Good question, it’s almost like I thought of it myself.
There are a lot of ways to answer this question. Most people talk about various advantages. I’m not most people. What people don’t talk about is evolution and adaptation.
Evolution happens between generations. Adaptation happens in the same lifetime. Marketing, not just online marketing, has evolved significantly over just the last few years, not to mention the last few decades. Over a career, even an average career of five years (yes, that’s the average now), it is necessary to adapt to changes that used to happen between generations.
There’s an important term to know here from economics. I know, I know. Economics has been called the dismal science (oddly enough by Schopenhauer who was a rather dismal guy), but it does determine who is rich and who is poor, and even more than that who survives and who dies from treatable diseases that they couldn’t afford to treat. So, it’s kind of important.
The term that we’re talking about is Creative Destruction from Joseph Schumpeter. When something new comes along that’s better it makes the last thing obsolete. The car made travel by horse obsolete. (Horses had a significant decrease in population after that and then steadily rose again because people like riding horses for fun.)
Why is this important? Because we need to look to the future so that we aren’t the horse being replaced.
A major part of online marketing is Search Engine Optimization (SEO). SEO used to involve throwing a few keywords into a document, throwing a few of the documents around the internet with backlinks to your site, and presto you were on the first page of Google. But, with each passing year things become obsolete in the online marketing game. The search algorithms become more refined and complex, and competition increases.
Someone that wants to play this game has to become more refined, complex, and competitive to keep up. So, what’s trending? Well, one thing that has changed a bit is how well search engines like Google are able 1) know where you are, and 2) make your searches relevant to your area. It’s not easy to compete in the big city markets, so firms are specializing, becoming more adapted to a specific environment. For instance, there are firms like this service that specialize in the Toronto area. The Toronto area isn’t small, but it is compared to the world. But it’s also extremely competitive for online marketing. Adaptation and evolution are happening quickly.
Back to my point. More professionals aren’t turning towards online marketing. They need marketing to survive, literally. When they look into marketing there are a lot of hard problems to solve no matter what they do, and they can’t do every form of marketing. It would be great if you could throw up twenty billboards, buy Facebook ads, and put your commercial on during the Super Bowl, but it’s not all feasible. Here comes another marketing term, Opportunity Cost. (That term also comes from the Austrian School of Economics (not an actual school).)
Opportunity cost means that your major cost is not your expense, it’s the money (opportunity) that you miss by choosing your path. You must choose a path. The key is to choose the path that is the best opportunity. Many people are looking at their opportunities and deciding that online marketing is the best path for them.
Marketing, and online marketing, will continue to evolve. People will continue to adapt. Creative destruction will continue to destroy the old and replace it with the new. Opportunity costs will continue to be weighed and measured.
What will happen in the future? Other than these generalizations it’s hard for me to say. Everyone has their guess. The people that guess correctly will be the ones that come out ahead. That’s the way it’s always been and always will be. But, here’s a guess I’m pretty confident in, online marketing will continue to grow and change.
