Change is inevitable. Nothing ever stays the same, which goes for marketing as well. Marketing goes as far back as 1450 when Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press, from the idea of printing with movable type. This invention eventually led to the mass-production of flyers and brochures that businesses used to market themselves to the public.
According to Robert Bartels’ The History of Marketing Thought, marketing theory began in the 1900s when its basic concepts were discovered and first explored. However, marketing has come a long way since the beginning of the 20th century.
During the course of marketing development, people used outbound marketing techniques, simply because it was the only way to get a consumer’s attention. Purchases would depend on how successful a company was in introducing their product or service to potential consumers. Times have drastically changed, but thankfully inbound marketing has entered the picture to save the day. More of the things we used to do offline, like product research and getting news, we now do online. It is important to adjust marketing techniques around this change in order to be successful and productive.
To fully understand successful modern day Internet marketing, you’ll need to switch your professional hat with your consumer hat. It’s Friday! You’ve finally come to the end of a busy 40-hour work week and now it’s time to go home, relax and take care of personal errands. You get a good night’s sleep and wake up the next morning feeling refreshed and ready to take on the day. You go downstairs to brew yourself a cup a coffee, until you realize that the coffeemaker that you got as a wedding gift 20 years ago has finally broken. You recognize the necessity of having coffee in the morning to help jumpstart your day, but then realize you don’t have the time, or patience for that matter, to drive around to all the stores in the area looking for a new coffeemaker.
Like the ¾ of all U.S. adults who are online (Blogher, April 2011, Pew Research, May 2010, U.S. Census Bureau, May 2011), you decide the easiest and most productive way to find a new coffeemaker is to look for it online. After extensive online research of prices, special offers and item reviews you finally decide where you are going to buy the perfect coffeemaker that you will call yours. The weekend is coming to an end, so it’s time to hang up your consumer hat and put your professional hat back on. But, don’t forget how you looked for a product as a consumer when developing marketing strategies for your company to attract customers just like you.
What did you learn from your weekend of using the Internet to research your coffeemaker purchase? If the company did not have a website showcasing this product, then you would have never found it. You might have chosen a coffeemaker from a competitor if they had a website to sell their producta. If you do not have a presence at all then Internet users would never be able to find your products or services.
Research has shown that 1/3 of U.S. consumers spend at least 3 hours online every day (The Media Audit, October 2010). Actually, studies showthat 46% of daily searches are for information on products or services (SRI, October 2010). What better way to market your company than to an audience that is already online looking for you. Inbound marketing’s focus on the Internet has become the next step in revolutionizing the way companies sell. Don’t be stuck in the past, upgrade to the web!