Online marketing offers a number of valuable new options. The marketing can be targeted to your personal interests, or even your physical whereabouts through the use of location-based applications. New marketing business models, where advertisers pay per actual reader, are also critical in advancing online consumer marketing. Some consumer brands representing premium products and services have already abandoned paper marketing. The last bastion in paper marketing to mailboxes seems to be discount coupons. Coupons have played an important role in offering discounts to consumers, especially in grocery stores. But in many markets, coupons have already vanished, and in the remaining markets it is highly likely that they will become networked through apps like Yowza, Coupon Sherpa, Grocery iQ and CoupSmart. With smartphone penetration in advanced markets widespread, networked-only coupons could soon be a reality. Another step in e-marketing is through an onslaught of e-mails, triggering your interest to re-visit a store you’ve already been to. If you are on the mailing list, new messages seem to come at two-to-four week intervals. Some stores introduce a few new products in each newsletter to attract customers’ attention. Others are repeating general store discounts at their outlet branch, week after week. My predictions for online/mobile marketing: * Innovative companies are embracing online/mobile marketing, eliminating the need for them to deliver marketing material to a physical mailbox. * Mobile coupon marketing is gaining traction and is being applied to new business scenarios, where coupons have been limited to date. * Staying away from networked marketing is not an option. The question today is for how long you run paper marketing in parallel.
Networked Society Insights 