From Product Marketing to Digital Marketing
The Internet advent followed by the decurrent technological evolution, brought profound, cultural, political and social changes. In few years, after it’s availability to the public, internet assumed a role, that few though possible, until then, revolutionizing in a disruptive and permanent way, how information was generated and disponiblized.
As the Gutenberg prense, came to change the powers distribution, providing information for those who didn’t had, the internet brought with it a profound revolution in many aspects.
People were no longer mere information consumers, to starting to be themselves, information creators, changing the paradigm until then institutionalised. As a consequence, the media had to change and adapt to a new reality. But not only the media was affected. The easy access to information contributed to the companies, until then, with product and customer centred business models, to suddently change and adapt to a new reality. For Marketing was no longer enough the Mccarthy 4 P’s (Price, Product, Place and Promotion), or the remaining 5 P’s (Packaging, People, Process, Physical Evidence, Payment), to face the new communication challenges. As Marketing needed to adapt before the Oil crysis at 1970, it was necessary once again to respond to the future challenges.
The emergence of social platforms, like Facebook or Twitter, as well the development of more evolved mobile devices (smartphones and tablets) came to turn the world small and accelerate the information flux, turning quickly this platforms, in cultural, social and political barometers.
For instance, at the 2012 American Elections, which opposed the President Barack Obama, and the Republican Mitt Romney, was possible to know the winner, weeks before the elections, through Twitter sentiment analysis, with a lower error rate, than the official polls (see more).
These social platforms, allong with other changes, came to promote an approximation between enterprises, institutions and their publics, allowing not only a bigger transparency, but also the development of new products and services, to meet the dreams and expectations of it’s target audience. As a consequence, the consumers started to be more demanding, not only with products and services provided by those, but also ethic and morally exigent, demanding to companies to behave accordingly the current cultural, social, environmental and political values. The companies vision, mission and values, had to be reflected in it’s market approach. As example of that, we have Nike case, who was boycotted, because of it’s products were made in third world countries with child labour (see more), or more recently, Abercrombie & Fitch, that was boycotted because of it’s discriminating policy related with overweight people(see more).
This consumer behaviour obligated companies and essentially marketing, to a new paradigm shift, the 3.0 Marketing. This new Marketing approach settled in the brand mission, vision and values, has as new model, besides those described previously, the 3 I’s (brand Integrity, brand identity and brand image).
In this new strand of Marketing, the brand image has a strong component, taking into consideration the consumers heart and soul, an example of that is Ben & Jerry's, the famous ice cream brand, whose philosophy is settled in sustainability and fair trade commerce.
The 4.0 Marketing, only recently embraced by Kotler, make the change from Traditional Marketing to Digital Marketing.
The Digital Marketing, as the name indicates, as a strong digital component, taking besides the previous technological evolutions, the development of new ones, that allows the Marketing support, in new inovations, such as: Marketing Automation, IOT, AI, NLP or Machine Learning.
The Digital Marketing is defined as:
“Digital marketing is a form of direct marketing which links consumers with sellers electronically using interactive technologies like emails, websites, online forums and newsgroups, interactive television, mobile communications etcetera” (Kotler and Armstrong, 2009).
“It facilitates many-to-many communications due to its high level of connectivity and is usually executed to promote products or services in a timely, relevant, personal and cost-effective manner” (Bains et al., 2011).
Said that, Digital Marketing, divides itself in many areas, each one approaching specific themes, like:
Digital Marketing Strategy
Website
Web Copywriting
Blogging
Social Media Marketing
Social Media Intelligence
Community Management
SEO/SEM
Social and Web Advertising
Web Analytics
Besides these referenced fields, other departments outside Marketing integrates digital, as Design, IT, IS, allowing Marketing to give a better response to current and future challenges.
