Changing Landscape of Digital Marketing

September 19, 2018

 

by Kuldeep Singh

LANDSCAPE OF DIGITAL MARKETING BETWEEN 2013 AND 2018

YEAR 2013

Come 2013, Moore’s Law  the oldest and  famous digital principle,  with the inception of digital technology,   thought to have laid foundation to bring   the digital evolution. This law  started seeing its downfall with the limitation on  stretching  the boundaries of innovation in growth of  Transistor density per inch area.

By this year Facebook placed  as  king, with wider reach  and having  a  clear  dominance  over social media landscape. Its widespread  reach  can be attributed to  improved  availability of  household computers and the widely-accessed digital channel. This is a clear  outcome of  reducing  costs  while increasing processing  power of computing  devices,  which wouldn’t be possible without small chips and processors.

Internet  horizon is seeing a  change –  increasing number of users choosing to browse Internet on their mobile  devices, which makes up to 13% of net browsing in total. Additionally, Facebook shared 78% percent of its users logged in on their mobile devices that year. This, again, wouldn’t be possible without low  cost  mobile Devices.

It means adapting  for marketers. Social media marketing focuses on Facebook mostly ( other platforms  at  their  nascent  stages ) and the brains of Facebook  think to switch from paid ads to paid content – signaling the rise of content marketing.

The Axe campaign made by Unilever ( ones with the Axe-effect, where girls chase the guys after application) win awards – so shouting at customers is still in craze.

YEAR 2014

Moore’s law in its essence  still driving  the steady rise of Mobile platform and its applications.

In Social Media space, Facebook still at apex  but  other platforms started  reaping rewards of their foresight – platforms like LinkedIn, Pinterest and Instagram are on the rise and engagement among user  increasing.

Growth of low cost and faster processing ( Moore’s law ) reflects its effectiveness as the handheld devices spread in consumers increases and provides benefit from  applications but with it’s limitations when it comes to  the picture-based platforms . which were  held  back due to slow loading  – faster bandwidth means faster loading, too – Nielsen’s law relevance becomes at play.

For marketers, scope of reaching consumers widens  meaning  multi-platform marketing. As the messages need to follow the audience, if audience has to be reached effectively.

Coca Cola increases the reach of its ‘Share A Coke’ campaign that started in the previous year, with popular names on the bottles and it’s a massive success. It’s also a multi-channel campaign, heavily advertised at digital and at shelf. It’s one of the most famous marketing endeavors nowadays, and it tapped the millennial need for individuality – also something reinforced by portability of devices.

YEAR 2015

Economics of smaller and cheaper processors are now changing into smaller processors with innovation which  means complete technology change – neural, brain-like parts,  which infact has  high  cost  to produce.

Moore’s law continues to drive the development of wearables, Interestingly  smart watches could not gain popularity  as mobiles. Probably on account  of limited usability !!  People are talking about changing materials driving the development, it’s just not about the size anymore.  Also, Internet of Things (IoT) is becoming quite crucial  makes it ripe for future marketing.

Coincidentally, mobile messaging is on the rise. Platforms like Twitter and Snapchat are truly becoming big, again owing a lot to smaller chip size. Pinterest and Instagram double their engaged users and Facebook continues to have a strong presence.

Marketing persons than has to gear  up for wearables based marketing, thing-and-appliance based marketing but also, content marketing is very much in – facilitated by Moore’s, but mostly driven by Nielsen’s law.

MOOCs ( Massive Open Online Courses ) like Coursera  and Udemy  gaining  momentum (part of the strategy to market the University online by providing content).

Coca Cola also demonstrates brand awareness, pulling the vision together in the ‘One brand’ campaign. This marks the rising importance of brand messages and being cohesive when talking to audiences.

YEAR 2016

Likes of Pinterest, Instagram, Linkedin are gaining foothold among audiences, each creating a niche for themself. But wide segment of social media is still under dominance of  Facebook attracting almost 80% of all Internet users.

The content should be easily  accessible across all devices. Reach of mobile devices increasing. Lowering of device costs drives expansion of mobiles , but the cost of data access and the speed of downloads playing crucial role. Moore’s law is factor for the devices, but it’s all about the bandwidth or speed of internet access  nowadays.

Economics of development with huge constraints reducing relevance of Moore’s Law

– smaller chips are not cheaper to produce anymore.

Bandwidth is gaining increased relevance  for marketing! Cloud computing means making our devices faster not by inserting more chips but by connecting  them to  various external Internet solutions.

Digital Marketing is seeing a fast paced evolution, due to fast growth of fractured audience having excess to  varying devices, which is making measuring of consumer behaviour more complex.

 Analytics increasingly getting sophisticated. Digital Marketing getting more and more dependent on Analytics, making  it more of automated  and spontaneous  efforts.

IoT - Internet of Things is another development gaining its ground very rapidly ( Discuss in subsequent post )

Coca Cola makes its ‘One brand’ campaign global, with excellent results. Convergence and consistency across platforms pay off, so does customer experience marketing model.

YEAR 2017

Dominance of internet in the people’s life  influenced everything, how consumers work , how they  shop and how they use  media and other available  resources. Along with this changing consumer  behaviour  marketing changed with it. Marketing to reach  consumers continued to evolve from Moore’s Law era to New era of Neilson’s Law, with evolving Intent and methods,  Like Internet of Things and a whole host of other methods and principles, like Augmented reality and Artificial Intelligence.

The Mobile devices are at  their best, the website analytics market is flooded with companies but smart marketers are needed – to make sense of the rapid change and connect the brand with consumers.

These days  advertisements , tries to address the audiences and reach the carefully-measured segments. It was Digital arena,  started by the small chips with a drive of  Moore’s law, now  graduating  to increased bandwidth of Nielsen’s law.

 YEAR 2018

CONTENT IS KING.

Now the Marketing has reached to micro levels. Content has become Spine of Internet  and the Broadband/ fibre optics becoming Nerves.

Marketing Activity 67%  still has prime interest in Facebook as top preferred social media for reaching consumers, followed by Linkedin and other platforms

Source - Social Media Examinar

 

Investments

Gaming, Education and Healthcare  are expected to be the priority  industries, attracting most investments and interests of consumers, Thus generating major  interest area for marketing innovations.

The commonality here is that change comes in waves – sometimes large, sometimes small. But marketers need to be aware of the rhythm and this what Moore’s Law  and Nielsen’s Law provide – a certain predictability of trends. Moore’s Law might be out but the law influenced everything – and the change isn’t over, the impacts just  carry  on , with renewed vigour and targets but with similar objective -

GROWTH and MOVING FORWARD