Well, I am not here to contest or challenge. All that I want is to take your vision to a whole new space of marketing, which the marketers should look at.

During a discussion with one of my friends, this is what struck me and I call it - The WaterPond Marketing

In todays connected world, there are consumers all around you? And they are connected! Dont you forget that! Hence its possible that the person you just interacted with knows the others you are going to interact with, so you always need to project your “RIGHT SIDE”!

Now in this far and wide connected world, you cannot go to every other person and tell someone one thing and someone other the other story and want them to believe you. Other way round, they all would know what you spoke to about, to the first person as they are connected!

So you cannot go about running the same Banner Ads on all the sites, with a thought that the visitors on the site are prospects. Well, they might be and I certainly dont contest that, but you are trying to tell everyone who is already connected that this is ME and look at running these Ads for all the people on the site, which includes both the unique visitors and the Returning ones.

Its no longer smart to burn the note and push your way into the lead to reach to your customer

Your customer is anyway knowing about you from somewhere or the other and creating perceptions and taking decisions based upon the recommendations of his influential friends and known contacts.

So, essentially you are in a Pond of Water, which is filled with similar need mongers and this is the place you need to market.

So just burning your money, I dont think would make a lot of sense. Instead my advice would be, go connect and bring out the Zappos model, which simply is that every interaction is the best opportunity to delight the consumer and serve him right.

This makes the game easier and much focused and brings out the best in you each time and you dont wander around! Relating the same to the online world, I think Banner Ads and popups are making lesser of a sense today as the market dynamics and reaction levels are changing.