Mobile and internet have completely changed the world around us. In the last few decades, digital marketing (note : digital marketing refers to the promotion of products over electronic media or internet) has touched all of us in different ways. In the process, there have been generation of careers that we never envisaged in the past.

One of the driving force behind this career has been a huge market generated because of usage of social media. The last I checked more than 170 million people are using social media today.

The Growth of Digital Marketing career from early years till 2018

1450 was the year that saw the printing press in Europe advent. It was the year when mass communicating and selling gained momentum.

Magazines emerged in the year 1730s and the first world TV ad appeared on the American screens in 1942. This is viewed as one of the revolutionary moments in the history of marketing.

In the year 1965, a computer located in Massachusetts linked with another one in California through the dial-up. In 1963, a mobile phone call (handheld) was invented. However, it was only until the beginning of the 1980s when the desktop PCs were available commercially for people. The launch of PCs maximized the digital marketing opportunities.

The early search engines (such as info Seek, WebCrawler, Lycos, and Yahoo) made crucial strides in the evolution of digital marketing careers. But the turning point came with the launch Google in 1998.

In 2000s, Apple popularized development of third-party software and mobile apps with the operating systems. As a result, consumers could choose how the content could be consumed, and business started taking advantage of this through marketing of services and products via efforts made in online advertisement —a practice that has continued to grow in the digital marketing field.  

With the birth of Google and its tools of development such as content targeting series in 2003, and Words in 2000, online platforms changed completely.

By 2004, some interesting things occurred.

  • Release of Photoshop 6.0
  • SEO became a major buzzword
  • Facebook was so popular
  • Queen Elizabeth sent her first royal mail
  • Businesses were using ad words for purposes of generating traffic
  • World web was 15 years old
  • First digital spamming incidences were common

Search engines began to use the advanced ranking algorithms, and online browsing became personal in 2004. All this had an immense impact on businesses : digital marketers had an opportunity to target browsers and developing strategies based on search patterns created by new ways of communicating and selling online.

Nowadays, GOOGLE BOT crawls and indexes trillions of pages making the relevant ones accessible via different searches.

Digital marketers make brands that can now reach anywhere and anyone at any time of the day.

New Businesses made possible because of evolution of Digital Media:

1. SEO Agencies :

Sites started optimizing for the different search engines in the 90s and, by the year 2004, SEO had become a critical tool for marketing globally. Early on, the techniques such as article submissions, keyword stuffing, and link spamming were used by digital marketers to promote quickly and online marketers could get away by using them as google was still evolving its algorithm. Today, it is recommended to use only white hat techniques as Google’s algorithm are evolved and matured.

Initially, many digital marketing professionals did not care much about the social media impacts and its usability. However, nowadays, SEO specialists understand that SEO is a significant tool in the digital marketing and social signals have an indirect impact on rankings.

Today, market is flooded with SEO Agencies which work tirelessly to get client’s rankings on top.

2. Digital Public Relations Companies:

There was no digital PR or traditional agency; we only had PR agencies. The traditional PRs used media tours for securing exposure for clients in radio and TV, print, press meetings, and mostly sending questionnaires to gather information from stakeholders. However, the scenario has totally changed because marketers have branded their digital PR – focusing mostly on the web—social media is a glaring example.

Currently, digital PR specialists are able to find out a lot before even deciding to make a pitch. Digital PRs are in a position to back their decisions with data since they work with SEO trends and research, and such leads to more quantifiable and better results.

Digital PR Agencies today work around the corner with clients from all aspects of lives to give them the right digital exposure.

3. Social Media Marketing Agencies:

Social media has evolved differently in the past two decades:

  • In 2003, word press released Myspace launched
  • In 2005, YouTube was launched.
  • Twitter was launched in 2006
  • In 2009, Google launched instantly for the real-time search engine results.
  • In 2007, there was launch of tumbler, founding of web streaming service, launch of iPhone, and the founding of Hulu.
  • In 2008, Spotify launched Gropon live.  
  • In 2013, Yahoo acquired Tumbler.
  • In 2014, Mobile exceeded the internet usage on PC. The Facebook messenger tailored ads on Iwatch, LinkedIn. Facebook look back was also launched.
  • Whatsup was acquired by Facebook in 2014
  • In 2015, snap chat launched a discover feature—the rise of wearable tech, predictive feature, and content marketing.
  • Facebook also launched instant articles in 2015

Most people used MYSPACE platform for social media digital marketing in 2004. They had no information that Mark Zuckerberg and his roommates at Harvard were going to release Facebook platform that would replace MySpace. This was the beginning of an entirely new era in digital marketing.

At first, social media was only considered for chatting with friends but started being a way to connect with brands, spread news, influence, and even shop. With time, business and online reputation management started gaining moment.

With sites with billions of users on the digital platforms (such as YouTube, Twitter, and Pinterest), social media has become one of the most important digital marketing tool as it enhances targeted marketing.

Marketers in the past used tactics that are designed to interrupt their clients—they did not seek permission to contact them and targeted everyone blindly in hope that they will reach the interested parties. Thanks to better statistics, research, and high-quality targeting of content, now different digital marketing is possible.

Brian Halling, Hubspot CEO and Co-founder, created the term inbound marketing to encourage the digital marketers to pay more attention to customers. In the same vein, Seth Godi (an author) introduced the permission marketing idea. At the present, content marketing on all such principles—understanding consumers better so that you can appeal to their needs and interests with tailor-made information and content.

In future, we expect interesting changes in the digital marketing industry. The new ways of browsing like Google AMP  and Instant Articles by Facebook will be common. Also, we expect new ways of SEO like Latent Semantic Indexing, CRM applications, and integrated voice search and content.

In summary, digital marketing is happening at a faster rate, and probably the Mac book used in writing this article will be obsolete by 2020. Digital marketing companies today are finding new ways to keep up with the everyday changes.

They are keeping a close tab on the development of smarter and newer search engine algorithms.

They understand they have to keep themselves updated to the latest trends which can come from any one or all of the below : great conversation, content, transparency, viral marketing, and word of mouth.

Digital Marketing is throwing new possibilities for existing businesses. Times is not far when we might have Digital AI Agonies running a new line of business in Digital marketing.