Over the past decade, digital marketing has rapidly evolved to become an essential component of almost all business marketing strategies. At the very basic level, digital marketing has empowered companies with the ability to discover, target, and reach new and existing customers more effectively and less expensively. However, the growth of digital marketing has been accompanied by widespread concerns about the impacts on consumer welfare.
Foremost among these concerns is the tracking of consumers through digital marketing methods and the ensuing impact on consumer privacy. This article will explore information concerning how digital marketing is being used, the underlying drivers and technology used to target consumers, the growing concerns about the impact of tracking consumers online, the potential impacts of digital marketing on consumer welfare, and regulatory activity related to digital marketing.
The article is structured in the following way introduces the concept of digital marketing, defines what digital marketing is, and examines why digital marketing has become popular with firms, provides a detailed guide to the most common digital marketing methods, the different types of tracking technologies used in those methods, and explores the drivers behind targeting and tracking consumers.
Definition and Scope of Digital Marketing
Digital marketing is defined as the usage of the internet and various digital technologies to market goods and services. Organizations use digital channels such as search engines, social media, email, and other websites to connect with potential prospects. In general, digital marketing encompasses all types of marketing activities that utilize electronic devices or internet technology, either offline or online, which are associated with a brand or product.
Digital marketing activities operate essentially like the classical means of advertising. However, there is less effort expended by consumers and a more extensive scope of reach. The common elements of digital marketing, which are tailored objects, non-linear and directly assessed interactions, digital effects that give room to rebrand for the purpose of relaunch and updates, and the availability of a broad sphere of imaginative opportunities for the advertisers, which are typically not easily feasible in traditional marketing.
More specifically, digital marketing refers to marketing goods, services, and therefore businesses through online technologies and digital channels. It is also often applied interchangeably with internet marketing, online marketing, or web marketing. In essence, digital marketing is corporate advertising and endorsement on digital and online media channels.
The phrase “Digital Marketing” is closely related to campaigns used to create brand contacts with an organization’s focus group using various types of online ads. In general, there are five vectors of digital marketing that have been observed as being intertwined; however, each has specificity vis-à-vis the channel attribute and the consumer users’ needs. The various vectors in these categories are termed commercial email, search-related activities, lead details, e-commerce transactions, as well as various multimedia-related activities.
Historical Context and Evolution
The application of marketing practices in business is not a recent development. The concept of marketing has evolved over time. The origin of the term marketing dates back to the 17th century, when it was used to define the process of buying and selling products in a market.
The principles of marketing transcended sales and included the set of actions that allowed a product to be known and desired by consumers.
The Evolution of Marketing
The evolution of marketing can be divided into distinct historical periods, with the emergence and importance of advancements in those fields: marketing, digital marketing, social media marketing, and now neuromarketing, which consists of applying neuroscientific techniques to marketing problems. Neuro-display, for example, identifies the areas of greatest visual impact in an advertisement; neuromarketing also identifies the cortical areas that are activated while people make a purchase decision in certain circumstances.
The emergence of the first industrial revolution involved changes in the ways that companies organized their production processes, and with it, they began to change the way they thought about marketing. It was then that scientific studies of production data began. It was standardizing and simplifying production processes, making them more efficient and less costly. But this was not the marketing concept we know; they were rudimentary attempts to reduce costs. The creation of the marketing concept began in the 1960s, with the publication of a significant book.
According to the authors, marketing has to go through three stages: the first, agrarian society, focuses on production and agricultural products; the second, industrial society, in which there is excess production and companies start to think of sales; but it is only in the third, information society, that marketing as a concept is born and that seeking the customer’s satisfaction is the primary goal of any business. And this context could not be better adapted than the information era we are living in today.
With the explosion of numerous information technologies and the digitization of information, marketing became a project intertwined with total quality, aimed at achieving customer satisfaction.
This led to a market orientation focused on the client’s needs. In today’s marketing context, organizations no longer develop service or product strategies only to meet demand; they are relatively free and want to create and expand needs and wants. The potential knowledge of the consumer is a potent strategic weapon for modern companies.
The grand vision of the marketing concept is the creation of value for and with consumers. It offers a unique strategic perspective on the organization of companies and their ability to obtain a sustainable competitive advantage in the market.
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