Digital Marketing

The field of digital marketing consists of the use of specific, targeted marketing tools through digital pathways and devices in order to promote a product or service to a wider, dependable audience of consumers.

History

The concept of digital marketing was originally developed in the 1980s by a company called the SoftAd Group. They created an advertising strategy for car manufacturers in which people could mail in cards from magazines and the company would send back a floppy disk that advertised various cars and offered free test drives. Since the 1980s, digital technologies have gone through an immense change and experienced exponential growth. Because of this growth, the field of digital media has followed suit with a vast expansion of the use of digital media advertising. It is estimated that digital marketing expenditures increased by 48% in 2010, and that there are approximately 4.5 million media advertisements displayed per year.

Digital Marketing Strategies and Developments

Some of the most prominent strategies of digital marketing are Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Content Marketing, Content Automation, Campaign Marketing, and E-Commerce Marketing. However, since the digital marketing field must evolve as quickly as the technologies it operates within, there are permanently new marketing tactics in the digital world. Some of these newer developments include:

1. Segmentation: Segmentation is the targeting of specific markets, resulting in the separation of sub-markets, has become a focus of digital marketing both with business-to-consumer and business-to-business divisions.
2. Influencer Marketing: Influencers are the important sections of similar communities that have the power to increase sales and customer loyalty. To engage these influencers has become a large goal of some branches of digital marketing. Different types of paid advertising campaigns, like those displayed through Google or Facebook, can be an effective way to reach these influencers. Or, digital marketers could use Social Customer Relationship Management software such as SAP C4C, Sage CRM, Salesforce CRM, and Microsoft Dynamics.
3. Online Behavioral Advertising: This strategy utilizes the technique of aggregating the online activities, purchases, and changes of behavior of consumers in order to cater online advertisements to the habits and interests of the individual or demographic of user.
4. Collaborative Environment: An environment of collaboration can be made when a group or organization works alongside the service provider and the technology or advertising companies to enhance communication, information distribution, and energy equally and productively between all of the groups.