If you’re conducting a search for advertising agencies in Atlanta, there’s something you should know — advertising and marketing have changed a great deal over the past several decades.
During the 1960s, widely considered the glory days of advertising and marketing, the list of marketing tactics available to most businesses was pretty straightforward.
Let’s take a look.
Here’s a list of advertising and marketing tactics available to marketing directors during the 1960s:
- Radio
- Network TV
- Telemarketing
- Direct Mail
- Events
Advertising and marketing professionals during the 1960s were known for participating in three martini lunches. And why wouldn’t they have a few martinis at lunch? There was nothing else to do!
After all, the list of marketing tactics above didn’t really require a rocket scientist to execute. That’s not to say there wasn’t plenty of work going on — it’s just to say that things weren’t as intense as they are today.
(For a closer look at advertising during the glory days on Madison Avenue, read 7 Marketing Lessons You Can Learn from An Original Mad Man on our sister website, the 60 Second Marketer.)
Today, marketing is much more complex, not only from an executional standpoint, but from a data and analytics standpoint, too.
Let’s take a look at the tactics available to you today.
In 2015, the list of advertising and marketing tactics is six times longer than it was during the 1960s:
- Radio
- Network TV
- Cable TV
- Telemarketing
- Direct Mail
- Events
- Websites
- Paid Search
- Online Display
- Instant Messaging
- Landing Pages
- Microsites
- Online Video
- Webinars
- Affiliate Marketing
- Blogs
- RSS
- Podcasts
- Contextual
- Wikis
- Social Media
- SMS
- Mobile Web
- Behavioral
- Social Media Advertising
- Virtual Worlds
- Widgets
- Mobile Apps
- Geolocational Advertising
- Mobile Beacons
- Mobile Email
If you’re a marketing director or an advertising manager, you can see by the list above that your job is now much more complex than it was just a few decades ago. But the job of a marketing director or advertising manager goes way beyond simply executing tactics. Today, you have to have a knowledge of statistics in order to be genuinely effective.
The introduction of statistics and analytics into the world of marketing is actually a good thing.
Early in my career when I launched my first Atlanta-based advertising agency, there was no real way to tell if an ad campaign worked. Oh, sure, we had plenty of rationale for why a campaign worked, but there was very little statistical data to support our point-of-view.
Today, marketing directors, advertising managers and advertising agencies are in a much better position because we can review and analyze the digital marketing data that confirms whether or not a campaign actually worked.
The Bottom Line.
What does all this mean for you? It means that your job as a marketing director or advertising manager has gotten more complex over the past several decades, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, it’s good news because it attracts smarter, more talented people into the field. And when smarter, more talented people enter into any industry segment, guess what happens? Salaries increase.
And that, my friends, is good news for all of us.
Jamie Turner is the CEO of the 60 Second Marketer and 60 Second Communications, a marketing communications agency that works with national and international brands. He is the co-author of “How to Make Money with Social Media” and “Go Mobile” and is a popular marketing speaker at events, trade shows and corporations around the globe.
