From Trade to Tech

Today marketing is generally defined as a blend of strategy and technology, however, it hasn’t always been this way. The history of marketing as we know it began with humble beginnings of simply trying to sell goods and services.

Some believe it started with retailers trying to present goods in a certain way for trading. The effort to develop persuasive communications for selling goods and services has been around for a very long time although this may not have been recognised as a marketing business at the time.

Concept Of Marketing

The ideas of marketing as it is understood in the modern era began during the time of the Industrial Revolution. It was a time of rapid social change motivated by innovations in the scientific and technological industries.

It was during the Industrial Revolution that purchasing goods became easier for a consumer, rather than making things themselves. Mass production meant that many industries endeavoured to serve the needs of a growing consumer market. The infrastructure for transportation as well as mass media took hold, which sparked a need for producers to find better ways to develop products and a more sophisticated approach to informing consumers about these commodities.

Increased Competition

From the early twentieth century to the late 1940s, competition in the business world became intense. The need to increase selling by using marketing techniques became an essential part of being competitive, with the ability to develop a brand and appropriately market it grew in value.

Marketing Business

Starting in the 1960s the markets in many industries became saturated with competition. The need to get and keep customers now required specialists in the area of direct marketing. This is a time when companies began dedicating entire areas of their business for the sole purpose of marketing a company’s products or services.

This was when marketing management developed the sophistication necessary to be an essential part of business success. Marketing managers began getting involved in strategic planning. Their input was important for determining the cost, the methods used to communicate information about products and services to consumers and more.

Strategic Branding

The world of marketing began to change during the 1990s. A product or service was created and instantly a brand was developed. Companies began to realize they could focus on selling more high-quality products and build a better brand for them. This resulted in companies experiencing an improvement in their margins, but also expanded their reputation. It also increased the awareness of the brand they had created. Some companies with a private label were able to improve their market share by more than 49%.

Internet Marketing

With the evolution of the web, websites soon became an essential tool for commercialisation. During the late 1990s, simple text-based websites began to flourish. They were initially utilised by providing information about a company’s products or services.

Today, hundreds of billions of pounds are spent each year on the marketing business and digital trends are fast evolving, making it more and more difficult for companies to keep up and compete in their market place.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Within the past 25 years, the importance of using the web and search engines for marketing has increased dramatically. In the beginning, web search engines were not the most efficient operations. Search engine results were easy to alter, and the quality of the results was poor.

To provide the best quality results, search engines changed their algorithms. The goal was to validate referring sites to ensure the quality of results provided by the search engine. It is now almost impossible to manipulate SEO rankings.