Online marketing has come a long way.

As the Internet became a more pervasive communication tool, marketing departments started using as an electronic brochure. That was the first wave of e-Marketing. 

The second wave came as e-mail technologies advanced and marketers began to use broadcast e-mail as a way to communicate as a supplement -- or a replacement -- to traditional direct mail. 

What’s happening now is the next evolution of online marketing. It is no longer just about sending targeted e-mails. Today, online marketing is about education -- moving from a targeted push promotional aspect with customers to a pull concept, where you pull people into your Web site through communities and value-added information.

Marketers draw prospects in with an educational offer, then use the Internet to electronically mature that lead.  As the prospects arrive, new technologies enable marketers to follow them through the educational process to a sales process.

The very nature of this new online marketing trend blurs the traditional lines of marketing and sales. Marketers are now involved from the point of the first customer contact to the time when customers are ready to make a purchase. Marketers are now building a one-on-one communicative relationship -- traditionally the sales function.

The approach has changed from:

"Good morning, can I market or sell you something," or, "Good morning, can I help you or educate you or provide some entertainment for you?" to

"Good morning, Bob. We know this is your hot button.  If you're interested, we've got a topic on it for you."

It’s not just "one-to-one" marketing, but "one-with-one." The prospect’s objectives become the marketers’ objectives, and by fulfilling a prospects needs for information and education, a marketer can guide them through the sales process.

Making a guided selling strategy work entails more than a clever Web site or a database -- although both are obviously needed.  A successful guided selling approach means a different relationship between marketing and sales to view themselves less as departments and more as a team.