The emergence of collaboration marketing is due to the astronomical rise and success of Internet businesses and the marketing techniques that have grown from the expansion of the World Wide Web. Many Internet marketing techniques mimic traditional print marketing techniques and follow the design set forth by these established techniques, but the innovation of the Internet domain demands that these traditional techniques be modified and expanded.

One of the biggest shifts in Internet marketing is from a platform that is more customer driven and focused. Internet era customers are more empowered and connected, which subtly shifts the balance of power towards the customer and effects how businesses must approach and relate to their clients.

Collaboration marketing is a type of marketing that has become the product of the Internet era business. Customer driven collaboration marketing understands and embraces the new role that customers have in driving marketing techniques, and seeks to work with customers and clients to maximize their input. This recognition of power the customer holds means that they become co-creators in the marketing process, and there is a reciprocal relationship between businesses and customers.

The shift towards customer driven marketing is subtle, yet powerful. The Internet has created a shift in marketing practices, where the focus is more on relational exchanges than transactional exchanges. Historically, marketing has been the business of getting customers to buy your product, convincing consumers that they need your product or that your product is superior to other similar products in the marketplace.

As the Internet has developed and marketing techniques become more savvy, in turn so has the customer. With ease they search for what they need, and have it delivered directly to them. The customer is no longer limited to what can be found in their neighborhood or area. This empowers the customer to be choosier with items they seek to purchase.

Marketing has typically existed on a platform in which you try to find customers for the product or services your company sells. This is straightforward and seems to make sense. But customer driven marketing is about finding products to suit your customers, rather than finding customers for your products, which is a subtle but vastly important shift in thinking.

This is not to suggest that you abandon your existing marketing techniques, particularly if they are successful for your business. However: customer driven marketing is a shift in thinking that allows customers to be more involved in the products they are able to purchase from you. Perhaps you offer a customer a chosen menu of services rather than a standard package that is the same for each customer. The ways in which customer driven collaboration marketing is manifested will differ for each business, but it starts with a shift in your company's thinking. A shift to thinking about customers and markets in terms of inside out, rather than outside in.