Online Marketing and the New Marketing Paradigm
When online marketing and advertising debuted thanks to the Internet and world wide web, most practicioners mimicked the strategies utilized in traditional marketing and treated the “online” as just another channel (like direct mail or telemarketing). However, the impact that online marketing has had on all forms of marketing is revolutionary and substantial due to
- Unprecedented ability to capture data
- Targeting of individuals based on geography or interests
- Reduced cost
Initially, these three factors promised to deliver phenomenal ROI on marketing and advertising expenditure – and, they did. However, online marketing’s success has also drawn a whole host of competitors online – from around the block and around the world – that seek the promise of outsided returns and lower costs.
Tremendous and growing competition for channel space has driven up costs, even making it cost prohibitive in some cases. Despite this, marketing online with a dedication to focused targeting and continual improvement promises substantially higher performance. This, however, entails shifting how online marketing is thought of – from merely a channel to a complete feedback cycle:
- Greater emphasis on market research, measurement tools that allows and focused micro-targeting
- Iterative processes of continual improvement such as A/B or multi-variate testing
- Adopting marketing management styles that bring together creatives, technicians and analyst
This is how the leading edge of online marketing has evolved, and the results speak for themselves. In one Polar Design client’s experience, use of these methods improved customer acquisition costs to 50% of the industry averages. That in turn lead to a 70% increase in sales at a 50% ROI, as described in our e-commerce marketing case studies shows.
