Marketing: Which Number Are You?
Posted by Patrick Murphy on Tue, Nov 30, 2010
Marketing has changed, there is no doubt. Over the years, marketing has evolved through three important stages that is sometimes referred to as Marketing 1.0, Marketing 2.0 and Marketing 3.0. It maybe that you are still getting to grips with Marketing 1.0, let alone moving on to marketing 3.0. However, keep in mind that the greatest opportunities will come to businesses that are practicing Marketing 3.0.
So how do you split out Marketing 1.0, 2.0 and Marketing 3.0? Over the next few paragraphs we will summarize the comparison between each marketing stage. 
The first major difference is how we interact with the consumers. In Marketing 1.0 the focus was very much on a “One to Many” and with the development of marketing and technology we quickly moved to a “One to One” model. Then in the last few years, with the birth of Social Media in the form of Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter, etc, marketing interactions have developed further into “Many to Many”.
The second major difference is what companies see as their marketing concept. Marketing 1.0 had a product centric focus with any marketing built around product development. This changed with the introduction of Marketing 2.0 where it moved on to differentiation – ‘how is our product different from everything else out on the market?’ As people are now more informed, Marketing 3.0 is less about product and more about values.
The last major difference is what is the object of marketing today? Traditionally marketing’s objective was to sell products and it slowly changed into retaining and satisfying customers. But that is all changing again. Where the primary focus of marketing is today is all about making the world a better place.
So there you have the 3 major differences about marketing in today’s environment. And they are: that your objective should be on making the world a better place, built around a concept of create value and talking many to many!