Digital marketing : role in new age marketing - revolutionary or evolutionary

Abstract

This paper is a result of my passion for marketing and a humble attempt to understanding the changes surrounding, and impacting how companies communicate value to their customers and partners. It outlines the evolution process of marketing from being a miniscule function in large companies to a key gatekeeper for most large companies in the ad tech space today including tech biggies like Google and Facebook that earn a whopping majority of their revenue through digital marketing. It's also an attempt to refer to external economic and technological changes that may or may not have caused a change in the way businesses position, segment, or target consumers or, more currently appropriate, end users. Amidst a lot of jargon thrown around marketing analytics, big data, & audience profiling, the underlying intention is to observe possibilities of digital marketing being another step in the evolution of marketing or a disruption that changes the way marketing is scientifically applied. The paper aims to ignite a discussion around where the bandwagon marches towards, what is going to be the next big wave in reaching out to your customers, and how do we communicate value that customers find essential to them?

This research touches upon key trends and hallmark points of evolution in marketing as a function and its scope. The introduction of new channels of marketing, and the inclusion of data modelling are examples of new methods that help marketing evolve as a practice. Although this research does outline the fact that the core concepts of marketing hold their firm ground. I would like to forewarn that this is purely a qualitative research. Coming with a great deal of experience in digital marketing with Google, I do realize the importance of marketing analytics and it is a subject that is widely written about so my attempt to take on the qualitative side of this business. Qualitative research is more perceptive and, therefore, more intriguing to me. The evolution of marketing in itself is based on how customer preferences have changed overtime whether it is to do with what they expect of a car or what they expect from companies to tell them about the car. Love it or hate it, there is a revolution happening in the pretext of an evolution or a possible long-predicted evolution taking place with revolutionary impact. It is a paradigm shift in the way we communicate, the way we interact with one another and in groups. It is the palpable effect of guzzling Exabytes of information and producing awe-inspiring state-of-the-art marketing analytics that companies use to woo their customers. It is this game of thrones that inspires more and more research work in this field. Everybody has an opinion on it and here is mine.