When I first started working online in 1995, web marketing was primarily about in-your-face advertising. And for a long time Internet Marketers tried over and over to follow in the footsteps of the commercial television model, sponsor content people want to see and then force them to view your product offerings via banners, pop-ups, pop-unders and etc.

Al Gore said something that struck me in his movie on Global Warming that I think applies in part to why this form of web marketing never really panned out as most would have liked. He said (and forgive me if the quote isn’t 100% accurate), “Old habits, combined with new technologies, can have devastating results.”

Now, Gore was speaking to issues like mass factory farming and strip mining, but the message is still the same. Web advertising was essentially telling people what they wanted in order to make the sale. But in this online medium people aren’t willing to accept being told what they want. With the click of a mouse they’re able to research and seek out options, and then base purchasing decisions off of the information they find. And the best part about that, from the consumer’s perspective… they can simply ignore you–the marketer who they know is just trying to “close the deal”.

Over the past 12 years Internet Marketing has gone through some major evolutions. There are still some trying to banner-beat surfers into sales, and High Volume Email Deployers (SPAMMERS) using archaic carpet bombing approaches, but every day fewer and fewer people click those links. Thank God!!!

Web 2.0 typically refers to the technologies behind user driven content and interactive engagement online, but I believe there’s a Next Generation of Internet Marketing (NextGen I.M. <– copyrights!) with it as well, and those who seem to get that appear to be doing very well for themselves online today.

People don’t like to be told what to do, or what to buy, and the Internet allows them to rebel when someone tries. Still, people do crave to be “in the loop” and fashionable. They want to know about trends, and desire to be a part of the in-crowd. Internet Marketing that fills one of these basic needs for people not only has the best chance at making the sale (without even trying), but of also being a self-building campaign that expands in reach on the web and promotes additional sales.

Why? Because once people feel like they’re “in” on something, they want to share that achievement (often brag about it), and so your little marketing effort that connected with this person is suddenly being discussed in multiple online social venues as that person spreads the word. It’s “Consumers Gone Wild” (<– another copyright!)

That’s Good Web Marketing in my opinion. As I see it, Internet Marketing is no longer about selling the product, but rather connecting the consumer to the empowerment that comes with the product.

Suddenly, this customer who connected with your message is giving you great “word of mouth” promotions, which online and coupled with Web 2.0 social engagement can instantly convert into tens-of-thousands of visitors to your sales pages. And if some of them also connect with your message of empowerment, that will lead to more sales. But if your page is just an old fashioned “buy this now” statement, all you’ll get is wasted bandwidth and a few nasty emails from disappointed visitors.

The best salespeople have always done this, even before the Internet. I once heard someone say “you don’t sell a lady lingerie by telling her men think it’s sexy, you sell it by looking into her eyes and telling her how sexy she’ll feel while wearing it.”

Basically, I think you have to approach Internet Marketing not with the goal of making a sale, but rather making the customer feel better. And what’s wrong with that? With this approach everybody wins.

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Also See:

• Successful At Home Business
• How To Blow It Selling Your Own Products
• Expanding On A Good Idea
• Stop, Thief! We Can Do Business

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 4th, 2007 at 2:03 pm and is filed under Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.