The current online marketing environment houses a mix of old and new trends and tools, however, businesses choosing to advertise their products and services with tried and true banner ads and email alerts are increasingly finding that rogue users of such techniques have given them a bad name and are driving their potential customers away. People are generally afraid of clicking on embedded banners and ads these days because they have bad experiences of being taken to inappropriate sites, and advertising emails come with similar concerns. Spam emails are generally deleted immediately by recipients out of fear of phishing and identity theft scams. So where is the future of online marketing heading?
It's been predicted that the future of online marketing rests in the use of strategic combinations of a variety of more recent advertising approaches which leave banners and banners far behind. While search engine optimisation techniques will continue to be one of the most popular and successful online marketing methods, website owners will certainly need to develop new approaches to reaching their seo goals. The most well known search engines such as Google and Bing are no longer necessarily leading the pack, so seo efforts will need to be focussed across many platforms due to the search functions of social media gaining popularity at an incredible rate. Google might handle around 88 million searches per month but, but Twitter and Facebook, which have their own search functions to scan internal and external pages, are also climbing. Facebook and it's 500 million users are reported to top Google in weekly web traffic.
In future, the online marketing of brands and businesses will need to engage an a variety of marketing strategies that combine seo tactics such as social media, search and quality content. Already well known elements of the IT industry are also likely to take their place as new methods of online marketing as we have seen with the introduction of RSS and SMS to enhance and sometimes replace email marketing approaches. While relatively popular today, viral online marketing strategies are likely to continue to be one of the key future developments in online advertising. Online marketing campaigns that incorporate unusual, surprising or inspiring content can be guaranteed to spread widely and quickly and advertising that causes a strong reaction is sure to be forwarded extensively.
The internet itself is such a relatively new phenomenon, and online marketing an event more recent growth area, that the future directions it will take are ultimately hard to determine, however one thing's for certain - online trends develop and shift in popularity rapidly and constantly so it's essential to remain informed and alert.