This month, The Ideal Marketing Company is celebrating 10 years in business. Starting off with just one person, the company now employs six people in total, working on a wide range of marketing activities. Interestingly, some of the areas we now work on for clients didn’t even exist in 2003.
Here is a list of 10 things that have made an impact on the marketing scene over the past decade.
The speed of the internet. In 2003 the internet was accessed via dial up, now broadband speeds are enabling us to gather information faster than ever.
The rise of social media. Twitter didn’t exist; Facebook was in its infancy. A whole generation has grown up with this technology and now takes it for granted. It is also one of the main routes to market for many clients.
Mass e-mail communication. Services such as Mail Chimp allow you stay in touch with thousands of prospects and clients for virtually nothing.
Mobile communication. The first mobile phone in use at The Ideal Marketing Company was a Nokia with a black and white screen and no camera. Now, Smartphones and tablets are increasingly becoming the way we access the internet.
Cloud storage. Before, if you wanted to access data you would generally have to go into the office. Now that data can be accessed from anywhere – even the beach.
Customer loyalty schemes. The rise of technology has allowed companies to hold ever more sophisticated data on customers including birthdays, buying patterns and average spends.
Targeted advertising. With more ways to reach prospects than ever before, it has never been more cost effective to profile and target your ideal customer.
The rise of online shopping. A decade ago people were very nervous about entering their credit cards online. Now for most people, Google is where the shopping experience starts – for business or pleasure.
The speed of communication. Although rolling news channels were around a decade ago, for trade or local news stories, things tended to wait until the week or month the publication arrived on your desk. Now we find that press releases can be picked up and run online within minutes.
Quality of data, and the cost of it. The cost of business data is coming down all the time. We find that when it comes to buying business lists or contact details for media outlets, data is becoming more accurate and easier to use.
In truth, very few things out there are truly ‘new’ and the technology is only helpful if it is used by people who know what they are doing with it. In the same way that owning a top of the range Mercedes is of no use if you can’t drive, having access to such a bewildering choice of technology is not much help if you don’t know how to use it to drive your business forward.
We are living in exciting times and who knows or would want to predict what changes will unfold over the next decade?
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MD & Head of Digital Marketing
Jessica has worked in digital marketing for over 10 years and has watched it evolve from an experimental marketing option to an essential tool for most businesses. She is driven to help businesses achieve their objectives using the best digital marketing resources available and recognises that each business is different. Jessica devours the latest news about digital marketing and is constantly learning in order to stay ahead of the trends for clients.
