Marketing ideas are more abundant than ever before. There are marketing ideas to help every type of small business in every industry. However, the current trend of making marketing ideas available to anyone that wants them is a completely new idea. Marketing has evolved a great deal over the last fifty years. Here are some ways that marketing has changed.
The Early Days of Marketing
Small businesses in the 1950s, 60s, 70s and early 80s had a mystique about marketing. Advertisements were the primary way to spread the word about a business. Small and large businesses focused heavily on the product itself instead of developing relationships with consumers. Small businesses were local businesses trying to sell their wares to community members but didn’t provide information about why choosing a local provider was best.
For example, in the 1960s, no one talked about how local businesses support local economies. According to Better Accounting, you would never have seen a television advertisement saying that for every dollar spent at a local small business, 68% is funneled back into the local economy. There are several reasons why this information was not valued by the advertising community as well as now.
Before the digital age, advertising was flashy and bold and was delivered via flyers, newspapers, radio, and television commercials. However, the small business owner typically depended on written forms of advertising because media like radio and television were cost-prohibitive.
The 80s Bring a Shift
Many marketing historians point out the 1984 Super Bowl as the time when how we advertise goods and products shifted and when advertising ideas started evolving. During the 1984 Super Bowl, a commercial for Apple computers ran. The commercial was not about the product itself because most people at the time would not understand how the product worked. Instead, the commercial was focused on why you needed a Mac.
It was a huge hit and spawned marketing ideas that changed how products, goods, and services are marketed. A shift in ideas about forming relationships with customers and not just making sales has changed the face of marketing. Dunkin Donuts, first located outside Boston, MA, and founded in 1950, has stood the test of time largely because of the companies’ willingness to adopt new marketing ideas.
The ‘Time to Make the Donuts’ campaign was a tremendous hit for dunkin donuts. Today, Dunkin, owned by Baskin Robbins, focuses on encouraging long-term customer relationships. Dunkin sells a cup of coffee every 37 seconds in the United States.
The 90s Moving Forward
Today, digital marketing is on every business’s radar. Creating an online presence and directly engaging with consumers is how businesses are being built. Today, it is not enough to share information about products and services. Today, you have to form relationships to advertise products and services.
Ideas about how to advertise businesses have dramatically changed since the birth of the digital advertising error. Today, there is far more competition than ever before. Ideas about relationships and navigating relationships with consumers have changed during this information era. Today, small businesses are competing not just with businesses across the street but with businesses around the globe. Advertising has to be more personalized.
Customized advertising that speaks directly to the consumer is where we are at today. AI, analytics, and more are used to customize advertising for specific target audiences. Today, the goal is to ‘drive traffic’ to a website to establish relationships with consumers by delivering valuable content. SEO (search engine optimization) is critically important in marketing.
SEO content helps with driving traffic, legitimizing a business, and delivering valuable information to the consumer, all with the hopes of establishing interest and ultimately making the sale. In fact, about 60% of clicks go to the top 3 search engine results, making SEO critically important.
It can be hard to keep up with all the new marketing ideas and even harder to implement new marketing ideas. As marketing becomes more and more dependent on technology, more business owners are making the choice to team up with marketing professionals. You can too. Learn how the latest marketing ideas can help to grow your business.