The Change in Marketing
How Has Marketing Developed in the Post Digital Age
Marketing has existed since the beginning of the business, allowing brands to promote and sell their products or services. Its most basic form is described as the set of institutions, activities, and processes for establishing, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for consumers and society. It was mostly about persuading clients to buy something or use a service on a small scale (Bassano et al., 2019). All that has changed with the emergence of the digital age, which transformed how businesses promote their goods. Nowadays, brands must pay attention to their design strategies to reach new clients. All this has led to the emergence of many companies and increased competition, which has been reflected in the fact that the budget is no longer a determining factor of success.
It should be noted that before the digital era, buyers were not a priority marketing target. In addition, it was enough for the buyers themselves that the seller behaved respectfully and did not provide any difficulties for them. However, it is worth noting that in the modern world, customer service is a priority for companies. Individuals anticipate that a business will address their needs every time (Bassano et al., 2019). In this case, the impact on many types of businesses turned out to be significant, as they had to resort to a complete change in their approach to customer service.
An important aspect is that there has been a change in the structure of communication and interaction in the digital era, which has affected the nature of the promotion and sale of products. As a result, it has become easier for marketers to get the attention of their target audience because consumer behavior has changed significantly. A big brand nameâs value has diminished in various ways because now it cannot establish a sales spike by simply being a large company (Bassano et al., 2019). Thus, smaller organizations have as much power as the bigger ones in creating success stories since digital marketing supports equality between them.
Previously, brand promotion was a simple task since the success of the company depended mainly on its budget. Due to larger investments in advertising, they had more opportunities to reach out to a potential audience. However, it is worth noting that the situation has changed with the entrance of the digital era (Bassano et al., 2019). Initially, the Internet allowed companies to use various platforms as a source of free advertising. However, with the advent of Facebook, this approach changed as paid advertising appeared, which allowed marketers to get the right audience’s attention in a shorter time.
Nevertheless, such a situation cannot be considered negative since it opens opportunities for the implementation of marketing innovations indirectly through paid advertising. However, there used to be a problem that companies used spam as the main mechanism of a PR company. Thus, in the digital era, every business has additional opportunities to participate in advertising competitions. It is true that a huge budget will create an advantage for established firms, but it is not the decisive edge of the past anymore. As a result, even the smallest brands have a great reason for participating.
Traditional or conventional methods of promoting goods and services no longer exist. For instance, radio and television have fallen much gratitude to every streaming service that is available. This is due to the fact that most of the potential customers of modern companies are concentrated on the Internet. Accordingly, television broadcasts are no longer the main source of advertising for successful business promotion (Bassano et al., 2019). Moreover, it is worth mentioning that virtual marketing channels seem to be better targeted. This is because companies only pay to reach an audience who may be interested in what they want to promote or sell.
Furthermore, one of the greatest changes is ad blindness, a concept that describes a state where the majority of people fail to see the ads available for them online. Currently, Internet users are becoming more and more experienced in ad bypassing tools using ad blockers, so most of the advertising remains unnoticed. This has led to the fact that various brands have realized the importance of changing the approach to advertising campaigns in a virtual environment. As a result, digital marketers should now be able to offer the audience something extra that will be worthy of their attention (Bassano et al., 2019). This can be in the form of an entry into a contest or a free eBook, for example. Companies may only have more opportunities to attract potential buyers in this case. Since conventional techniques are no longer viable, they have to be creative.
What Trends Have Given Rise to This Change and What Are the Challenges Marketers Face
The change that is witnessed in marketing has been influenced by certain trends, for example, the integration of artificial intelligence, blockchain technologies, and influencer marketing. In the internet era, where social media is ubiquitous, individuals appear to appreciate or enjoy real and authentic experiences. Prospective consumers are more likely to trust an actual person than an ad concerning how great is a particular brand or product. As a result, this is the point where the idea of influencers emerges (Bassano et al., 2019). Companies have realized that individuals with a lot of followers on social media are easy to reach and ask them to post about their products. For instance, football players such as Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi are paid a lot of money to promote sports apparel for Nike and others. With the huge number of followers and engagement on their social pages, a company is guaranteed that the ad will reach further than spending money on television or radio advertisements.
Blockchain technologies also open up many opportunities not only in the financial sphere but also in the methods of implementing marketing campaigns. The technology allows marketers to monitor their advertisements regarding where they are placed and ensure that actual consumers are clicking or at least viewing them. The result is that companies can use advertising tools more efficiently due to more accurate information about the interaction with users.
Any business’s main task is to reduce costs and increase its profitability. This leads to the fact that companies tend to use digital marketing technologies, as it allows them to control a larger number of key indicators. Customers can as well benefit from the open nature of blockchain technology as it offers them more control over how their personal information needs to be utilized by marketers (Bassano et al., 2019). Thus, marketers have more opportunities to obtain vital information about interests and preferences with a properly built trusting relationship between companies and potential clients. This solves a fundamentally important task for marketers since the success of advertising depends on getting information about the audience.
The reach of a specific audience is becoming more and more accessible to marketers; therefore, it is necessary to consider many aspects of it. As paid advertisement gets more competitive, companies cannot afford to waste money and time on keywords or content that are poorly targeted and too broad. Among the most effective tools for reaching the ideal audience is a buyer persona which allows the marketer to visualize as well as better comprehend a consumer. In addition, many companies face the problem of identifying their key audience, which leads to failures in promoting a service or product.
In 2022, different companies should expect a competitive market as many businesses that offer services try to gain more targeted leads. Paid advertisements such as Google Ads and Facebook Ads are likely to increase cost-wise. Thus, marketers need to understand how to leverage less costly lead production approaches such as utilizing video marketing, networking on LinkedIn, and developing interactive channels such as virtual conferences and webinars. As competitiveness increases, it is necessary to deliver solid value to potential customers before anticipating direct sales.
What Makes a Brand âCoolâ
Customers spend huge amounts of finances on brands they consider to be âcoolâ. An important aspect of the success of any brand is how it is perceived by potential buyers. That is why “coolness” allows many companies to surpass their competitors since the lack of a certain reputation among the audience can negatively affect the attitude to advertising and the products themselves. Brands that meet certain criteria among users of social networks acquire important characteristics that allow them to stand out.
Among the findings from the research was that not every character is appropriate for all brands and consumer segments. Various qualities manifested in the “coolness” of the brand can conflict with each other and affect the perception of the brand. Such an example is the attitude of subcultural and popularity, which cannot manifest themselves in a product or service at the same time (Iliya, 2020, p. 28). In the process of the study, a tool was developed that enables a manager to establish which coolness component serves as a strength or weakness. It can also aid in determining the one with greater significance in shaping general perception and how they might differ across customer segments, geographies, and time.
Undertake a Visual Analysis for a Brand of Your Choice and Show How One or More Aspects of Cool Are Communicated This Way
A brand of choice is the basketball player Stephen Curry who is among the topmost-paid athletes in the world. Stefan is quite a popular athlete, which is reflected in the number of sneakers and other sportswear sold due to his reputation (Liu and Burns, 2018). It is important to note that such results are achieved due to the fact that this brand is perceived as “cool”. Among the aspects, they associate the player with extraordinary results in his performance and Stephenâs popular and aesthetic appeal. The main influence on the feeling of “coolness” is that the style of play of this game is quite different from the usual one, which influenced its success.
The fact is that basketball is perceived among ordinary people as a game created for tall people. Thus, this was reflected in the fact that the conventional style of the game was based on such players. However, with the advent of Stephen Curry, people began to pay attention to short players who tried to achieve game success at the expense of three-pointers. Consequently, the brand of Stephen Curry itself began to be perceived entirely differently from other players as their understanding of the game itself changed. Consequently, this has opened opportunities for marketers to associate the player with ordinary short people, which significantly expands the audience.
Consequently, with the growing achievements of Stephen Curry, sales of sportswear and tickets for his team’s matches began to increase. This is because it has become easier for people to associate themselves with the success of basketball players, which has changed their attitude to the sport itself (Liu and Burns, 2018). For instance, in 2009, when he first signed an NBA contract, Golden State Warriors was valued at four hundred and fifty million dollars. Currently, the team is valued at more than four billion dollars while still being the franchise player. In sports and especially in the United States, a brand is considered âcoolâ when it seems original, extraordinary, and close to people at the same time.
Stephen Curryâs type of play has influenced many boys and girls who are not gifted physically. Since his emergence, many others have followed in his footsteps and has even forced the coaches to change how they approach their game. Thus, mow different players are asked to shoot from beyond the three-point line as it guarantees more points. Thus, it is important to note how one person can greatly influence the perception of a product or service. Accordingly, marketers tend to enter into contracts with such influencers in order to associate the promoted brand with them.
Value and Brand Propositions
Influence of Value on Brand Propositions
A value proposition development depends on a review as well as an analysis of costs, benefits and value that a company can deliver to customers, potential consumers and constituent groups within or outside the firm. Thus, it is worth noting that it is part of an organizationâs overall marketing approach (Liu and Burns, 2018). It offers a declaration of intent or a statement that introduces the brand to customers by saying what a company stands for, its operation and reasons it deserves their business. There are individuals who present it as a marketing or business statement that they utilize to summarize why the client needs to use a service or purchase a product. The statement persuades prospective customers that one specific service or item offered will add more value or solve a particular problem better than others.
A proposition is viewed by experts as a promise by an organization to a consumer or segment in the market. It is easy to comprehend the reason why customers need to purchase from someone. Marketers are encouraged to first identify a need that people have so that it is easy to identify to cater to that. For instance, in their statements, they can demonstrate how they will solve the problem as suggested earlier. This assures the buyer that among all the available products or services offered in the market, this particular one is perfect and fits their situation. Unsuccessful companies have failed to utilize such statements to target consumers who can benefit from their products which aid in maintaining a companyâs competitive advantage.
What Makes Influencers Successful As Part of a Communication Strategy
Social media altered how companies communicate about their services and products. The transformation is manifested in the fact that content creators or influencers act as intermediaries between brands, and products on the market and the public due to their popularity. The role of an influencer in the marketing approach does not go through direct sales but via the building of a position in the long haul. Hence, the idea is to establish a partnership that will enable a company to raise the notoriety of a brand and associate products to a specific public. The more a business has a straight association with an influencer, the greater the natural state of the relationship. An important aspect of building communication between a brand and a client through the influencersâ ads is the number of followers who demonstrate engagement. In terms of their subscribers, there are different types of influencers, such as nano, micro, macro and mega.
A nano influencer refers to a content creator that has the smallest number of followers or subscribers. However, they have a significant interaction rate and produce content concerning a particular issue or theme, being a leader of a strong community and capable of sharing their messages with efficiency and much naturality. When involving this type of content creator in a communication strategy, brands need to attract many of them to participate in ad campaigns (Wibowo et al., 2020). The rationale for such a choice is that there is an opportunity to get more audience coverage. In this case, if the influencer has no experience in the implementation of advertising, companies should provide them with support. In addition, bloggers with a small number of followers are a source of traffic for marketers implementing their projects in narrowly focused and niche industries.
Another group of influencers is the micro, and which have between ten thousand and one hundred thousand followers. Similar to nano, they have an interested audience that reacts to their content (Romansky, 2019). At this stage of developing their personal brand, they already have aspirations to monetize their work. Thus, this type of influencer is more expensive for marketers. However, they are often used in advertising for active interaction with the public and increase local recognition. Experts claim that these content creators present a conversion rate 22.2 times higher than macro (Liu and Burns, 2018). They often speak about certain themes that are interesting to a great number of people. Some of the topics include lifestyle, beauty, gastronomy, travel, health, and humor (Rivera, Lopez, and Veiga, 2018). These often attract a diverse group of people with common preferences.
The third group of influencers is the macro, and they have between one hundred thousand and one million followers. They are suggested to a brand when a company has a goal of massive divulgation that seeks to reach multiple people simultaneously (Riedmann-Streitz, 2018). The content created by this type of blogger is suitable for advertising brands seeking to strengthen their position in the market or create some kind of resonance regarding the release of new products or services.
The last group of influencers is mega who have more than one million followers. They show advertising to a much larger number of people, but the disadvantage is that they are less interested in promoting the product, while the contract value is high. Most of such people were already known prior to social media, while others have produced content for a long gaining fame over the years. With a huge as well as diverse audience, their association with the public is very distant (Pereira, 2019). This type of influencer acts as the main source of traffic for brands seeking to increase their awareness quickly and massively (Rasool, Shah, and Islam, 2020). Services or products that are in the introduction stage to the market that require to be more recognition by a great number of people often are in this group (Rather, 2020). This type of influencer is also useful for promoting events, as well as products sold through e-commerce.
The Psychology of Price and Influence on Consumer Decision Making
Pricing is also an important aspect that should be considered in the business development strategy. This is determined by the fact that some products or services may be mistakenly offered to people because they do not correspond to their financial situation (Mathai and Jeswani, 2021). For instance, expensive items should not be sold in an area full of low-income earners (Kuppelwieser and Klaus, 2021). In this case, it is important to consider that people have basic needs that they must satisfy, and additional products will be considered a luxury (Manthiou, 2020). A brand that seeks to gain market in such geographies needs to understand that or else it will get losses.
However, pricing depends entirely on the company, which may affect the perception of the product. In the situation mentioned earlier, a good way to get consumers’ attention is to reduce the price if it does not harm the business itself (Horsfall, 2020). On the other hand, you should be careful since low prices for a quality product can arouse suspicion (Godovykh and Tasci, 2020). There are also factors that affect the perception of a product regardless of pricing, such as short shelf life or lack of availability of the product (Gilboa, Seger-Guttmann, and Mimran, 2019). This is reflected in the fact that people strive to take care of their health and safety.
Distributionâs Impact on the Overall Customer Experience
Companies such as Amazon and Alibaba have perfected their customer experience through their handling of the distribution of goods to customers. There are two aspects that they consider the most, which include time and convenience (Candelo, 2019). People want to deal with a brand that values their time and can deliver on a short deadline (Bueno et al., 2019). For example, during the pandemic, it was forbidden or not recommended to leave the house (Chylinski et al., 2020). Those with younger children had to rely on these companies to get necessities within a short length of time. Thus, companies that were always on time gained loyalty from the people they served.
Apart from time, customers consider brands that will deliver goods or services to them in a particular place. People tend to get their purchases as close to home as possible, respectively, companies that cannot provide this will lose their success and credibility. When fear of infection affected many people during the pandemic, delivering ordered goods to the doorsteps was more convenient and respectful. It is worth noting that this resulted in some businesses gaining more market and loyalty. Lastly, it is important as well to consider providing customers and clients with information about the logistics. Businesses need to provide their customers with the ability to track the goods sent to them, which improves the relationship between the buyer to the seller through trust.
Pros and Cons of Measurement for Marketers Today
In marketing, everything is measured: from the number of visitors on the site to the lifetime value of each client. A marketer must know and use all the basic metrics. Otherwise, he will not understand how effectively he spends money on this or that advertising and whether the company earns money under their management (Batat, 2019). It is worth noting that the majority of them will apply to key performance indicators or value events such as leads, sales, revenue, or any other action an end-user may undertake (Tuten, 2019). Marketing metrics allow the company to see the campaign in numbers and are needed for further analysis and reporting.
How measurement is categorized is essential since it enables marketers to compare them. Companies are continuously attempting to optimize their websites, investments, and all about their online and offline experiences. Now companies are using highly scientific methodologies based on a deep understanding of the calculation of specific marketing metrics to track and predict business trends and models (Palmatier and Steinhoff, 2019). Data measurement is fundamental to every successful marketing campaign, as nowadays, the buyerâs experience is greatly fragmented across devices and channels (Becker and Jaakkola, 2020). Thus, the ability to track the interaction of a potential audience with various ads can significantly improve its effectiveness. Marketing campaign metrics play an essential role in monitoring and planning marketing activities and possible ways to optimize them for better results. They form a reliable database, thanks to which marketers and business owners based on the B2B scheme develop and implement business solutions. Modern technologies make it possible to automate most of these functions.
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