In this world of steady development of digital marketing, no major changes have been seen over the last decade. As predicted, many traditional marketing integrated to digital marketing and advertising, but there is still a distinction between digital and traditional marketing. Digital marketing is still described as marketing of products or services using digital channels that require the use of the Internet.
The world of marketers
Despite the fact that digital marketing is constantly changing as technology develops, the same basic principles still apply in 2028. By creating a well-organized website (desktop/mobile) and producing the best content you can, you will succeed. Website traffic and email marketing are one of the most effective digital marketing channels that generate business and provide high ROI. Ads containing images or text have been found to be the most effective ways to advertise. Due to the rapid global adaptation of mobile devices, the growth of search engine usage has increased even more.
Marketing technology has evolved, and new software has appeared but none of these have disrupted digital marketing or the way marketers tend to impact consumers.
We have seen some advanced development in the marketing technology. Novel project management tools have changed the way marketers manage, organize and delegate their work.
Artificial intelligence (AI) and automatization technology have automated some manual tasks and increased work efficiency. As an example, targeting and marketing analytics are nowadays fully operated by AI. However, over the past ten years marketers work load and tasks have remained more or less the same. Even though a part of all manual tasks have become automated, marketers are still responsible for strategy, planning, creation and execution. Creative work like content creation remains as manual work and is seen even more valuable than a decade ago.
Use of personal data in marketing
The EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has been an important and a corrective change in data privacy across Europe. GDPR is considered as a necessity, a generally accepted protective regulation that has harmonized marketing activities in Europe. GDPR has transformed marketing transparent, obligating marketers to use secure technologies, without restricting marketing activities.
Even though GDPR clauses have been re-assessed in every few years, the regulations cannot stay in pace with technology development or market evolution. GDPR attends data privacy inside EU but there is a clear conflict in controlling data globally. Data privacy regulations are well controlled locally but from a global point of view totally out of touch and asynchronous with the reality and the global market we operate in.
Consumers are now better aware of the meaning of personal data and the common rules of digital marketing. They have demanded full transparency with their data but as transparency has become the norm, consumers have gained back trust, allowing them to fully enjoy having better service and tailored content. Consumers can partly decide what content they receive by opting out. However, ads are tied to websites and mobile applications and therefore always targeted to users.
Media environment
The world wide web has remained as a centralized platform where brands are introduced and where traffic data is processed. The battle ground of digital marketing is dominated by global search engine, Google and a social network platform Facebook. Local traditional media operators (e.g. Sanoma and Alma in Finland) are still holding their position in the field of traditional marketing.
Partly personalized digital marketing (especially website, email, social media, mobile marketing and display ads) has gained more foothold in the field of marketing but the affect in traditional marketing has been limited. Mass marketing in broadcasting TV and radio are holding their place. Global brands like McDonalds carry on successfully mass marketing in TV and radio. Addition to personalized marketing enabled by AI and automatization, quality content, traditional marketing activities and understanding of personas and segments are still highly valuable.
Changes in the market
Nowadays browsing online, the country of origin of companies is quite difficult to verify from the first glance. Google's language technology automatically translates any content based on user’s location or nationality. Currency is also transformed automatically. This creates difficulties separating local from global companies. Due to the development of Google´s tools, Chrome has a monopoly in the
playground of browsers. However, there is no certainty how long this monopoly will last. But for now, the wealthiest western nations and tech giants Google and Facebook lead the development of technology and dictate the possibilities in digital marketing.
As the dominant social network platform, Facebook does it´s best in aiding local businesses to survive. In order to compete in the market, local businesses need to assimilate as a part of Facebooks ecosystem. Facebook offers low-cost technology, which allows smaller businesses to keep up with the big players in the market. Through Facebook´s ecosystem, small and medium sized companies also have access to AI, automatization and big data solutions in every day marketing and sales. Similarly, Facebook needs local businesses to activate local communities and users.
As e-commerce have become more global, also the need for physical shopping experiences has increased. Consumers are longing for shopping experiences in brick-and-mortar stores and shopping malls. Consumers long for personalized good services, quality products and good prices.
Making payments online with application like MobilePay, ApplePay and PayPal has become the norm, whereas wire transfers have become obsolete. What it comes to physical purchases, same applications in mobile are the norm for money transaction. Card and cash payments are no longer accepted.
Major challenges and academic research interests
Due to language translation technology and grown users in social networks, there has been a remarkable increase in user generated content (UGC). Social connections have fragmented, which has caused the need for classification of social contacts. The amount of content created by friends, colleagues, influencers, media and brands has reached the critical mass. In the eyes of a consumer everything in global but the biggest challenge for marketers is: How to create awareness globally when the content and competition has grown exponentially? Another challenge in digital marketing is exactly the same as it was a decade ago, how to find the most skilled people to do our marketing and how to stand out in the crowd. How to rapidly generate ideas of attraction and increase creativity? Marketers role in a world of technology has grown as a popular research topic among academics. How automatization will affect digital marketing and how long creativity and decision making will be done by humans?