The world of internet marketing is forever evolving. What was true six months ago isn’t true today and what’s true today probably won’t be true six months from now. Therefore, it’s imperative that you constantly and consistently keep your finger on the pulse of the Internet.
Recently, three new changes have either come about or been imposed/proposed that could have a profound effect on the way things are sold on the Internet. Anyone who wants to stay relevant in this fast changing field had better pay attention and learn to adapt.
The Rise of Facebook
You may be saying to yourself that this is old news. Facebook has been around for ages and everyone knew two or three years ago that it was an important tool in the Internet marketing tool box. True enough.
However, what you may not be aware of (and even if you are, you may not realize just how profoundly this affects your marketing efforts) is that Facebook is expected to surpass Google shortly for sheer volume of searches.
In other words, while we have focused on search engine optimization and only recently begun to look at how to maximize our efforts to market on social media, our market has been shifting out from under us and is rapidly making SEO a second fiddle to the needs of closed networks like Facebook and Twitter.
Proposed Rules on Tracking
While it’s still not official yet, new rules proposed by the Federal Trade Commission regarding web site tracking have the power to fundamentally alter the way we do Internet marketing for the foreseeable future.
A very big part of figuring out what consumers might want to buy has (until now) involved tracking web surfing habits on major web sites, especially places like Facebook and Google. This has proven to be a highly successful tactic in making sure for example that you aren’t wasting banner ad impressions of emergency alert systems for seniors when the people surfing a particular web site are mostly teenagers (to put it into very simple terms).
However, if the FTC’s new rules go into effect, much of the tracking that is the lifeblood of today’s Internet marketing efforts will go down the tubes as people choose to opt out of tracking.
New Rules on Net Neutrality
Finally, the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) has recently proposed a new set of rules regarding net neutrality that could equally affect your efforts to sell products to people using smart phones.
Net neutrality means that Google’s web site shows up just as fast Grandma’s Sweet Recipe’s site and ever other web site on the Internet. However, the new rules that have been proposed mean that on smart phones at least, certain web sites can be given preferential treatment to show up faster and others can be displayed much more slowly.
The means that those who need to market to cell phone users (and let’s face it, that’s pretty much all of us) could find ourselves out in the cold with customers effectively unable to visit our sites and choosing a competitor’s web site instead.
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