Marketing's Evolution on the Internet

By Shuting Qi and Allison Zwarka

Marketing is a broad verb for reaching out to target audiences and promoting and selling a good or service. In marketing close relationships to individuals and to your region's culture is extremely important. Our world has been experiencing an evolution within technology during the last several decades. The internet has changed our lifestyle and therefore marketing has as well since it is a reflection of our culture.The following three technological advancements are aspects of how the internet has changed marketing:

     Online Shopping

20 years ago, people rarely shopped online. One of the main reasons for this was due to the fact that computers weren't affordable for many families. Another reason for the lack of online shopping was due to the fact that not many people knew that is was even an option. Advertising for online shopping wasn't necessarily present at that time. Since the internet wasn't very prevalent at the time, marketers tended to focus on TV, radio, and newspaper. Nowadays, almost everyone has a smartphone and computer to go online. We have Amazon, eBay and other online commerce to purchase almost any goods we want. Marketing strategies have adapted to this change quickly, and that's a necessity in the field, you must be able to change quickly with the times. Almost every company has developed an online site. Online promotion and shopping experiences have became new research topics for business. across the world.

Social Media

The first social media type program was email communication. However, social media today is completely different. Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter are used to communicate to hundreds of people at once. Marketing has also taken advantage of this increase in social media. One of the keys to success for commerce is marketing online. By creating an official account for your business on a social media platform a company can easily market their goods and services for free.

Advertisement

Advertisement has always been an essential part of marketing no matter time period. But what has changed? Today, more and more websites' revenue is generated by online advertisement instead of past forms of print advertising. Strategies has been adopted by businesses such as Amazon where they sell advertisement to other businesses on their website in order to increase their revenue.

In short, the internet changed our lifestyle over the past decades. These implementations of the internet into marketing strategies have increased the incomes of companies across the world and have been major factors in changing the industry.

Kotler, Philip, Kevin Lane Keller, and Taihong Lu. Marketing Management in China. Singapore: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2009. Print.

What is the Difference Between Marketing and Advertising?

By Lindsey Murphy

As an advertising major, people tend to confuse marketing and advertising so I have learned how the two fields differ. In short, advertising is one of many components of the marketing process, maybe even the most important. Other concepts of marketing include media planning, public relations, sales strategy, marketing research, and more. Here at MSU, you can create or design ads as a creative advertising major, or you can sell and manage ads in the management side of advertising.

Advertising is using media to promote a certain product, service, or event. Nancy Lovering does a good job of explaining the differences between advertising and marketing and the process of each of them. Marketing is more concerned with knowing the target audience and composing marketing strategies that suit the brand. Advertising is involved with using different forms of media to communicate with consumers.

To help distinguish the different goals of marketing and advertising here are a few examples of what each does:

Marketing:

• Long-term, used to continuously keep in contact with consumers
• Identifies groups with shared needs or characteristics
• Uses demographic segmentation such as sex, age, income, ethnicity, occupation, and marital status to identify groups of people
• Building relationship with consumer regarding product
• Uses research analysis to determine who should be targeted and by what means

Advertising:

• Short-term, used to make consumers aware of products.
• Uses colors, slogans, and subliminal messages to help consumer perceive certain emotions
• Anything you see or hear that persuades you to do or buy something
• Uses print, radio, television, or the internet to reach out to consumers
• Uses endorsements to create a positive association with the brand.

Lovering, Nancy. "What Is the Difference Between Marketing and Advertising?" What Is the Difference Between Marketing and Advertising? | Chron.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 Jan. 2017.

What is Stereotype Marketing?

By Allison Zwarka

Stereotyping marketing is an essential part of any marketer’s process. Stereotype Marketing is using stereotypes or generalizations to market different products. It is very commonly used across many marketing fields and is proven to be very successful.

 A common type of stereotype marketing is demographic segmentation. This is the use of facts specific to a person’s life, such as age or education level, to market products to a range of individuals with similar situations. When a marketer is looking to sell something the first thing they think is who is my audience? Who am I trying to sell to? By using stereotypes, they are able to target their specific clients and cater their advertising toward them.

Let’s say I want to sell football tickets. The first place I am going to look into is advertising on a sports television network or at a sporting store. Figuring out who your client is, is one of the most important first steps in marketing. In order to be smart and good at what you do, you can’t waste time. Getting directly to places your clients would be or where they would look cuts out a lot of unnecessary advertisement.

A few very common stereotypes are the domestic housewife. This stereotype if mainly used when trying to advertise cleaning supplies or other domestic tasks such as making dinner. Another stereotype is the gender roles focused on children. Most “boy” toys are advertised with little boys playing with them. An example of this is Lego’s Star Wars packs. On the boxes only boys are shown playing with it, because it is categorized to be a boy’s toy.

A lot of the time the average consumer doesn’t even notice these stereotypes being targeted, but it really is an essential part to any marketing campaign.

Kokemuller, Neil. “What is Stereotype Marketing?” Chron, Web. 28 Jan. 2017. <http://smallbusiness.chron.com/stereotype-marketing-66515.html>

Joseph, Chris. “Types of Stereotyping in Advertising.” Chron, Web. 28 Jan. 2017. <http://smallbusiness.chron.com/types-stereotyping-advertising-11937.html>

Prompt 1: What is Marketing?

     By: Shannon Crilley 
      
      Most pople today think of marketing as the "advertising" part of business. It's generally considered to be the branch of business that connects the product with the costumers and it allows the consumers to have knowledge about the product they are buying. Whether that knowledge be information about the latest and greatest technology that has just come out, or watching that obnoxious commercial about that one product that you don't need, but you want over and over again. Marketing is the process through which the goods and services make their way to the consumers.

      Personally, when I think of marketing I think of commercials, social media, advertising, and publicizing a product. A person that works in a marketing field must be tech savvy, creative, aware of the market, and interesting. No consumer wants to buy a boring product or watch a boring commercial. The marketing field has the power to "hype up" their product as much as they want, thereby creating better sales. In today's modern era, I think marketing positions definitely appreciate and rely on mass media and how easily they can now connect with the entire world in a few clicks of a button.

      Aside from my own personal opinion, there's professionals that know and understand marketing and what that job entitles much better than I do. Michigan State's very own professor, Gilbert Harrell is the author of his own marketing textbook used here on campus, Marketing Foundations. This book describes basic-level marketing and what exactly marketing a product can do for a company. Harrell talks about how marketing is the most important way for a company to connect with it's customers. I also found that I had a fairly good idea of what a job in marketing entails. The employees with positions in marketing must be smart, creative, interesting, and able to think ahead of the current trend and plan for what's coming next. Harrell explains that marketing is the key source to connecting the product with the consumer.

      As a college student interested in marketing I am excited to start learning more about this amazing field and what exactly it takes to make it in marketing!

Harrell, Gilbert. Marketing Foundations. Chicago, IL: Chicago Education Press/Pearson, 2010. Print.

You’re Marketing Without Even Realizing It!

By Jen Mylett

Marketing, in short, is the process of producing, promoting, and selling goods and services to potential consumers. It is essentially what connects businesses to their customers.

Everything that a business does or stands for is marketing. Whether they know it or not, businesses are marketing themselves 24/7. Let’s take Nike as an example. The way that they go about their everyday lives over at Nike sends a message about all the little things that make their company who they are. Here are a few examples:

• The way they pick up the phone/ their tone of voice
• The quality of the goods they sell
• What prices they offer
• How Nike is advertised on social media
• The level of customer service they provide
• The design of their website
• What other companies they associate with
• How clean their stores are
• How the employers present themselves
• What athletes they choose to sponsor
• What diction they use in emails
• The locations of where Nike is advertised

Overall, your business will either thrive or dive just by using the right marketing techniques. Going back to one of the examples, choosing which athletes (or clients) they decide to do business with is especially important.

Why would Nike want football star, Michael Vick, as a sponsor when they have athletes like Neymar Jr. and Alex Morgan? After all, Michael Vick is probably more well-known than the other two athletes, but the only difference is how those players market themselves. Neymar and Morgan are both highly respected and talented soccer players of this era whereas Vick is talented, but has a rough past with prison and dog fighting. Nike wants to look good by sending out positive messages to their consumers, therefore it was a good choice to sponsor the soccer players.

It’s all about the little pieces that ultimately create the whole picture. No company can succeed unless every little thing that they do to represent themselves is creating value and trust. It’s not about if you’re marketing or not, it’s about if you are doing it correctly.

"Our Athletes." Nike News. Nike, Inc., n.d. Web. 28 Jan. 2017. <http://news.nike.com/athletes>.