The digital revolution has transformed the business landscape and profoundly influenced marketing in an increasingly global environment. From a demand perspective, the digital medium has offered firms access to new customers, markets, and business models across the globe.

The Internet enabled a level of customer dialogue that has not previously been experienced in history of business. Certainly customers could have conversations with retail-store clerks, sale reps, or managers; however, it was not possible at the scale that the Internet affords.

The fundamental shift was one from broadcast media such as television, radio, and newspapers to one that encourages debate, exchange, and conversation.

Interactivity is the key difference that separates online advertising models from traditional models. As the digital world evolved, this difference became more evident, and interactivity forms grew beyond anything we could think of in the past.

A powerful paradigm shift in online advertising was that the advertiser has adopted the role of the magazine publisher and become responsible for creating content. Because the hard sell and overt advertising tend to put off an audience burned out from commercial, advertisers can now gain influence by creating a sense of community for their target audiences.

It is not about numbers. It is about conversions. – Larry Chase

Online tools made marketing more efficient and in some ways easier than ever before. Online marketing campaigns can be measured, tested, and improved based on specific number targets and realistic objectives.

In many ways, online research is better than printed material because the information is revised more often, is distributed faster, and is easy to integrate into reports.

If you have specific goals, adopt a solid plan, measure activities, and modify actions based on results, then you stand a much better chance of reaching your objectives.

The new rules of marketing for the global digital world:
1. Target segments of one, and create virtual communities.
2. Design for customer-led positioning.
3. Expand the role of branding in the global portfolio.
4. Leverage consumers as coproducers through customization.
5. Use creative pricing.
6. Create anytime/anyplace distribution and integrated supply chains.
7. Redesign advertising as interactive and integrated marketing, communication, education, and entertainment.
8. Reinvent marketing research and modelling as knowledge creation and dissemination.
9. Use adaptive experimentation.
10. Redesign the strategy process and supporting organizational architecture.

Source: Wind, Jerry and Vijay Mahajan – Digital Marketing. New York: John Wiley&Sons

Not only have merchants gone online to sell products directly to consumers or provide them with the information and motivation to visit retail outlets to purchase products, but they have also found customers willing to buy directly online.

Surveys showed that since 1997 the internet has played an ‘indispensable’ part of the lives of 20 million people in the United States. Internet users were surfing for information and entertainment, but they were also increasingly using the Internet to shop.

In summary, the internet has changed the way industries conduct business, and also changed marketing forever.