What technology means for the marketing mix

What technology means for the marketing mix

Marketing has evolved as technology has evolved. Billboard ads and newspaper adverts feel somewhat outdated. Television, the internet and smart phones are taking over the marketing world, forcing marketers to shake up their strategies.

Now, instead of ringing up the local newspaper or radio station, marketers are emailing websites or working out how to integrate adverts into mobile apps.

Traditional marketing still exists

However, traditional marketing — such as networking and face-to-face marketing — is still around. In some cases, these channels have embraced technology. For instance, Skype and email have really made it easy for marketers to stay in touch with their target audiences.

Your marketing can now be optimised and targeted to show content or products to people who are most likely to be interested in them. Some say this has made advertisers’ jobs too easy.

One example of this is Facebook’s advertising scheme. This lets you specify what age, gender and precise interests you would like to pinpoint with your ad.

Facebook even allows you to advertise to people who are connected to a specific person. You can also choose to target to people with a specific relationship status, language, education level or workplace.

Tech enables social marketing

This brings a whole new level of marketing: social marketing. Sites that provide social marketing include Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Instagram, LinkedIn, Yelp and YouTube. Each has its own, unique selling point, but all share a common factor: personal data collection.

Nowadays, marketers need to track and measure multi-channel campaign that may include email, search, social media, telephone, and direct mail. They will also track clicks, responses, purchase patterns and other such data.

It’s been a long time

Marketers have been using these digital methods for a long time, but not as long as traditional methods such as networking.

Networking events provide many benefits for a company. They build relationships with other businesses and create opportunities that could lead to new people coming into the business to work or to spend money.

In conclusion, technology has aided marketers greatly over the past few years. But although in many ways it has made marketing easier, it has also added complexity.

The ratio of online to traditional marketing now stands at about 70:30. Because of the enormous diversity on the internet, marketers must do outrageously impressive things to get noticed.

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Adam Stevens is a technology and marketing enthusiast as well as a writer for Intxt, a bespoke mobile marketing specialist.