NOT MAKING MONEY - MARKETING TRENDS…INTERNET ADVERTISING

I always wondered why they called it jumping on the bandwagon. As a matter of fact, I looked it up and it seems that back in the 19th century, there were bandwagons that were used in the pre circus parades. The members of the circus would ride on top of these colorful bandwagons. As they passed by, spectators would notice and join the procession. The circus promoters would hope that this would encourage the followers to actually become paying spectators of the circus itself. That is how the term jumping on the bandwagon got started.

What does this have to do with marketing trends and Internet advertising? Everything. See, whenever somebody comes up with a new way of "getting the word out" everybody and their grandmother jumps on the bandwagon and uses that method of advertising to promote their product or service. It doesn't matter if the method has been proven or not. Once somebody sees another person using it, the bandwagon jumping begins because nobody wants to be left out of the "in crowd."










So, what are the top marketing trends for Internet advertising today?

Probably the most widely used method of advertising is, and will probably be for a long time, Google Adwords. This is a relatively inexpensive and effective form of marketing that precisely targets the people who you want to reach. That is of course assuming that you set your Adwords campaign up properly. Many have gone broke because of poor keyword selection, poor choice of bid amounts and just plain awfully worded ads. Google Adwords is by no means a sure thing if you don't know what to do with it.

Another form of marketing that seems to have created a buzz these days is Butterfly Marketing. This is really just another form of viral marketing where a friend tells another friend and so on. It's word of mouth with a few twists to it. Many Butterfly Marketing sites have shown incredible success, again if you set them up correctly.

Another big buzz around town is Bum Marketing. This is basically the practice of writing articles after doing careful keyword research on the topic of your choice, and then submitting those articles to article directories. The key is to make sure you have a resource box that contains a way for people to get more information through your website, much like this very article. It's actually very effective.

Of course aside from the "new wave" of marketing trends, there are still the tried and true methods like SEO, E-zine Ads and a host of other things that have worked since I can remember. The thing about trends is that many of them are really just reworked ideas of old methods. The ones that aren't, usually don't last very long because when all is said and done, the most effective forms of marketing have probably already been invented.











So, if you're looking for the "new" thing under the big top, you may not have to look any farther than optimizing your website for the search engines and taking out a few good solo ads in the better E-zines. Of course writing an article every now and then can't hurt.

It certainly hasn't hurt me any.