Original: May 10, 2011 Issue 16

By: Judah Marguiles

Contributing Writer

In the past, marketing techniques composed of advertising your product by speaking to your neighbors in the local grocery store, hanging billboards by the side of the highway, posting ads in the newspaper, or through telemarketing. Though many of these techniques are still being used, they are slowly being over run by the new era of marketing, the Internet.

Almost everyone would fully read the daily newspaper, where marketers would heavily advertise, but now most people turn to the Internet as their source for news. Since the Internet provides readers with real time reports, multiple newspapers have begun to shutdown due to their inability to keep up with the world wide Internet.

As a result, most marketers are beginning to turn away from placing their advertisements in the newspapers, and instead are focusing their advertisement more towards the Internet.

Just as the Internet has decreased the need for newspapers, it had decreased the need for face-to-face interactions. Previously businessmen were encouraged to attend social functions and market their business to the other people at the function through in-person interactions.

Today the process of social networking is mainly done through the Internet. A businessman will have more success in advertising his product using social network websites such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpase, and LinkedIn because he will be able to reach more businesses and potential customers than he would through attending a social function.

These examples above are only a few of how the Internet has captivated marketers around the world. When viewing the changes in marketing approaches, one must ask they question: what will the next era of marketing be?