Back in the glory days of advertising, a brand really had to have a good amount of money set aside for its marketing budget for big ads, TV spots, radio spots, and not including a hosted event every now and then. Marketing budgets usually exceeded millions of dollars to reach the masses. Brands couldn’t even phantom a life where big money was not spent to showcase their brand’s product or service. Then the internet was born and the digital marketing age was created.

To see companies such as Macy’s who spent millions and millions of dollars advertising during the days where consumers were into commercials and magazine ads, to now seeing a company such as Amazon who does not use any advertisements and takes over the retail industry, frightens old school marketing executives It goes against everything those MBAs taught them. Well ladies and gentlemen welcome to the world of Digital Marketing, where most things are free and the things that are not are not nearly as expensive as what they were before, and where you can reach the masses instantly. When brands ran a TV spot or a radio spot, they were banking on their target consumer listening to the radio at that time or watching TV at that time their spot aired. Now in their defense, before this digital marketing era became so prominent, television, radio, and magazines were the top places for consumers to gather their information, yet it was so expensive to create a great marketing camping. Citi Bank’s Live Richly camping that aired in the years of 2001-2006 cost the company $1 BILLION DOLLARS. Yes $1 BILLION not million BUT BILLION. Thank God things have changed right?

Brands have the ability to market their products and services quicker and cheaper than before as well as to a wider range of people due to the increase in social media and other digital marketing tools and still remain effective. The airline Virgin Blue decided to create an ad campaign on Twitter for their Virgin Australia branch. The deal was that because it was their 9th anniversary, they were going to give plane tickets away for $9 each through Twitter. They gave away 1,000 tickets but earned nearly 33,000 Twitter followers. No TV spots, no radio spots no newspaper ads, just a twitter ad campaign. The power of social media and viral marketing can assist brands in building brand recognition as well as gaining brand loyal supporters for little or no cost.

Today’s marketing age allows brands to place more money into the development of a great product or service rather than the tons of money typically poured into a marketing budget. Brand campaigns can now go viral with a few clicks and touch millions of people, while at the same time creating unbelievably fast brand awareness, which at the end of the day is the name of the game in the branding world. People need to know who and what your brand does. Now this can be accomplished with little or no money, a great idea, and a computer with WI-FI. Oh how things have changed.