In modern marketing, embracing technology is critical in order to give your business a competitive edge. Cloud computing and associated technologies such as big data and analytics, have revolutionised the way many firms do business, but some traditional marketing processes remain as important as ever before.
New technology, old beginnings
The cloud is bringing a huge number of benefits to modern marketing practices, but even though the use of this technology is a recent phenomenon, it has relatively distant origins (in computing terms at least).
The idea of sharing computer resources has been around since the 1950s, but continues to drive results today. Being able to seamlessly scale up or down your digital marketing portfolio relies on being able to flexibly increase or reduce the network and infrastructure resources at your disposal. With multiple marketing firms or teams sharing resources provided by a dedicated cloud provider, this has resulted in much greater efficiencies than ever before.
Similarly, the ability to collect data on your customers from a wide range of devices (PCs, smartphones, tablets) relies on the same technological principle that was first invented in the 1970s – the packet switched network. This method of digital network communications laid the foundations for the internet and later, cloud computing, enabling the number of network access points to multiply rapidly.
Social media insights, Sales Force and cloud storage are all huge enablers for marketers, but they are not so much breaks from the past, as evolutions of technologies that have been in development for years. The digital marketing landscape continues to evolve and grow as new technologies are embraced, and it’s likely that the foundations of the industry’s future are already being laid.
Embrace the future, but don’t neglect the past
Although digital marketers should look forward to new and innovative approaches, such as embracing wearable technologies or the Internet of Things, they should not neglect the tried and trusted marketing practices that have served them well for many years.
For example, if you are using big data analytics to generate insights about your customers, you first need to ascertain exactly what you hope to achieve. If you want to know how to better target a specific age group or what kind of results you are getting from your current strategy, these are the kind of questions that big data can help with but they are also the kind of questions that have proven useful since long before the advent of the internet. Ultimately, it’s important to remember that marketers must have a clear purpose in order to get the most out of digital technologies – the tools may have changed, but the goals remain largely the same.
Similarly, engaging with consumers remains crucial even as the number of ways to interact with them increases. It is not enough for companies to simply have a presence on social media, for example, they must treat their customers like human beings, push informative and entertaining marketing materials and think critically about their message before posting. Of course, all of these aspects were equally important before the rise of social media too, so it’s important they aren’t neglected just because marketers are using a new medium.
Understanding the industry’s past, and that of the technology influencing it, is a great help when attempting to decipher the future of your business or profession. Whether you’re working with cloud-based software or studying mobile trends it’s important to remember the human element of digital marketing – an industry that has always been keen to embrace the old and the new.
By Matthew Scullion, Managing Director at Matillion.
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