For more than 10 years now, there has been a powerful trend for people to search the internet for the products and services they want. Not only is this the current trend, but it is accelerating.
The consequences, for offline marketers, have been brutal, with them increasingly fighting over a shrinking piece of the pie. They are in the unhappy position of investing an increasing amount of resources (both time and money) for a constantly shrinking return, while online marketers dine on their lost market share.
Ask anyone who has been doing it for a while how hard it is to get a new client, or sale, from networking, telemarketing, cold email campaigns, direct mail and a host of others. Especially compared to 5 years ago.
Regularly, on LinkedIn Q&A, there are questions from traditional marketers, that reveal the strain of trying to adjust to the tectonic shift from offline to online.
At the risk of mixing metaphors, the online marketers are catching the wave. The offline marketers are pushing a rope. Naturally, there are exceptions to both of these, i.e. successful offline marketers and failed online marketers, but that is exactly what they are, the exceptions.
As I say, the trend is accelerating. There is still plenty of time to catch the wave. You don't have to plunge in with a big budget. You can baby-step into it at a pace you can digest. A year or two down the road, you will be glad you did.
There is tons of free information available if you search 'Inbound Marketing'. If you want to accelerate the learning curve, there are plenty of people out there you can hire to help out.
The big winners here, will be the ones who learn how to substitute website visitors for sales calls.
Above contribution from Carl Diamond