One of the greatest sea changes in the past two decades in traditional marketing is the innovative and revolutionary impact of Internet-based methods, particularly social media and targeted ad campaigns.

Whereas email lists and other methods somewhat mimicked the direct mail tools of the past, social media, combined with other analogs from the real world to the digital world, has completely changed the game.

Marketing now is both part art and science with analytics playing as much of a role in how a company markets as the substance of the marketing itself. All of this sounds pretty daunting, and it is, yet that goes without mentioning the many barriers to entry that technology has removed for DIY and professionals alike to market at scale and with a degree of cost-effectiveness that was previously hard to imagine.

Whether you're trying to find what methods are right for your company, or you want to know how technology can help you scale your current efforts beyond their present horizons, there are three majors ways that technology is changing business marketing for the better.

Ease of Access

Unlike the gated barriers of the past, modern marketing is easier than ever before for professionals and your average person. That doesn't mean that they are equally effective or that either cohort will have guaranteed success; it simply means that the days of relying upon an agency are quickly fading into the past. Internal marketing departments and freelancers and everyone in between is providing effective, relevant services that are meeting company needs and providing end value - all without agencies, contracts, and the ongoing efforts required to sustain that mechanism. Don't worry, agencies still have a place within all of this, but the pressure upon them to perform is greater than ever before.

Ease of Scale

In past decades, scaling a Marketing effort was not only very expensive, but it was also very, very risky. After all, one had to know their market well, be confident in their campaign, and hope to gain a return from the effort greater than the costs put into it. All of this without the aid of analytics, data, keyword searches, and so forth. That's why so many professionals used to call acts like this 'reading the tea leaves' and 'gazing into a crystal ball' - corporations and their marketing partners had to peer into some hazy future and 'guess' what the market wanted. Those days are quickly fading as overwhelming reams of data, when elegantly interpreted, can point out a clear path forward for companies, mitigating the risks of the past and harnessing capital more effectively than ever before at scale.

Ease of Obtaining Relevant, Actionable Customer Data

Again, we return to the greatest gift modern technology has given to marketing and that is relevant actionable customer data. This is the kind of data that Marketing agencies would have only dreamed about in the past and, in many ways, was impossible to obtain. The only caveat here is that an overwhelming amount of data means there's a lot of noise in it as well but a sophisticated marketing team, agency, internal, or otherwise, will be able to cut through that and deliver well-honed campaigns engineered to create value for their companies.