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Blasts from the past: digital marketing history

To start with ... that title isn't quite right. You see, digital isn't the term we used back in history - depending on the year, it should be e-commerce or Internet-, online-, digital- or e- marketing.

In some of my classes, at events or when I'm talking with practitioners, folk seem interested when I ramble on about the early days of marketing on the Internet. So here's some of my stuff from bygone days. Looking back at what I did back then, I can see how early my opinions on all things 'digital' were formed - and I've hardly changed them since. Not sure if that's a good or bad thing ...? Take note, however - some of this stuff is out of date - I'll leave you to work out which.

The first - website objectives - is an article I wrote for inclusion in a Chamber of Commerce magazine circa 1998. I would later extend these objectives - with the exception of cost saving - to all online marketing .

The second is a website checklist that I used as a handout for some courses I ran as part of a EU funded project.

One of my first efforts - dating back to 1997 - the best of sites, the worst of sites was a one page handout for virtually any kind of meeting / networking event / presentation you can think of.

Copywriting for the web was another one-sheet handout I used between 1997 and 2002. It was aimed at SME owner managers who were writing their own content. Sadly, some still do, which makes this article still - frighteningly - relevant.

You should bear in mind that I wrote these to be printed, not appear online - back then there were no blogs or newsletters, only a few chat rooms and the odd influential website - and cyberspace [oh yes, that's what it was called back then] was ruled by the techies. Although I was obviously influenced by what some folk were saying [I discovered Jacob Neilsen early on], much of what I say in all of the above comes from my own experience out there in the e-commerce trenches when most of the general public did not know what the Internet was.

As a footnote: I was part of the 'campaign' to have website written as one word, which has been pretty much universally accepted - but I notice that back in the day I used web site. Ho hum.

How to cite this article:
Charlesworth, A. (2007). Blasts from the past: digital marketing history. Retrieved [insert date] from AlanCharlesworth.com: https://www.alancharlesworth.com/DigitalMarketing/blasts-from-the-past

This page was first published on this domain in July 2018 ... but much of the content was on alancharlesworth.eu for some years before that.