As the marketing landscape continues to evolve, the challenges of measuring our performance and integrating our efforts—while navigating changing privacy laws—continue to perplex marketers. It’s the seller’s version of more money, more problems if the money is the ad spend and the problems are, well, all of the above.
We knew that traditional methods like MMM (Marketing Mix Modeling) and MTA (Multi-Touch Attribution) were not making the cut. MMM was too slow, MTA too narrow. Instead, SaaS platforms address the challenge of media measurement and attribution, and offer a new solution: a tool to proactively and strategically plan for the future.
What are the 4 eras of marketing?
The four epochs in the history of marketing are known as the production era, the sales era, the marketing and marketing control era, or the epoch. Some analyzes only include the first three of these.
Robert Keith first introduced the notion of different eras of marketing in his article “The Marketing Revolution”, published in the Journal of Marketing in 1960. He examined the marketing practices of the Pillsbury Corporation between 1869 and 1960. The four different eras correspond to the market evolution.
The production era, up to the 1930s, is characterized by an abundance of raw materials and new mechanical processes that fueled investment in mass production. Many companies have concentrated on producing a single item. Marketing efforts typically consisted of informational brochures and catalogs.
In the sales age, which stretched from the 1930s to the 1950s, companies began to be more aggressive in their pursuit of competitive advantage. Sales campaigns were devised to persuade customers, or the advantages of the specific product over others. Customers’ wants and needs became important, and distribution networks developed.
Brand marketing emerged during the marketing era, which was from the 1950s to the 1960s. In marketing departments, the brand manager emerged as the individual responsible for all marketing activities associated with a brand, and the competition increased.
Eras of Marketing
After the industrial revolution, manufacturing became widespread and gradually became more efficient. Many companies believed that the key to success in the market was to minimize the price to the consumer. The best way to control this was to minimize their production and distribution costs.
The classic example in almost every marketing textbook is from the Ford Motor Company. We remember this company primarily because of its production and manufacturing system, where it made its workers specialize in particular tasks and roles. As a result, Ford was able to significantly reduce the cost of manufacturing a motor vehicle and was able to offer its cars at prices well below its competition.
As other companies in other industries saw Ford’s success, they tried to follow this example and work hard to streamline their manufacturing production system and reduce logistics costs in their distribution channels. Hence, marketing success for those companies that were very cost-focused and very efficient and were in a position to pass on those savings to the end consumer.
While this is a relatively outdated approach in a developed economy in the world today, it is generally how some manufacturers in developing countries are currently competing by being able to make products much cheaper than their competitors or competing nations.
One of the reasons Ford could reduce its cost to such an extent was that it only offered one product, namely the Ford Model T, which only came in the color black.
When did marketing start, and how has it evolved over time?
All the knowledge that man has accumulated over the centuries in the history of marketing is now available on the Internet. We have collected and organized it for you in the most accessible way possible. We want you to access everything you want to know about marketing history quickly and efficiently, have an enjoyable marketing experience, and feel like you’re actually finding the marketing history information you’re looking for.
The study of the history of marketing as a discipline is significant because it helps define the basic lines to recognize change and understand how the discipline evolves in response to these changes. The practice of marketing has been known for millennia, but the term “marketing” used to describe the business activities of buying and selling products or services, came into popular use in the late 19th century. The study of the history of marketing as an academic field emerged in the early 20th century.
Marketers tend to distinguish between the history of marketing practice and the history of marketing thought:
- The history of marketing practice refers to an investigation into the ways in which marketing was practiced; and how these practices have evolved over time while responding to changing socioeconomic conditions.
- The history of marketing thought refers to an examination of the ways in which marketing has been studied and taught.
Although the history of marketing thought and the history of marketing practice are distinct fields of study, they intersect at different times. Marketing professionals are committed to innovative practices that capture the attention of marketing scholars who codify and disseminate these practices. At the same time, marketing academics often develop new research methods or theories that practitioners subsequently adopt. Therefore, developments in marketing theory inform marketing practice and vice versa. The history of marketing will remain incomplete if the academic world is dissociated by professionals.
How has marketing evolved?
The year that is behind us and what we are experiencing are completely exceptional due to Covid-19 and the measures taken to defeat it.
In this socioeconomic scenario, the marketing sector, already highly inclined to change, has evolved even faster to provide comprehensive responses to the new needs of consumers and business customers.
It is appropriate to examine what has happened in the recent past and what awaits us in the coming months in the world of corporate communication.
The marketing plans are developed in advance compared to the moment when the first activities are officially started, consequently, what had been planned for the 2022 communication of the companies, has undergone great changes since the appearance of the Coronavirus in the West.
Operational marketing in the first months of last year was blocked because, to deal with the new scenario, companies, and communication agencies had to return to the analytical marketing phase and define new strategies.
During the lockdown and also in the following period, it became clear that digital marketing had to become the main tool to promote brands, offer products and communicate with customers.
Add to this the need to make some employees work remotely (sometimes everything), it is clear why all companies, even those who thought they could postpone again, had to compare themselves to the rapid transition to digitalization of production processes, administration services, and marketing.
When did marketing start?
If you’re just starting out, there wouldn’t be much point in going out and trying to build affiliate associations. There’s a sales cycle, and when you work with other people, they don’t necessarily have that incentive to work directly with you. They are in it for themselves at the end of the day.
Another strategy we’d avoid if you’re just starting out would be content marketing, although we love it to death. If you don’t know exactly who you’re targeting and start creating content for the wrong audience, you’re out of luck. That means all the posts you’ve created won’t do you any good. Once you get your first 100 customers manually or through whatever channel you want, once you figure out exactly who they are, you can create content.
The key takeaways are to focus on hand-to-hand combat, pick the channels you think will provide the best return, throw things against the wall, and then focus on the channels that stick. Then, once you start doing guerrilla marketing, you’ll be able to figure out who your target personas are.