Marketing Convergence

I came across and interesting poll from SLI Systems noting what industry insiders think of the effectiveness of different kinds of online marketing (e-mail, SEO/SEM, Podcasts, etc.). It seems clear to me that as all online media innovates on new channels to drive people to to sign up for a product or go to a website there is a necesity to augment this with a direct or virtual human touch point.

Companies invest millions and millions of dollars just to develop an eCommerce marketing budget. If these companies invested money in some of the traditional marketing options, tradeshows and telemarketing this budget's effectiveness would extend expotentially. Taking this further, five years ago people were looking at innovative marketing to support their traditional marketing activities such as Direct Mail. Now companies are retiring forms of traditional marketing, using an electronically driven marketing strategy and filling in the holes with more expensive labor intensive marketing (although there are cost-effective options).