An introduction to the history and evolution of Digital Marketing

 Marketing as an activity has existed since the beginning of human evolution itself. Human beings have constantly involved in trade with each other to satisfy their daily needs and life necessities.

People in earlier times followed a barter system for trading yet they needed to market their goods in some way or the other to get the desired profits in their dealings so it won’t be wrong if we term marketing as an integral part of our own existence.

Marketing promotes the exchange of goods and services and through marketing activities, people can obtain what they want in exchange for their goods and services as entities.

Over the period of time, marketing has occupied a fixed place in business and one cannot imagine an effective and profitable business without conducting marketing activities.

But when exactly human beings started incorporating marketing in their business dealings?

 

Origins of Marketing

The origins of constructive marketing take us back to all major civilizations around the world which at some point traded with each other. For e.g., it has been recorded that the Indus civilization at some point, had developed trade with Mesopotamia. Egyptian civilization too had trade links with Mesopotamia. Greek civilization was too involved in trade with the Egyptians and Babylonians.

Over the period of time, they developed coins and tablets to ease the purpose of trading thereby creating initial tools of marketing.

A food stall remains from an excavation at Pompei city of Rome empire from 79A.D showed images/paintings used for advertising its food offerings as a way of marketing its products.

Over the period of time, marketing progressed with the arrangements of trade shows as early as in 11^th century A.D in Europe.

By the 15^th century, industry-level printed mass advertising had already begun.

By the 17^th century, people had started using newspapers as an effective medium for advertising to reach relatively large audiences.

By the beginning of the 20^th century, marketing had become so much important that the first Marketing course was introduced by the University of Michigan.

Soon enough the world moved to another revolutionary form of marketing that we know today as Digital marketing.

 

The roots of Digital Marketing and its spread

As per mailchimp.com, ‘Digital marketing, also called online marketing, is the promotion of brands to connect with potential customers using the internet and other forms of digital communication.’

In the 20^th century, apart from newspapers, marketers started using other tools for marketing such as Cinema advertising, Radio advertising and then moved to TV advertising and further to email marketing but the biggest revolution came in advertising - one of the components of marketing itself, upon the introduction of the internet to the world.
With the launch of the World wide web 0.1 in 1990, digital marketing became the core of success in business.

People using traditional marketing tactics, soon realized their limitations in terms of limited reach, increased competition, and limited control over various aspects of their audience and it cemented the position of digital marketing in the marketing world.

In line with the above, the first clickable banner went live in 1994. The same year also marked the emergence of Yahoo.

In 1998, Google came into existence. The search engine giant was co-founded by Sergey Brin and Larry Page and facilitated the dawn of a new era in the digital world with its progressive search engine tools.

Around the year 1999, Microsoft and Yahoo launched their own search engines to tackle the growing competition posed by Google but it actually led to cementing of Digital marketing in the marketing field.

 Later the emergence of social media platforms, such as Facebook, created a new way of establishing contacts and sharing information, and soon people started using such platforms for building connections and sharing information thereby making connections with their potential buyers.

Today, if we look at digital marketing, then it has grown in leaps and bounds with the improvements in existing digital marketing mediums and the invention of new mediums such as WhatsApp marketing, YouTube marketing, Instagram marketing, Twitter marketing, and various others.

In current times, more than half of the world’s population uses the internet for various purposes and this number is only going to grow with the passage of time.

 

The future of Digital Marketing

The ever-moving wheel of digital marketing does not seem to stop for ages to come as digital marketers keep devising new and ever-effective strategies and tools on a continuous basis in this giant world of digital marketing.

The prominence of digital marketing can be gauged from the fact that many small businesses too are utilizing online tools and platforms such as Google AdWords, Google my business, various social media, and others to keep up with the ever-increasing competition.

With the advantages of digital marketing being realized worldwide, more and more businesses are using various digital marketing strategies to rank higher on search engines.

Leaving behind the concepts of traditional marketing, people are going to dive further and further into the sea of digital marketing which will be strengthened by the introduction of 5G, Artificial intelligence, and Cloud computing.

It’s time for gearing up to acquire the necessary knowledge in Digital marketing by joining appropriate Digital Marketing classes so that one can prepare oneself to take the advantage of upcoming opportunities that the bright future of Digital marketing holds in itself.