Looking back over 20 years, those amazing lessons of digital marketing

In the 1994, I was honored to be the 34th employee of modern media, such as American Telephone and Telegraph (At&t), MasterCard (MasterCard), CBS (CBS) and Coors Brewery (Coors Brewing Company makes their first dotcom station. It was an interesting and exciting time because the Mosaic browser and subsequent Netscape browsers changed the way we communicate and connect with others forever.

Over the past 20 years, so much technology has radically changed the way we do things. Recall that in the past 20 years alone we have witnessed the birth of banner ads, natural search, paid search promotions, E-commerce, online promotions, affiliate marketing, email marketing, social media, mobile advertising, mobile apps, marketing automation, gaming, and so on.

While all of this is a huge technological advance, digital marketing doesn't change as much as you think. Banner ads and paid search generate a lot of revenue because they have been around for the longest and continue to drive the growth of digital marketing budgets. Large data, cloud architectures, and programmatic purchases may affect the way we buy and sell digital media, but we are still trying to figure out the long-term impact of these technological advances. So I want to share some amazing observations and major lessons that come from my digital marketing experience over the past 20 years and hopefully they will help you achieve your goals.

1. Start with a clearly measurable goal. I know it sounds extremely easy, but I don't know how many really smart people have launched projects that don't start with measurable market goals. Because you can't manage what you can't measure, digital marketing projects that don't have a measurable goal are doomed to fail from the start.

2. People buy for emotional reasons, and then find a suitable reason for themselves. No one cares about your product, service or brand until you give people reason to care. Sell, before you emphasize the logical reason that your product is superior to your competitor's product, start with an emotional link between the customer and the company's higher goals. I will find a suitable reason why I buy from you.

3. "People don't buy what you do, they buy it for the reasons you do." Simon Sinek (Simon Sinek) said this in his famous TED talk, which resonated with me. Companies that have well-defined missions and goals, such as true North, will always attract more business than those that sell goods and services.

4. It does not mean that you should do it. The advent of every technological advance is accompanied by a "trendy" period when people do not even ask why, and begin to focus on the question of "how fast I can get things done". How many companies have asked "What do we want to do with this web site" before the site is being built? This simple question. Today, they are programmed media purchases and relocation targets. How many customers simply because they visit your site is your target of fierce marketing, and therefore inadvertently alienated from you?

5. "Have you found a unique opportunity that no one else has seen?" The problem raised by Thiel (Peter Thiel) may be that people are rarely asked, but it is the most important question we should be asked. Every very successful company finds its own unique opportunity in the marketplace and then "bets all the chips" around the opportunity to grow into a profitable company.

What's really amazing about this list? This is not just about expertise, it can be simply applied to any type of marketing-not just digital marketing. It's important to be cautious when you hear people hype the latest and best technology solutions. No matter how much technology changes, what makes your business successful is not technology.

This is especially true if your direct competitors can take advantage of this technology as well as you. Excellent digital marketing programs are generated from the company's precise goals. Whatever the digital or technological advances in the marketplace, these are the things that will make you successful. No matter how the salespeople try to convince you in the opposite way, there is really no "panacea" that has never happened before.