Guest Post by Daniel Elroy

There is no doubt that Internet marketing has reached a crossroads. While social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, have allowed businesses and brands unprecedented access to consumers, rising concerns over privacy    means that advertisers need to strike a delicate balance between ever-more targeted approaches and maintaining their customers’ trust. As former Google CEO Eric Schmidt famously put it while discussing Google’s own targeting policies, “Google policy is to get right up to the creepy line and not cross it.”

The history of targeted Internet marketing could perhaps be best described as a game of cat-and-mouse, where technological advances, consumer smarts, and government regulations chase one another up to that “creepy line” that continually gets redrawn. As technology moves faster, and the stakes for both marketers and consumers grow ever higher, both could benefit from a survey of the Internet marketing landscape: past, present, and future.

The Past: A World of Spam and Pop-Ups
Throughout the history of marketing, brands have attempted to effectively (and economically) reach potential customers while preventing their message from falling on deaf ears. The advent of the Internet age promised marketers an opportunity to finally place their message directly in front of those people who cared the most about their products. More than TV ads, more than mass mailers, more than print advertising, the Internet promised to replace blanket marketing with targeted campaigns.

However, technology needed to catch up. The early days of Internet marketing was still very much a one-way street. Marketers depended on the digital equivalent of junk mail and flyers to clog users’ inboxes or pop-up ads placed on websites supposedly popular with the same demographic as their products.

The low cost  of such digital marketing was attractive, but the actual results were arguably not any better than what could be achieved in the offline world.

The Present: Social Media Fever
Today’s Internet presents unprecedented opportunities for making marketing a two-way street. Technology and demand have met up in a landscape that is still under-regulated. As a result, businesses are pushing the envelope in a mad dash to identify and capture as many marketing impressions — and as much users’ information — as possible.

We are living in a world where marketers collect “likes” and “followers” as trophies. Marketers set traps with advertorial content, incentives, and any other bait available. All of these efforts are designed to make users click so that their own “likes” can be revealed for future targeted marketing messages.

At present, marketers have a clear advantage over consumers, who lack a full understanding of (or concern about) how their online behavior is targeted by marketing companies.

Future Prediction: The Customer Is King
In actuality, this prediction is the same reality that has always existed. No amount of marketing will sell a product that is unwanted by consumers. And targeting that crosses the line into “creepy” will have customers running the other direction in droves. The future will no doubt see a rise in more savvy consumers, armed with a fundamentally stronger understanding of how Internet marketing works. They will also have better tools to protect themselves from prying marketers, while government regulations will undoubtedly catch up with shadier industry practices.

How should marketers meet this future? With transparency, a compelling message, and the understanding that the customer is always right. No amount of SEO tricks, stealth cookies, Facebook “Likes,” and clever Tweets can replace satisfying consumers who want to follow and be loyal to a brand that targets their needs, desires, and interests without alienating them with shady practices. The Internet Marketing Jobs of the future will require a whole new suite of skills which are far more aligned to people skills and solid marketing that technology and trickry.

Guest post by Melanie Durango

With the dynamic nature of the internet & the constant variations & changes in search engine algorithms the reality is that Internet marketing has to be a flexible activity. Search patterns are constantly changing as Internet users modify their online behaviour and search engines (and social media sites) evolve to deliver enhanced customer experience.

As a result online marketers need to respond with a flexible dynamic approach which adapts according to latest best practice. Whether you take care of online marketing within your own business or use an external internet marketing company, it’s important to realize that what works well today might not work as well next week. You must be ready to adjust your campaigns to match user behaviours.

Organic Search still more Important than Paid Search
The Company User Centric recently performed another study on search results favoured by Internet users. The outcome indicated yet again that users still overwhelmingly prefer organic search results. Regardless of search engine, it appears that most users still skip the paid results, and see the organic listings as being more relevant to their search query.

So Search engine optimization (SEO) should still be considered a fundamental part of any internet marketing strategy. As search engines evolve their ability to deliver users with increasingly relevant search results is constantly improving. As a result a big part of SEO is about understanding how search engine like Google determine the relevancy of a website to a particular topic. This however is a moving target so again SEO should be considered a dynamic art

Users Rely on Search Engines Less for Finding Specific Websites
Another trend emerging that Forrester Research points out, is that Internet users are relying less on search engines to find specific websites. While you might find that users rely on search engines to look for brands, reviews, products, and general information, they are less likely to use a search engine to find a specific website.

This is partly due to the fact that users are becoming ‘better’ at using the internet and will go straight to a web address (if they remember it). Coming up with a memorable web address for marketing purposes is therefore becoming more important. Google themselves have said that the current exact match domain name preference is something they are going to be looking at. In the future they are far more likely to favour the creative approach to domain names rather than the ‘what you see is what you get’ approach which has worked well in the past (from a straight Google ranking perspective) .

Social media sites are also having an impact on search engine activity and offering another route for users to find content, company websites etc. The power of user recommendation and referrals is also fairly strong within these sites. It’s important to find out which social media sites are most frequented by your target audience, and develop a strategy to interact in these places, placing content, engaging in discussion etc

Using Metrics to Measure Results
The importance of metrics to any online marketing effort is obviously paramount. Campaigns should have set key Performance indicators whether they are related to SEO, paid online ads, social media marketing etc. What is even more important is that web marketers act on these metrics and be prepared to adapt and change strategies, if something is no longer working.