Unfolding Digital Marketing: From 2000 to Today
Digital, Social Media, and Mobile Marketing (DSMM) open new ways for clients and companies
Nowadays, the digital world is part of everyday life: at home, at work, shopping, at times of fun, study or with family. To reach this point, digital platforms have undergone several changes from 2000 to the present day. New ways have emerged to achieve, tell, engage, sell to, and give products to customers reflecting and experiences in the marketplace.
Over the years, technological innovations have been taking place, such as the rising penetration of the internet at home,rapid broadband connections at affordable prices, the emergence and growth of social networks, and the adoption of smart mobile devices by consumers, which have also changed their way of behaving in the face of these transformations.
To better understand that, the researchers Cait Lamberton and Andrew T. Stephen divided the evolution of digital, social, and mobile marketing (DSMM) in this period into four Eras: from 2000 to 2004, from 2005 to 2010, from 2011 to 2014 and the new era from 2015 to the present day.
Era 1 (2000–2004): How digital media simplifies consumer behavior
In the year 2000, the “dot com bubble” exploded and with it concern about interactive strategy tools, which should be based on appreciations and data, not the emotion that the internet is “a magic way to make money”. Throughout the period, it was recognized that the internet could help persons by giving access to information, contact with other end users and selling products and services.
The virtual media has become a source of search and decision base for consumers at the time of purchase. The Internet has also become a marketing tool of great potential, which would benefit customers, who receive products and services, and companies, who could study customers’ preferences and behaviors and thus generate higher levels of customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Era 2 (2005–2010): Word of mouth online and social networks
From 2005 to 2010, consumers have more engage in their social interactions across word of mouth and social networks. Partly because of the Internet uses has become increasingly common in people’s lives. They begin to share opinions and stories, and global brands using social networks as a channel for digital marketing content.
Companies manage the content generated by the users because they realize that the online evaluations / comments have impacts on the sales of products and new customer’ acquisitions . Organizations develop online marketing communication strategies based on consumer responses, understand that user expression, and UGC (user generated content) activities can be directly related to revenue and profit.
Era 3 (2011–2014): The Age of Social Media
In this period, social networks underwent a change in the habits of their consumers. The platform that was initially used to create social bonds began to generate and share contents of various subjects. These changes have made the consumer an influential agent due to interactivity with other users and the easy dissemination of information that may have far-reaching consequences.
In the face of this scenario, numerous questions have arisen, such as what leads the user to share certain subjects, which themes generate more engagement, like creating viral content, etc. Therefore, it has become important to research the characteristics and needs of consumers to draw up good strategies and follow their actions and activities in social networks.
From these evaluations, it is possible to achieve better results and a greater use of information through the necessity of user generated content as a marketing tool, use of specific platforms to capture marketing intelligence, among others.
The New Digital Age: from 2015 to the present day
Although the New Era is still in development, the years 2015 and 2016 marked the return of some topics that were developed early in the DSMM, such as how consumers express themselves online and using the Internet as a marketing tool of digital publicity.
Thanks to online data, is possible to extract important results for the offline world. The combination of multiple data sources allows companies to know consumer preferences and thus optimize spending on marketing, focusing only on what brings return.
The gap between online and offline is over. Nowadays digital marketing is simply marketing, because almost every marketing activity in a work now can have some digital form.
However, it is worth mentioning that the emerging topics in DSMM become:
a) collective behavior models such as “shared economy” with the growth of Uber services;
b) multi-channel and multitasking behavior, that means how people consume online vs. offline;
c) and mobile marketing: build structures to understand mobile opportunities as technology progress;
d) regulation and privacy issues of the digital consumer, since online privacy has become more important among firms, consumers and policy makers;
This text was written by the students Carolina Marques, Erika Mazzucca, Livia Aragão and Melissa Ramalho based on the article “The Thematic Exploration of Digital, Social Media and Mobile Marketing: Research Evolution from 2000 to 2015 and an Agenda for Future Inquire”, by Cait Lamberton & Andrew T. Stephen.
