A long, long time ago, (1994 to be exact) American Telecommunications giant AT&T put up the first clickable banner on Hotwired.com and changed the face of marketing forever.
That banner ad had a whopping click-through rate of 44%!
Which, at the time, was completely unheard of. Remember that back in the misty past, before the advent of the internet and on-demand videos of cats falling over, the only way to advertise your products was through expensive television spots, newspaper and magazine promotions, radio ads, call centres and door-to-door salesmen that offered a full set of encyclopedias for the low low price of whatever a set of encyclopedias went for back then!
Of course, the first clickable banner ad was expensive ($30,000 for 3 months, or just under R150,000 at the time (http://bit.ly/41E7mxh)), but it shook the world of marketing to its core. 44% of people who saw the ad clicked on it!
And it wasn’t long before other marketers took notice. Yahoo started offering ad space on its platform, and then once Google was developed it began to do the same thing. Facebook took it one step further, giving birth to the phenomenon that is Social Media advertising, eventually followed by almost every other internet platform.
Now, almost 30 years later (yes, you read that right, it’s been 30 years since you watched the Lion King in theatres), digital marketing has become a multibillion-dollar industry and is only growing stronger. And the best part? You don’t need R150 000 to get started. Just a laptop, an idea, and a social media account.
It’s so easy that everyone is doing it! And therein lies the problem. If everyone is marketing online, how can you make your brand stand out?