If you follow our Facebook page, you may have noticed that early last week, we quietly marked the 10-year anniversary of envisionit media, inc. We’ll be celebrating properly as the year goes on (so be sure to keep up with us here and on Facebook and Twitter for updates). Meanwhile, I thought I’d take a look back at a few notable differences between the digital marketing landscape a decade ago and today.

It wouldn’t be a very quick read if I included every single difference, so these are just my faves. Enjoy the walk down memory lane and provide your own memories in the comments!

OMG, what did we do without Facebook?
That’s right…10 years ago, Facebook didn’t. even. exist. Gasp! Social media was barely even a phrase. Yes, the idea of social media has been alive for some time—think instant messenger and message boards. But the marketing world’s favorite buzzword of the last few years didn’t quite yet have today’s popularity and meaning back in 2002.

And how quickly the space has grown! In 2002, Friendster was introduced. Myspace followed in 2003. Flickr and Digg hit in 2004, and that same year the college scene was introduced to The Facebook. Twitter was born in 2006. StumbleUpon, FourSquare, Google+, Tumblr, Pinterest…all these social networks later, and companies now commonly have dedicated social media marketing roles and entire departments.

Phone is ringin’…
I happened to graduate from college in December 2001 (which is why I know to follow up this section’s subtitle with “…oh my god.” Name the reference in the comments if you know it!) and got my first cell phone a few months later in 2002. It was the standard Nokia phone that everyone else had. It made calls, it received calls, that was about it. Some fancy people had PDAs at the time, but it would be a few years before Blackberrys found popularity and exactly 5 years until the first iPhone was introduced. And now? There’s an app for that! And QR codes, geo-fencing, mobile-friendly websites, mobile SEO…and the word on the street for a few years now has been that the future is mobile marketing.
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Every organization wants to achieve success in digital marketing. There is nothing better than reporting a 300% increase in conversion. In order to get there, you need to take the necessary steps. It starts with an approach towards web analytics that is designed for success.

Let me first define web analytics: it’s the collaboration between analysts, web developers and management on the collection of web data for the purpose of analysis and optimization.

Having experience in implementing some of the best web analytics platforms such as Omniture, Google Analytics, WebTrends and Coremetrics, I know that no out-of-box solution fits your exact business model. All web analytics platforms will start collecting data when implemented, but that data isn’t necessarily reflective of your company’s business goals or online KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). This is why web analytics is a collaboration between multiple teams, to measure the KPIs that matter to your business. It is valuable to have a consulting partner who is able to suggest the best way to obtain the KPIs that matter to your company’s bottom line.

Once you start obtaining data from your site, it is time to analyze and make a hypothesis. It is important to collect the most fact-based data from your web analytics platform, otherwise your analysis and hypothesis are going to fail. This is by far the most important job of the web developer and the analyst, making sure your data is accurate. No analytics platform data will match a competitor’s system, as they collect data differently. However, conversions should match 97%-99% accuracy of your CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system or database.
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If you’re a marketer that does not live under a rock somewhere, chances are you are migrating (if you haven’t already) your marketing and media plans to the online space. Print ad budgets are getting nixed for a shot at AdWords, websites are getting revamped every couple years to keep up with the growing technology and search engine changes.

Since my agency, envisionit media, is in the online arena, I wanted to do a little research and see what we’re calling “online marketing” these days. Our office throws around several terms – interactive marketing, emarketing, digital. Why do I want to find that out? Well, I want to make sure our website is optimized for the terms that people are actually searching for in Google – not just our opinions of what they’re searching for.

So, I used this fabulous free tool called Google Insights that we use a lot when researching keyword themes for our clients.

I typed in the following terms – interactive marketing, emarketing, website marketing, online marketing, and digital marketing – into the tool; set the parameters for Web Searches in the US in the past 12 months, and Voila! I was served this lovely little chart that showed me what terms were being used more frequently.

In looking at a quick glance of the outcomes,

It appears “online marketing” is the winner and one we should test creating some website pages around, optimizing them, and determining what traffic it brings in. In fact, we should also test “website marketing” and “digital marketing” to determine if each key phrase brings a different level of qualified traffic. We may be able to bring in a lot more traffic on “online marketing”, but maybe the visitor is not as sophisticated or as qualified to work with our agency as one who types in “digital marketing”….
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