Humankind is about evolution. Starting with the Stone Age and moving through to the post-modern digital era, there has been consistent evolution. The same goes for marketing and the way it has developed.
Marketing has been around for longer than we realize, though it is hard to imagine how marketing existed before 1900 in any meaningful way. Here is a brief history of business marketing.
Production Orientation
This is the area that focuses heavily on mass production. The belief was that customers would buy both readily available and cheap products, which meant gearing businesses towards quantity over quality.
This is what triggered the Industrial Revolution, which would cover the globe. The goal became to improve efficiencies in distribution and production. Marketing, meanwhile, promoted lower prices and besting the competition.
Sales Orientation
With more sales companies joining the fray, things became more contested. But there was now an idea that customers would buy a product if they were enticed. More and more companies began to rely on marketing over sheer quantity.
With the prevalence of television, print, and radio, there were different platforms for marketing. This was also when door-to-door salespeople were becoming more and more popular.
Marketing Orientation
Starting around the 1940s, businesses realized that they needed to identify customer needs. This is where the concept of marketing was truly born. The idea is that companies could reach their goal of understanding the target audience’s needs. The process began by pinpointing those needs and providing solutions to those needs.
Digital Marketing
As technology continued to progress, there came a dynamic shift in marketing. Marketing campaigns moved to a digital format, which opened a world of opportunity for more exposure to better services or products.
Now, the majority of the world’s population is online. Through digital platforms, companies can reach their target audience more effectively and often directly, without the need for traditional marketing mediums.