The technology behind digital marketing

Developments in technology and the evolution of marketing are inextricably intertwined. Technology has underpinned major milestones in the history of marketing since its inception. The process tends to go something like this:

1 New technology emerges and is initially the preserve of technologists and early adopters.

2 The technology gains a firmer foothold in the market and starts to become more popular, putting it on the marketing radar.

3 Innovative marketers jump in to explore ways that they can harness the power of this emerging technology to connect with their target audience.

4 The technology migrates to the mainstream and is adopted into standard marketing practice.

The printing press, radio, television and now the internet are all examples of major breakthroughs in technology that ultimately altered forever the relationships between marketers and consumers, and did so on a global scale. But of course marketing isn’t about technology, it’s about people: technology is only interesting, from a marketing perspective, when it connects people with other people more effectively.

There are plenty of examples of technology through the ages having a significant impact on various markets – technology that may seem obscure, even irrelevant today. Remember Muzak.

The point is that technology has the ability to open up completely new markets, and to radically shake up existing ones. The mainstream adoption of digital technology – the internet, the software applications that run on it, and the devices that allow people to connect to both the network and each

other whenever, wherever and however they want to – promises to dwarf all that has come before it. It heralds the single most disruptive development in the history of marketing.

Whether that disruption represents an opportunity or a threat to you as a business who gets clients through advertising depends largely on your perspective. I hope the fact that you’re here means that you see it as an opportunity.

Social recommendation

When you share something in your social media, it means your friends will start to getting to know you by the things you share. Lets say you love to walk , perhaps you will share the trails you did in the past, how was your experience, perhaps what makes the experience better or even the products or shoes who make the walking more comfortable and enjoyable. If one of your friends is going to go for a trail experience he probably will trust your recommendations, and will seek your help in that matter. 

On the other side of the coin it is your name at stake when you give some recommendations, you don´t want to say something is good if you did not even taste it first, if you are recommending something base on receiving commission (if they discover that) you loose your credibility. So usually recommendation from a friend or even strangers are a good source of reliable information because people don´t appreciate to associate themselves with things or products they don´t approve first. 

the best part is you don´t have to pay to get those recommendations, if you only ask a customers for that , they usually will give it to you for free, it does represent also an opportunity for them to complain about something if the experience was not so good. 

that is valuable for your business for 2 reasons: you get your feedback to improve your business base on real assessment from your customers and also get your free review to publish on your website to increase sales. That service is not expensive and it is a great starting point as many other services we find today in online marketing. We call this reputation management.

There is a growing importance on social recommendations. According to a study by Mckinsey in 2014, social recommendations induced an average of 26% of purchase across all products categories. That should be enough for you not to underestimate the power of social media recommendation. 

More than ever people are going to buy from you because of your values and what YOU stand for instead of cheap prices + sales tricks.

 This title is a bold statement but I guess if you have been around for a while you have been victim for the system and unscrupulous companies and tricks for the purpose of just selling more. Because of that and some previous experience I become skeptical and careful to make decision regarded where to spend my money when hiring for services and everything else.

 

When we talk about branding, that is just building up the values of brand based on, or in other words what you or your brand stand for. You start do have a reputation for the way you do business and people now recognize that and they buy it from because of that.

 Big companies can have a reputation too, but when they become big , maybe too big, meaning they become public by raising money from the stock market, not been manage as small business anymore but by CEO and its committee They also get a lot of pressure from the market who want so see the stock to raise. Them, comes to play the biggest temptation to make more money than to stand loyal to its foundational values…

 We have seem many companies to change in the course of its development but the customer always vote with their choice and money to buy from who they believed stand for what they are in agreement with. How many times you have seem somebody buying a more expensive product from the competitor because they care for environment and they want to support that, or buy from that company for any other reason they want to support

 Technology, more specific the internet, has made the information much more accessible than before, we can buy and have business all around the world with the simple click of a mouse in the comfort of our homes or even in palm of our hands using our cell phones. With this increased market we also find hard to find out who deserve our trust, so in that sense we as clients are becoming more difficult to convince, and we resort to some tools to make our decisions. For example to buy a book we always look for the reviews on that book.

Today I just saw this event “Factor X live” a Brazilian advertising company claiming that people are preferring to buy from companies who approach them organically, that means people are ok with advertisement who are not perfect as long as they were honest, perhaps they prefer to see the owner of a English school talking honestly about his school than an ad professionally made using actors. Internet is making this possible, any small enterprise can reach millions of people with a very small budget for a very efficient online marketing, specially for information products that can be delivered instantaneously from the internet.

 If you never have try this before, meaning to have a online presence, perhaps you should try, it is never being so much easy and cheap to get your words and business to so many with so little to invest. Stick to your values, remember people are looking for you because of them,…. You can even hire someone to manage your online presence, as many business always bought some adverting in the past, nothing wrong with that….

 I want to conclude this article inviting you to share how it is been your Online experience ?? Good or bad ? not been online yet, in that case why ? 

Tips to Get Repeat Web Traffic. Very simple examples of what can you do.

1. Update the pages on your website frequently. Stagnant sites are dropped by some search engines. You can even put a date counter on the page to show when it was last updated.

 

2. Offer additional value on your website. For affiliates and partners you can place links to their sites and products and ask them to do the same for you. You can also advertise their books or videos, if these products relate to your industry and are not in competition with your own product.

I am doing exactly this item number 2 on this page 

3. You can allow customers to ‘opt in’ to get discounts and special offers. Place a link on your site to invite customers to ‘opt in’ to get a monthly newsletter or valuable coupons.

I do this one too, sometimes you can see some of my courses like SEO on Udemy platform with a discount or for free on "google my business page", website, LinkedIn page, or even here on my blog

4. Add a link to your primary page with a script ‘Book Mark or Add this site to your Favorites’. 

5. Add a link ‘Recommend this site to a Friend’ so that the visitor can email your website link, with a prewritten title, “Thought you might be interested in this”, just by clicking on it.

here at "Blogger.com" you can notice those "share" buttons, I did not nothing, they are already done for your user here in this blog platform. 

 6. Brand your website so that visitors always know they are on your site. Use consistent colors, logos and slogans and always provide a ‘Contact Us’ link on each page.

7. Create a ‘Our Policies’ page that clearly defines your philosophy and principles in dealing with your customers. Also post your privacy policy as well so that clients know they are secure when they visit your site.

8. Create a FAQ page which addresses most of the doubts and clarifications about your product or your company that are likely to be asked. This helps to resolve most of the customers doubts in their first visit to your site.

8. Ensure that each page on your website has appropriate titles and keywords so that your customer can find their way back to your site if they lose the book mark.

9. Never spam a client, who has opted for newsletters, with unsolicited emails. Later if they decide they want to ‘opt out’ of the mailings, be sure you honor their request and take them off the mailing list. They may still come back if they like your products. But they will certainly not come back if you continue to flood their email box with mails they no longer wish to receive.

What are you doing with your time? Use it in a way you wont regret latter.

 From one research I did make this post you can see in the picture. Very often I end up sending it to people I talked everywhere.... that post help us to align our most important goals with the time we have. That is because it is so easy to get cough up on the "rat race" of our busy days...

As you can notice from the answer on the research no one said they regret they did not spent more time in the office, or more time working, or they regret that they did not make enough money. All the answers were related to fulfilling good relationships.... 

The better relationships you have the less regrets you will have by end of your life. Since many years ago I try to live in way that reflect that believe because I think it is true. For example, now I am divorced and alone in China as a University teacher but I still make the priority in my time to talk to my kids that are living in USA with their mother. To be honest the time we spent online together is the best time anyone can wish for...

We do play chess, Risk, naval battle, among others....

here is me playing with my kid

I am famous for being a very economic person, some of my friends tell a joke saying if I go swimming with a effervescent medicine on my hands, it can arrive dry on the other side of the swimming pool. This is them comparing how tied up I hold money matters....

Even thou I feel money is very important (we need it to survive in this world) I also do know that it will not matter to much to the place we are going after this life. So I made lot of my life decision accordingly.

I left our home (the house we live in) to my ex-wife without fight for it, I did believe she need a good place to live as well our kids, but she end marring again and moving out to USA. So again I let my kids go with her while I could prevent that for happening just by not signing the authorization paper for them leave the country. I have learn by reading therapeutic book that small kids would miss mother much more than father, so made this decision for their well being not mine.

Now I do keep making the effort to be available to them wherever and whenever they need, and for now that is mostly online.

I just wrote this article because sometimes we need someone or something like this article to point us out to the right direction in life, so we can start making better decision in life, at least the ones who we will not regret when we arrive to the point the research I just talking about in the begging of this text.

I hope you did enjoy reading this text, also hope it makes you wonder and reflect where are you going, perhaps you want to share in the comments below your story and if this insight was helpful.

This blog is about marketing and related subjects, but as you can see.... not loosing sight of the most important things in life can make a huge difference in how you enjoy life and have your peace of mind.

Let me recommend Chris Bailey and his post about 7 Ways To Better Use Your Time, it is a very nice reading.

Online Presence. How important that is?

 There is no yellow pages anymore, at least like there is to be in the past. I am afraid I have to explain what it "means yellow pages" for the newer generation. So here it goes: Yellow pages were part of the phone book , where telephone companies have to publish annually, where you could find the end phone numbers and address of commercial entities (this part was printed in yellow pages)

So if you have a store your number will appear in the phone book, but also for the purpose of advertising you publish your number on  the yellow pages, here you could buy a bigger space for your number as it works more as an ad space.

In my country at least some people would say if you were not on the yellow pages you were not on business, meaning people could not find you.

Is very safe to say that the Online space is what yellow pages were used to be in the past, that is why the paragraph from the picture above "... One of the top 3 reasons of start-up businesses failing is they didn´t have an online presence" make a lot of sense.

Hope you get the message, if you are opening up a business, do not go on before placing a online presence where people can find you.

Costumers will love to hear from you.

That is because they buy from you. If you love ice-cream and the ice-cream shop owner make the effort to tell you the ice-cream you love has just been made, it is fresh, and it is on promotion... you will love  him for it. I have such an experience.... not with ice-cream

My wife (well my ex-wife....) had once a Patchwork store while we were still married, and I helped in the store, and I did found out pretty quick that the costumers loved to hear from me when the new load of Patchwork fabric just arrived, they loved also when I told them we were on promotion, they also loved when their requested supply arrived and I told them they can come to pick it up.

 I wished to say it was because of my personality but it was not the reason they loved to hear from me. At that time I had a blog and a website but did not much else. My mistake.... 

To take advantage of online presence without many other tools that comes with it is like living below the full potential of your business. Don´t do that....

It was not a completely disaster because I used to text my clients on their cell phone to tell those things they love to hear from me, witch makes me happy too because my sales increased a lot because of such small action.

Today the market has change a lot and everyone has a mobile phone in their hands and it is so much easier to make your clients happy (Remember they love to hear from you). You don´t have to do it yourself, to hire someone to do it for you will also do the trick and will be worth it. 

business card picture

Today costumers can hear from you in many different ways, but most of them will prefer to hear from you on their favorite social media platform, don´t be afraid to build up your audience... your customer will love you because of it. Remember, when you advertise to YOUR audience, the Facebook group community, your results will be so much better, this concept is better explained in this following video: