Internet Marketing Trends in Advertising

I’ve always heard the phrase “jumping on the bandwagon” and sometimes wondered why they called it that. So, I decided to look 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 these colorful bandwagons and as they passed by, spectators would notice and join the procession. The circus promoters hoped that this would encourage the followers to actually become paying spectators of the circus itself. That is how the phrase jumping on the bandwagon got started.

What does this have to do with internet marketing trends in advertising? Pretty much everything! See, any time an internet marketer finds or creates a new form online advertising everybody and their dog jumps on the bandwagon and uses that method of advertising to promote their products or services. It doesn’t matter if the method has been tested and proven to work or not. As soon as one internet marketer sees another one using it, the bandwagon jumping begins because nobody wants to be left out of the “it crowd.”

So, what have been the top internet marketing trends for online advertising lately?

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 internet 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 created a huge buzz recently is Butterfly Marketing. This is basically 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 marketing trend that has taken the internet marketing world by storm 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. It’s actually very effective.

And let’s not forget about social networking sites like Myspace and Facebook, or social bookmarking sites like Digg and Technorati. These are all the craze right now. In fact, they are being used so much as an advertising method by internet marketers that it’s getting to the point where some of the sites quality has declined drastically. They can be a great marketing tool but they can also be ruined by marketers.

Of course aside from the “new wave” of marketing trends, there are still the tried and true methods like Search Engine Optimization (SEO), E-zine Ads and a few 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 a tied and true advertising method in the internet marketing world, 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 and submitting an article every now and then can’t hurt.

Internet marketing trends come and go but the tested and proven advertising methods will never die!