Changing Landscape of Digital Marketing
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.
