5. Marketing Techniques
If theres one internet success story from the last year or so that youre familiar with, its probably Kickstarter, the site that epitomises the practice of crowdsourcing by allowing projects to source investment, interest and possible custom from a huge user base. Its merely one of the latest techniques that marketers can use to ply their trade, but its an effective one, as are many others that they have been able to utilise using the internets technology tailored marketing, for instance, is possible by gathering details about peoples interests through their search patterns (though the privacy invasion of such a technique justifiably raises eyebrows), allowing organisations to market products and services at the individuals most likely to be interested in them. This is cheaper and much more effective than traditional marketing techniques, such as television advertising, as there is no guarantee that a firms target market will be watching a specific programme at a specific time. Direct marketers also have a field day with the technology, as no longer do they have to go through the hassle of printing and delivering material in an attempt to source custom or keep previous customers informed of new developments. Instead, they can merely email information to a mailing list of thousands in a matter of seconds. Its a great annoyance to most of us, but for every ninety nine individuals that have a junk e-mail filter and wont bother to read such material, there will be one who does and makes a purchase as a result. Some industries and services may be dying as a result of the internets growth. Marketing definitely isnt one of them.