Importance And Drawbacks Of Digital Marketing
Digital marketing is promoting your products or services through various forms of electronic media working on the internet and online platforms. In current times, one can not imagine businesses without online promotions. With digital marketing, there can be personalized campaigning for individual clients, unlike TV or print media advertising which is planned for massive buyers. However, digital marketing has its own sets of pros and cons, which are discussed in this article.
Advantages of Digital Marketing
There are many advantages of online marketing for both small and large scale businesses, such as;
- Lower Cost: A well-structured digital marketing strategy can reach a mass crowd than traditional marketing techniques. Companies can save a lot of money here, as digital marketing does not require much budget to access the target audience.
- Personalization: Making customized offers to your clientele proves to be very effective. This is possible because your website gets linked to the customer database.
Thereby, you can always welcome them with a targeted offer, whenever they visit your website. The more they deal with you, the more you can polish the client’s profile and effectively pitch them.
- Social Currency: In simple words, social currency refers to word of mouth. When this provides value to a user, but the value increases when it is passed from one to another or many, then it becomes more powerful.
Online marketing lets marketers build engaging content like articles, videos, and images. Such content is easily passed and forwarded from one person to another and it becomes viral.
- Global Reach: The world has turned into a global village with digitization. With online marketing techniques, ad campaigns can have visibility and exposure in any part of the globe. Even with a small investment in the company or the project, new markets can be discovered with a social platform.
Anyone can set up trade relations globally with a website.
- Results Can Be Measured: It is very easy to measure and track the performance of ad campaigns. Unlike traditional marketing, it would not take weeks or months to evaluate the results of the campaign.
However, with digital marketing you can use web analytics, social media platforms, and other metric tools, to analyze the effectiveness of your campaign. There will be a detailed study of customer behavior patterns and you can take necessary actions accordingly to improve engagement.
- Improves Conversion: With greater accessibility and wider reach, companies can easily follow their prospective clients until they get converted. Because with the help of a website, a potential lead is only a few clicks away to make a purchase. Unlike other media techniques that demand people to go shopping, or get up and make a phone call, online marketing can be immediate and seamless.
- Customer Engagement: With engagement, it refers to holding the customer’s attention for as long as you can to build brand loyalty with them. Frequent engagement also helps in creating a brand reputation which helps in surviving the competition.
This can be attained by email marketing, regular social media posts, timely and relevant blog content, and engaging posts like event promotions, polls, and other promotional offers.
Disadvantages of Digital Marketing
Digital marketing has been the most credible technological advancement in the business world, for all sizes of companies. However, it has its share of challenges and downsides that must be taken care of.
- Time Consuming: No doubt, it can make the news viral in seconds but the important tasks like SEO, generating marketing content, and optimizing online advertising campaigns can consume a lot of time.
Also, the results of SEO are seen after months. To ensure a good ROI, results must be evaluated properly.
- Feedback and Complaints: It is very sensitive as well as critical to maintaining the online reputation of the firm. The audience can be influenced by negative reviews, complaints, criticism, and feedback floating on social media channels and websites.
Customer service must be handled carefully and there shouldn’t be any failure in responding effectively to clients.
- Training & Skills: Digital marketing training is a must for the staff to have the expertise and the right knowledge to carry out operations in a structured manner. The techniques, platforms, methods, tools, and trends are constantly changing. Thus, they must be kept updated to gain maximum benefits.
- Competition is High: Since with digital marketing, you can access the audience globally. This means you have to face severe global competition to successfully meet your end customers. It is very challenging to stand out in the crowd and grab the attention of consumers online with good strategies.
- Privacy & Security Issues: Numerous legal considerations are indulged in gathering and using consumer data for online marketing purposes. But the rules regarding privacy, cybercrime, data protection must be carefully taken care of.
Conclusion
Of course, the benefits surpass the drawbacks of digital marketing. This does not mean that it should be implemented blindly. Marketers must carefully and professionally apply the current trending marketing techniques with a balance of both offline as well as online methods. The ultimate goal is to enhance business and boost sales, keeping in mind the above-mentioned factors.