create and publish content online and to interact in many meaningful ways. No longer consumer but a producer, too. This is when social media and community-based platforms became synonymous with digital marketing. 

2000: And while the rest of the world went wringing its hands in despair over this Y2K bug, there never was a problem in cyberspace such as niche search engines quietly going out of business to make way for giants such as Google. 

LinkedIn is developing professional platforms. Currently, this portal is a very useful platform for recruiters as well as job searchers, which speaks for the extent of growing demand to do the same in digital media. 

The year of birth was 2003, when MySpace first came to life. Then in the same year came Orkut and Facebook. Business enterprises realised by then that at a paltry fraction of costs relating to traditional marketing, they could reach millions of users. 

2004: Digital advertisements revenues from the country crossed the $3 billion mark in the United States. It not only set but became an established era of digital marketing around the world. 

2005: It would initiate a new dawn for video sharing and video marketing and stayed at the core of present-day digital marketing strategies. 

2006: Search engine traffic has reached up to 6.5 billion in a month, and Microsoft replaced MSN by Live Search. Twitter came into existence, and split testing started to find its relevance in marketing. In the same year, Amazon crossed $10 million in online sales, so that road proved also be growing strength of e-commerce. 

2007: Hulu and Tumblr empowered the digital content towards every user and ways in microblogging. The marketers used the channel directly for their target audience. 

2008: More internet users joined the China book than any other country, and Spotify the social media that was launched as music sharing. 

2009: Google instant that was developed showed the result while typing by the user that accelerated the velocity and efficiency of the search. 

2010: WhatsApp became a much more livelier trend, and the final version of this media into WhatsApp Business opened the doors for companies to communicate directly with consumers. 

2011: Internet use exceeded TV viewing, especially on the younger side. Google+ and Google Panda launched-pretty much spiking search and social media agency. 

2012: Social media marketing budgets rose 64%-so including value quantification for Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn on the balance sheet of business. 

2014: Mobile officially exceeded desktop in browse and shop use as a pivot of digital strategy. Messenger finally launched while LinkedIn reveals how you can buy more targeted ads . 

It is the year of wearables, predictive analytics, and inbound marketing. It was the time when businesses streamlined and further advanced their digital strategies. 

Some of the updates which Google improved in 2016 include Panda and Penguin 4.0. Also, in stunning motion, Accelerated Mobile Pages or AMP for total optimization launched into the mobile landscape. 

Video Ads really caught up in 2017, and marketers converged to great mobile-first user experiences as well as virtual reality advertising. 

2018: Machine learning and marketing automation began to pick up pace. Social messaging applications started going mainstream for business purposes. The mobile phone's usage expanded, SEO and content marketing got cross-linked. 

2019: Geo-marketing Multiplied all possibilities of differentiation for the companies. Increasingly, location-based pieces of content began to be delivered to achieve high conversion on social media. This began more and more personalization through email marketing campaigns. 

2020: The COVID-19 pandemic has greatly accelerated the digital economy whereby remote work became the new norm and much more dependency on digital channels to reach consumers. 

2021: Facebook presented a new, completely different kind of online world- Metaverse, in which social media, virtual reality, and business would be interlinked. 

2022: More and more people use their mobile phones, so the number rises in growth as digital marketing continued the process of 'learning' to adapt to this sudden shift. 

This is a timeline that shows how deeply and rapidly digital marketing has grown. What is now the most stereotypical display ads used today was once a small industry but very advanced in terms of data orientation. 

Five Transformational Points of Origin of Digital Marketing

• Origins of Search Engine 

It is essential to indicate that search engines existed at the dawn of the year 1991 but were fully utilized during the year 1994 with the founding of Netscape given that most people started using the internet at this point. The act led to the invention of search engines such as Google from the tail end of the 1990s starting with the early 2000s. First, think of Search Engine Marketing (SEM) if not for the indexing and caching of web pages based on keywords. What was meant as an information sharing platform then became a doorway for social interaction. 

• The Social Media Revolution 

World Wide Web was meant to be a medium of information sharing, but it came to be used as a social avenue as well. Social media applications like Facebook and Twitter changed the way people interact and business avenues communicate with their prospects. Brands, with the help of targeting ads on these websites, could collaborate with influential speakers who speak directly to the audience. Launched in 2004, Facebook built up to a million users in a few brief years and invented, in 2007, a self-service ad platform, which in a very short period led to dramatic increases in revenue from advertising on the site. Others followed fast. 

•  Mobile-First Marketing 

Google invented AMP, taking into consideration the shift, as it noticed mobile devices dominated. This can be said to be because of the facts that, up to 2019, there was more than 52% internet traffic accrued from mobile phones. It made marketers change their approaches in ways that made it feasible yet excellent for consumers to experience seamlessness across different devices. 

They have to strike an appropriate middle ground between the roles of the big and small screens in the organization. 

• Consumer Data and Targeted Campaigns 

This new digital marketing is always data-driven with regards to the strategic approach for personalized marketing. Customer Relationship Management systems allow the brands to leverage analytics in tracking the behavior of the customer. Such data would help businesses craft more tailor-made marketing endeavors and enhance target audiences so that customers might become more satisfied. Predictive analytics, as it unfolds, would be used to predict customer needs as well as assess the effectiveness of marketing. 

• Voice Search and Interactive Content 

At present, brands are always promoting engaging content that will enable them to have customers so that a sense of community can be derived. Game and contest promotion activities hence develop as an important element of the interactive elements as well as tools for experience stimulation. Business adapts to voice search technology by now coming up with innovative marketing tools as that mirrors such changes. These content presentations bring users in and keep them around for longer periods of time.  

The Current Scenario on Digital Marketing 

This is a type of marketing through the digital medium. It means marketing your product and service through the internet. Like all other marketing strategies, it is for spreading publicity about the brand, the product, and yourself in front of the public. 

Even before the Internet, companies primarily were not online-based marketing. Instead, they would depend on such things as billboards, television and radio advertisement, newspapers direct mail, phone calls, postcards, catalogs, and postcards brochures and other printed materials, and so on. 

Even today, with numerous companies competing to reach as many target customers as possible, a few of the old-fashioned marketing tools still work. The older layers of a brand's customer base. For instance, they may prefer reading newspaper articles in hardcopy rather than their soft-copy versions. Radio marketing isn't dead. One fundamental difference between the two is the reach they offer. Newspaper or radio ads may be powerful in promoting to regional audiences. If you are looking to stretch your distribution using digital methods, they are the way to go. They are also cheaper compared to their traditional counterparts. 

Digital marketing is possible through tweets, videos, and podcasts; emails, blog posts; PPC advertising, and many more. To demonstrate the scope in digital advertising, we have 3.5 billion people who use social media, as well as almost half of the world's population. Additionally, it's getting harder to sell to the younger generation. They take some convincing before they can be convinced to buy. Your digital marketing campaigns will help reach them and sell to them over the long term. Digital media present the possibility of staying in communication with your target audience, getting in touch with them, and creating connections. 

 With the advancement of technology, their way also has to change to be in the groove. Businesses need to adapt and innovate using: technologies, companies have to adopt a variety of steps to keep up with the changing trends. 

The traditional brick-and-mortar shops have gradually moved towards online marketing, or have started investing more into their marketing strategies and focusing upon digital marketing strategies. The modern digital marketing options focus on capturing the fast-growing and lucrative online market. 

The process of attracting online users will establish whether a company is flourishing and profitable or been unsuccessful. 

Internet marketing with the aid of thousands of digital marketing tools and techniques will enable businesses to market themselves and boost sales. For a small scale, emerging, and growing business, internet presence could assist them fight sustain and expand. 

Some of the ways that make use of digital marketing for the growth of your business are explained below: 

1. Increasing geographical reach and a broader reach 

It may be a strenuous and time-consuming task to extend your business into a new geographical area through conventional marketing techniques. Using the suitable digital marketing strategies you can easily take your business to the new geographies and new locations without any obstacles in the way. Digital marketing campaigns are implemented quickly and in a very short period. They are also very flexible and enable you to reach the appropriate audience without any issues. 

2. Building a brand name 

The probability that a company can fulfill their promises to the targeted audience is very high in building the identity of their brand. It attracts greater trust of customers in making better and strong relationships with customers. 

According to Safari SEO Agency, "awareness for a brand is one of the most potent-and-by-willfully-neglected-of effective campaign advertising". Happy and satisfied customers will only assure that they will share their happy experiences with their peer group which can open new doorsteps in new markets and arenas for the company. Whether it is big or small, digital media marketing solutions will help every organization build up an enduring and reliable brand name. An emblem accompanied by a slogan, or tagline, can help your business create a uniformity and an identity that is trusted. 

3. Economical 

Small as well as medium-sized businesses cannot afford to spend on various channels of marketing. TV commercials are expensive as are the cost of hoardings along with the print advertisements. Not all businesses have enough money to spend on marketing their respective businesses. That is why Digital advertisements play a tremendous part. Digital marketing strategies are not a huge requirement for investment, and they can connect with a wider public at a cheaper cost. The digital Media Marketing solutions offer businesses more efficient and cost-effective marketing channels that are more efficient in communicating by converting a huge number of potential customers. 

4. More revenue 

A well-designed digital marketing strategy will result in higher conversion rates. This later enables the business to earn more profits. Digital marketing strategies have proven to create a higher volume of profit as compared to many methods of advertising. Google views organizations that embrace digital marketing techniques to have 2.8 times their income growth expectations. Business organizations that utilize digital marketing have 3.3 times the potential for payroll growth and also the growth of the business. 

5. Enhanced ROI 

As mentioned earlier, proper digital marketing strategies would enhance the value of the brand and revenue. At the same time, they also help in creating an Improved ROI compared to traditional modes of marketing. Digital marketing strategies are trackable in nature and thus help you analyze the actual output of your impact on your target public. A successful digital marketing strategy must generate constant traffic flow that could be converted to lead-generating. The more traffic generated, the quicker return for your investments. 

6. Go the whole hog 

Millions of tablet and smart phone users can be reached by those with an organized and clear digital marketing strategy. Any person connected to the Internet in whatever way would become a prospect to your business. At least with the statistics gathered, up to 75 percent of Google Chrome users now connect to the Internet through mobile devices. Without a digital marketing strategy in place, a business is left a long way behind the possibility of capitalizing on this enormous market. According to experts at Woxro, within the next few years the market of smartphone Internet will expand with rapid speed, and with an online marketing strategy, it's not necessary to be waiting to get into this market or another. For as long as you have an online store and international shipping, you are able to offer your services to customers anywhere they may be.

12 Ways Digital Marketing Can Help Grow Your Business 

 "The pace technology uses to shape change to the world is exactly the same speed small and medium-sized enterprises need to catch up with.". This way, as the traditional business becomes more up-to-date with the adoption of their model via consideration of the emergence of the digital age, therefore, more importance is laid on digital marketing because it then becomes a priority. Traditional high street businesses are evolving in a new direction to become online-orientated or evolving existing practices by tapping into fast-emerging online markets.    It would mean attracting the correct target audience online, which makes all the difference between an insurgency business and the limping kind. High website traffic doesn't mean anything if it is not converted into sales or leads. It is now with the help of digital marketing tools and strategies that entrepreneurs have a better chance to fight and grow in this new digital-first world. Here are twelve compelling reasons why investment in digital marketing is required for your business growth. 

Levelling the Playing Field  Digital marketing makes up for all inequalities so that small and medium enterprises can keep pace with the big boys. Proper online strategies allow smaller businesses to acquire resources previously granted only to the big boys, but which they could share with the entire world without having to be bodily in every nook and cranny on the planet. 

Marketing on a Shoestring Budget  Digital marketing has ultimately come to be a substitute for the classical methods to low resource firms as this is cheaper. It is shown that most firms achieve considerable economies and improved performances through the online process of marketing effort . 

Raise Conversion Rate  Digital marketing is interested in optimization of conversions. Online visitors are converted into a lead or client by digital marketing. The other useful tools of digital marketing, which play an important role in conversion and are associated with online activities, include SEO marketing, social media marketing, and email marketing. 

A firm that applies digital marketing properly has usually increased their revenues to a higher levels. Through statistical analysis, it is quite evident that there exists a firm with the proper digital tactics that enhance revenue growth compared to the firms which did not. This will help in expanding and entering new markets. 

It involves real-time engagement  The digital marketing tools enable a company to interact with clients in real-time. By having this level of interaction, the better understanding of preference fuels the business towards coming up with the proper experience that results in loyalty and trust.    Target Mobile Users 

During the past few years, the tables, as well as smartphones, have been in extensive use. Digital marketing campaigns can specifically focus on mobile users; it is that which enables businesses to reach the consumers at a device where they spend most of their time, thereby enhancing engagement and sales possibilities. 

Building Brand Reputation  Attractive content reaches the interested audience and creates the potential customer-relation. Promising things to the audience, one satisfied customer will refer more; if high-quality content is delivered, making the brand's reputation successful. 

Gives Better ROI  At some occasions, digital marketing produces higher returns than the old marketing options. It lets business monitor and measure the effectiveness of real-time results that aid in making the right decisions that can convert and also increase expenditure on marketing. 

Build Trust  Most important action that every business must take is to build trust, and digital marketing utilizes social proof and consumer testimonials to build up lines of trust and credibility with its target audience. For the consumer, therefore, this means believing it when they read good reviews about the brand online and see it as having some social media presence that is engaging. 

Among others, the calls of the digital marketing strategy are the activities that push a user toward a desired outcome. It might be a case where a person is prompted to buy the product or even subscribe to a newsletter. Creative well-placed calls can really increase the conversion rate. 

Prepare for IoT  An increasingly expansive growth of IoT would allow the business house to connect well with consumers in an amorphous network of devices: one that germinates new possibilities about engagement and growth. 

E-commerce Survival Made Easy  Going strongly with online shopping now, businesses would fight for survival if they don't evolve. Digital marketing turns out to be the need of the hour to attract and retain customers amidst a competition as tough online as it is off the web. 

Digital marketing has opened so much change in what business-oriented people think about and how they communicate to people. And where change is continuous, in this digital world, what will unlock success is keeping in tune with new tools, trends, and best practices. 

Want a little help or some questions about your digital marketing strategy? Let us guide you through the digital world: do not be late in calling us now.