Credit – https://pixabay.com/photos/marketing-strategies-3105875/
As all marketing companies now focus primarily on digital marketing, primarily through the potential shown in SEO and social media, it’s becoming more difficult to remember a world where adverts and marketers had to compete against each other via traditional marketing, whether it was via radio, newspaper, TV, or a combination of all three.
For many businesses and individuals, the internet was their ticket to generational wealth, refocusing their business models and capitalizing on how society and the global economy were moving.
However, for some companies, it either took them a little bit longer to get on board, or they fell too far behind and became surplus to requirements in a world that now demands some version of an online presence for your business. Here are three key reasons this shift was so significant and seemed to happen quickly.
#1 – An Expanding Customer Base
Gaming companies didn’t have to adopt a scattergun method like they did before the internet. Previously, they’d have to select certain TV stations or radios and pay for time slots or shows they could advertise in the middle, which would find the biggest audience. It was an uneven approach, and few companies could afford to advertise and market as regularly as they would like.
However, once the internet started to spotlight how businesses now had the chance to market to a global audience rather than a local or national one, marketing companies acted quickly to put together packages and ideas that companies could use to try to capture an international market.
Online casinos were one sector that went from hyper-local markets to international audiences overnight. This meant that gambling firms could now market their products and that their market would come looking for them. Nowadays, gambling companies have mastered the art of digital marketing, with new casino games now acting as the spearhead of their strategy to onboard new customers to their casinos.
Being able to appeal to an expanding customer base online meant that marketing companies in other industries, aside from the casino world, could see the impact of quality digital marketing and how it could yield a much greater return than old-fashioned methods.
#2 – Cutting Down On Costs
Perhaps the most obvious factor, and the one that definitely drove the most significant change, was that digital marketing slashed costs compared to traditional methods. For gaming companies, this was ideal, as many business analysts and experts classify them as a subsector of the wider tech world.
Therefore, the move to digital marketing meant that gaming marketing departments were not only moving to a cheaper, cost-effective route but could also target an online audience, where a significant portion of their target market existed.
Online marketing was something smaller companies could do themselves on a smaller budget, and it meant that grassroots marketers could offer ways for people to appeal to their target market directly. While influencers have changed how marketing and advertising work, the basis of this change remains the same: marketing companies can target their core audience far more easily online. Although social media marketing might not be cheap, it’s a safer bet of reaching the right audience than an extortionate radio jingle or two back in the day.
#3 – Societal Changes
In the 1990s, fewer people considered themselves computer-literate and competent online. However, as newer generations have grown up with this technology and the internet has grown astronomically in terms of capability, speed, and costs, it’s left many old-fashioned ways of marketing in its wake. Throughout the internet’s timeline, the 21st century essentially acted as a seminal moment, with mass adoption and companies waking up to the enormous potential that lay in wait.
Smartphones, tablets, and quicker internet speeds meant we started getting all our information online. We played our games online and spoke to our friends and family online, so it was only the next natural step for marketing companies to move into the digital world. Even sectors with a traditional spin, like word games, have found success online, such as the immense success of Wordle, which took the world by storm a couple of years ago.
Conclusion
This variable’s coincidence with cheaper costs, direct advertising to a target audience, and the potential to advertise to millions of new international customers rather than just domestic customers on a local scale meant that the tide had turned in a big way at the turn of the century.
As we reach the end of the first quarter of the 21st century, it wouldn’t be surprising to see some old marketing avenues, such as TV and physical newspapers, disappear entirely in the next 25 years.
Given that the demise of local news is accelerating due to the lack of an audience, marketing follows wherever the audience is, and it’s hard to envisage any reality where the internet and digital marketing as a whole don’t end up dominating and monopolizing all avenues of marketing within the next half a century.