Devoted to online marketing, viral marketing, and web marketing

Because of the expanding consumer burnout and cynicism and the falling response rates of internet consumers, there is a growing number of online marketers that are adapting to a more consumer-friendly strategy. Here is a list of things that you must take a serious look at for your marketing efforts. 

Involvement Approach – You’ve seen some of this already in the form of contests, games, entertainment, testing for competence, etc. These various ideas keep the potential consumer at the site longer and provide a platform for word-of-mouth growth. 

Even Higher Quality Content – This is another approach that increases the chance of users to pass on the content to others, making one contact into potentially 4 and more. 

Permission Based – Those that continually innovate and find strategies in this area are going to win big. Getting your potential customers to invite you to send them things is a goldmine that could be tapped over and over again.

Editorial/Advertisement – These are just what it says. This is content based upon one’s thoughts and opinions about a matter. People love to hear opinions that stimulate them and make a contribution to their lives. Some companies that do it right could greatly increase their sales and profits. 

Blogs – These will continually become an increasing force in the online marketing world. Even on what some consider to be somewhat of an inferior blogging community, Blogspot.com, there are about 33% more visitors than the New York Times gets. The great majority of them have not even begun to figure out the way to make great money doing this. But it’s coming. 

Rich Media – This is going to be a booming area to innovate in. There are already over a third of households that have broadband connections to the Internet. This is providing the opportunity for all sorts of audio, video, animation, interactivity among many other things.  

Studies are showing that these rich media banner ads are generating 5 times the rate of all other non-rich media ads. That’s according to a report by DoubleClick. 

All of this is confirming what I have been saying in these posts recently: There is no more thinking about one strategy concerning your online marketing. 

Do you know what is great about the above trends? This gives you an opportunity to respond to their needs in a very customized manner. Why are these trends occurring? People use all sorts of ways to interact and communicate now. They do not want to be forced to go to only one if that means major time and inconvenience. Those who market accordingly will find themselves huge winners. 

One last thing here, whatever you do, don’t start to believe hype about the end of this or that. In many cases it will not be an either or situation, but rather a blending of them. Other than the newspaper industry, as far as its connection to the marketing area, most of the other claims are premature. 

For you and your business and its marketing plan, start to think of asymmetrical strategies, not singular focus on any one marketing tool.