The world of online marketing changes fast -- what was an effective tool for reaching customers yesterday, may be outdated and ineffective today. The following represent four online marketing techniques that we were once the pride of the industry and helped make millions of dollars for those businesses that executed them properly. But today, their usefulness has been supplanted by new technologies and more targeted, cost-effective ways of generating revenue and traffic online.

4 Online Marketing Techniques that are on the decline

Banner advertising

It seems like only yesterday that the best way to drive traffic was to create some really compelling banner advertisements and place them on popular, relevant sites throughout the web. My, how times have changed. The golden goose of banner ads never stood a chance over the long haul. People grew weary of where these garish ads would take them (and how many pop-up windows they would open) and soon click-through rates dwindled to almost nil. Today, there are some innovations in the banner advertising arena - and if done correctly - there are some click-throughs to be had using dynamic ads that speak more directly to consumers. However, many companies have put their precious marketing dollar into search engine marketing rather than the old standby, the banner.

Spam

Spam was the first great marketing tool on the web - and despite all the headaches it caused, for the companies that used it without conscience, darn it all if it didn't bring results. But there are only so many online pharmacy ads and free vacations giveaways that a person can take - and soon, email inboxes were overstuffed with spam. Even if you're business sent out a quality email blast, chances were it would get lost in the sea of unwanted emails. Now, many of the world's top spammers are shut down and although the "great" spam wave is over - the email marketing industry will never be the same.

Email Newsletters

Once the preferred method of delivering content mixed with marketing messages and calls-to-action, the email newsletters was, for a while, a fairly un-invasive way of driving people to your site. Unfortunately, at some point, people stopped opening these newsletters, or simply abandoned their email boxes due to heavy spamming. Now, email newsletters are strictly opt-in affairs, and are used to alert customers to special offers and upcoming events. SEO content has replaced the content once put into these handy delivery devices.

Black hat SEO

When SEO was in its infancy, many internet marketers found ways to "trick" Google and get their pages ahead in the rankings. Unfortunately, these tactics often involved keyword stuffing, unreadable content and other "black hat" techniques that would become the scourge of the industry. Like spam, it worked by overwhelming the visitor with sheer volume - and always created a poor customer experience. Now "white hat" techniques that promote good, relevant content, proper URL structure and select keyword use rule the SEM industry.