Advantages and Disadvantages of Digital Marketing

Traditional marketing strategies have now evolved into modern advertising. In this age of digitization, reaching out to people has basically changed. With the aid of technology, digital marketing allowed businesses of all sizes to access a global market.

It is expected that for this year, global ad spend will reach $605 billion. This vast number indicates that competition in digital marketing is getting tougher each day. Deepened strategies, personalized and well-thought campaigns will be needed to step ahead of your game. Given the stiff digital marketing conditions, why are the numbers still growing?

What makes people spend millions and turn to this form of advertising?

What are the things you should know to ensure that you will get the most out of it?

What are the things that you need to be aware of?

Before we discuss further its advantages and disadvantages, let us first define digital marketing.

Digital Marketing

Its basic definition is your online marketing efforts. This involves the different online platforms or channels you use to advertise your campaigns and create marketing contents. This also involves your online strategies like website, email marketing, social media marketing, SEO, and content marketing that goes a long way reaching people in various medium like mobile phones, laptop and other forms of gadgets.

Digital marketing shows you off in these channels and strategies, so your future clients can see you, know more about you and discover what you have to offer.

Most purchases now start online thus the need for your online presence. The key is for you to develop a strategy that will best suit you, your prospects and your need to leverage your brand. As you do this, take note of the following advantages and disadvantages in digital marketing.

Advantages of Digital Marketing

Its advantages over traditional marketing is enormous. However, one of its main advantages is its ability to reach a wide targeted market at a given time frame and minimal cost with a measurable result.

Brand development

Your business is not just about the name and products your offer. It is about the voice and the message you want to come across your desired market. Building your brand through direct campaigns and personalized content can bring you closer to your customers. You may want to let them experience the unique proposition and value of your brand.

Personalization

Unlike TV or print advertising, digital marketing allows you to personalized your campaign. It has the ability to find your target audience, interact with your prospects and know exactly what they are looking for. Getting to know your audience and interacting with them helps create brand loyalty and create your reputation.

One to one marketing or individual marketing will help your brand leverage among the competition by creating contents or advertising that make the customer feel you are directly talking to them and addressing their individual needs.

Wider reach

Using digital marketing allows you to expand your presence and reach a vast number of customers. Your website and your social media pages can be viewed globally thus making your market global. This also allows you to have an equal footing with big and established enterprises dominating the traditional marketing scene.

Accessibility

Digital marketing makes you accessible to your customer as well. If you have a brick and mortar establishment, your online presence makes it easier for your customer to stay connected to your business. Your existing customers may want to leave to reviews for a good store experience and place a recommendation for their friends. Your prospect clients may also want to know your store location, services you offer, store hours availability and basically what you specializes in.

Greater engagement

Using traditional marketing methods may not give you the engagement you can get in digital marketing. It allows you to get hold of your customer’s attention as long as possible until you have already created brand loyalty with them and long enough for you to build a credible reputation. Continuous engagement helps you survive this competitive world. Stay competitive and relevant by actively engaging with your customer through different media channels. This can be achieved with a regular blog post, relevant and timely social media contents, an engaging post like polls, event promotions and other promotional offers.

Lower cost

One thing that makes digital marketing business-friendly is cost-efficiency. You spend less than a traditional marketing campaign which is a very difficult method for small businesses as they come with a limited budget for advertisement.

Source: Lyfe Marketing

Small business and start-ups will save a lot of cash as well as struggles in advertising their products and services by just using digital marketing. Use social media to leverage your internet marketing. Properly plan your campaign, know your target market and use the best tool, so you can reach your potential customers at a minimal cost.

Measurable results

One great leap of digital marketing over traditional methods is that it is measurable. Every digital marketing strategy you create can be measured. Web analytics, social media metrics and other online tools used to gauge result makes it easier for you to find out how whether your marketing efforts are working or not.

By measuring your campaign and knowing its effectiveness in real-time, you can adjust your tactics to yield better results and greater success in translating your products and services to your niche market. This reason should be enough for you to try investing and creating your digital marketing campaigns.

Disadvantages of digital marketing

Though this has been one of the best technological advancements for a business of all sizes, it has also its fair share of downsides and challenges that you should be aware of. 

High competition

With the growing numbers of users, a digital marketing platform has been one of the toughest competition there is. According to a study, 90% of mobile phone users are not certain of the brand they want to buy from and about 33% have purchased from a different brand than the one they had in mind, because of the information provided by another website or brand.

With these statistics, your online campaign is against global competition. Your campaign should be well thought of, should stand out, grab attention and create impact on your target audience. Anticipate what they are looking for and whether you provide or not answers even to their most basic questions. Be relevant to their needs and be quick in your response.

Dependability on Technology

The internet is prone to errors. Links may not work, landing pages may not load and page buttons just don’t simply do its job. This may be some of the reasons your prospect clients will move from your brand on to next.

To avoid this, always make sure to run a test in your website, proofread your contents and make sure that your campaigns will work on its targeted niche.

Time-consuming

One of the most challenging parts of digital marketing campaigns is time. Unorganized tactics and strategies may take most of your time and finding enough time to devote to your campaign on a daily basis become difficult. This will lead to bad results as you spread thin to other areas in your business.

Create a definite digital marketing strategy. Set your goals and find your niche market. You may want to improve company sales or leverage brand awareness, make this as your plan’s basis. Focus on a strategy that you think your company needs the most. Plan and curate well your content. Use online digital marketing tools like HubSpot, Ahrefs and social media posting and scheduling tools like Hootsuite and Tweetdeck.

Security and privacy issues

Amidst your aim to be on top of your target market’s mind, security should always come first. Website protection is something you need to take seriously as a digital marketer. Security is crucial in meeting your goals. You should secure your network and safeguard your networks connections by using firewalls and encrypting tools like VPN. Learn how cyber threats like phishing, identity thief, fraud or scams work to better equip yourself. Do the most basic thing in investing in a good antivirus or good internet security suite.

Aside from this, you should take note as well the legal considerations in obtaining customer data that you will use in your digital marketing strategies. Protect your customer data at all cost as this act as a goldmine to cybercriminals and it may be compromised during data breaches.

Final thoughts

Millions and millions of people across the world are lurking around different digital platforms as we are now in what we call the digital age. As this trend continues to grow, businesses whether big or small should also be aware of these and use these to their full advantages.

Know your market, find the best platform, create the right content, take note of its pros and cons, learn the perfect timing and grow your brand by riding on to the popularity of this trend and the different channels associated with it. Marketing, whether traditional or digital, is all about connecting to people with the right timing in the right place. And if you think your target people can be found online, then this is where you should go – now.

Author Bio:-

John Ocampos is an Opera Singer by profession and a member of the Philippine Tenors. Ever since, Digital Marketing has always been his forte. He is the Founder of SEO-Guru and the Managing Director of Tech Hacker. John is also the Strategic SEO and Influencer Marketing Manager of Softvire Australia – the leading software eCommerce company in Australia and Softvire New Zealand

Featured Image Source: Pixabay

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