Disadvantages of Online Advertising 

Since many consumers spend time shopping online for everything from groceries and clothing to electronics and cleaning supplies, many businesses include online advertising in their marketing strategies. While the benefits of advertising online include the potential to reach a large market and the ability to measure results, online advertising also presents some disadvantages.

Customers Ignore Ads

Consumers are so used to seeing advertising on television, hearing radio commercials and flipping through advertisements in magazines, they've developed an aversion to all forms of advertising. This is also the case with online advertising, where consumers can avoid clicking banner advertisements, bypass ads in online videos they watch and close pop-up advertisements as soon as they come up on their screens. Customers are in control of which advertising messages they want to click and respond to.

Viewing Problems

Website downtime, lags in website or video loading and browser complications can reduce the number of times consumers see online advertisements and how well they see them. When technical issues occur, companies lose the opportunity to broadcast advertisements for their products and services and may lose potential sales. Viewing problems can occur because of problems with a website or if a consumer is using a smart phone or other mobile device to view a website, has a slow connection speed or does not have the correct applications and programs installed on his computers for proper viewing.

Expensive Ad Prices

Pricing for advertising online can range from inexpensive -- $20-a-month placements on local parenting blogs -- to thousands of dollars on popular sites such as the New York Times. The cost for banner, text and video ads vary depending on the amount of traffic and the type of readership a website or blog receives. Online advertising through pay-per-click campaigns and social media sites can also wreak havoc on a company's marketing budget, potentially yielding little to no return on investment.

Consumers Get Distracted

When customers visit a website, they typically have a goal in mind, whether it's to catch up on the latest celebrity gossip, read the news, chat with friends, and download music or shop for a specific item. Websites present customers with various options that can easily distract them and pull their attention from your online advertisements.

Too Many Options

The Internet offers a wide range of websites on which companies can place advertisements. This can be overwhelming, especially for small business owners. With so many options, it's difficult to narrow down the choices to the websites that will attract the most potential customers and sales. Once a company selects a website, it is then presented with a variety of ways it can advertise its products or services on the site, such as through banner advertisements, video marketing or by sponsoring a post. Companies have to determine which type of advertisement yields the best response from their target markets.

Source: smallbusiness.chron.com

Types of Internet Marketing:

The various types of Internet marketing are:

Search Engine Optimization (SEO):

In this kind of marketing, the website is made more search engine friendly so that when a specific keyword or search is typed by the user, the site will make it into the top search results. This type of Internet marketing is more appropriate method to attract the potential customers.

Pay-Per-Click: 

Under this category, the advertiser pays the search engine certain amount to get the address of his website featured separately if a keywords relating to his industry of sector is typed in.

Affiliate Marketing: 

It is a kind of marketing wherein a company hires other companies or websites known as affiliates and entrusts them with the responsibility of marketing the product. The affiliates are paid commission. The affiliates can host a website in which it may display the banners or logos of the company. If the visitor clicks on this banner, they are redirected to the sponsor's site. The affiliate is paid a commission.

Online Auctions: 

Online auctions are just as the auctions that take place in the real world. Items are put up for sale and the seller quotes the minimum price. Interested buyers then start quoting their price. And the item is sold to the highest bidder. The buyers in case of online auction can be form any part of the world

Banner advertising: 

Here banners of the advertiser are displayed on the website. The advertisers pay a certain amount of money to get the banner displayed on the website for a certain period of time. The banners are usually visually appealing to attract the potential customers. The respond it will get depends upon the website it has been displayed. Again there is no guarantee that the prospective customers will view it.

Directory Listings: 

It is a service wherein sites are placed in special categories in a directory. Such kind of service can be free or fee based. The listing can be made in yellow pages or directories such as Yahoo.

Internet marketing is thus a new age marketing that provides the sellers with never seen before kind of opportunities. Since it is online, it is much cheaper than traditional methods of marketing and can be done by even a small-scale enterprise.

Ethical E-mail marketing: 

There are many web applications which allow website owners to maintain the subscriber database and allow personalized newsletters to be sent in a jiffy. Usually marketing strategies are impersonal in nature. For e.g. an ad shown on TV is simultaneously watched by many. Email marketing gives an opportunity for personally addressing the recipient. If handled tactfully, email marketing can be used to successfully stroke the emotions of the targeted audience and thus elicit positive response. It can be used to send information about the latest product information, launches, beta products, and updates on service workshops, seminars etc to the subscribers.

Source: www.alzains.com

Ten Advantages of Online Marketing Vs. Traditional Media

A lot of small business people are very curious about online marketing, but they don’t understand how it can directly increase their business. Many of them are seeing less return from their advertisements in traditional media like The Yellow Pages, newspapers and direct mailing campaigns, and are looking to explore new ways of expanding their market share. When the advantages of online marketing are laid out, it is easy to see how it is oftentimes a more cost-effective marketing solution for small businesses.

These are some of the many advantages that online marketing offers over traditional media outlets:

1. Reduced Cost

The starting cost of online marketing is only a fraction of the thousands of dollars that Yellow Pages, television and radio ads cost. For example, you can get a free listing on Google Local that will be just as effective as a costly online Yellow Pages ad. In addition, while traditional ads may only run for a short time, a search engine optimization campaign can deliver long-term results. You can also save money with online Pay-Per-Click advertising where it is easy to experiment with small ad volumes until you perfect your strategy and then expand your marketing budget when you are assured of a positive sales return.

2. Everything Is Measurable

When you place an ad in the newspaper or a magazine, it can be difficult to assess the direct sales impact for your business. With online marketing, everything can be tracked and illustrated in detailed graphs that illustrate traffic growth, leads and sales conversions from your specific search marketing campaigns. Using a free traffic analysis tool like Google Analytics, it is easy to calculate your return on investment (ROI) so you can appreciate the excellent value generated from your online marketing budget.

3. Brand Engagement

In the crowded market, you need to establish and maintain positive brand awareness and client loyalty. Apart from word-of-mouth and leveraging your personal relationships with your established clients, a website is the most important marketing tool a business can have. A regularly updated website with well-written content that maintains people’s interest is essential to showing people exactly how your business is distinctive – and how you offer the best value to your clients.

4. Demographic Targeting

The degree to which an online marketing campaign can target and measure the response from specific demographics and regions is often astonishing to business owners who normally use traditional media. New demographic prediction and online advertising platforms allow you to specifically target the specific consumer demographics most likely to buy your products. In particular, if you want to target young people between the ages of 16-30, you’ll need an online marketing strategy to reach them where they spend the bulk of their time: On the Internet and on social media sites.

5. Real-Time Results

With online marketing you don’t have to wait weeks to see a significant boost in your business. With a paid search marketing campaign you can experience real-time results that enable you to fine-tune your marketing message to achieve your desired effect. If your marketing strategy isn’t working effectively, real-time monitoring tools allow you to easily pin-point exactly where you are going wrong.

6. Easily Refine Your Strategy

Using online marketing analytics and tracking tools you can test conversion rates at a fraction of the cost of a traditional media campaign. Online marketing levels the playing field and allows savvy small businesses to compete in competitive niches that previously would only be open to large corporations and their massive marketing budgets. If your marketing strategy is not bringing in the return on investment (ROI) that you desire, you can work to perfect it without having to launch an expensive new campaign as would be required with most traditional media outlets.

7. Long-Term Exposure

The benefit of an organic search marketing campaign that optimizes a website for specific keywords is that you will achieve a long-term return on your investment. Once your website’s visibility is well-established with search engines, it is easy to do regular low-cost maintenance of your strategy. The early adopters of new online marketing platforms like social media marketing will have a significant head start over their competition.

8. Product Information

Today’s savvy consumers want to compare reviews and opinions of friends, trusted bloggers and industry experts before they make a decision. If you can provide quality, linkable information that is what people are looking for, then the next step of converting users into paying clients can be very easy. With social media networks like Facebook and Twitter re-enforcing the value of positive word-of-mouth exposure, trust is more important than ever in the marketing field.

9. Less Intrusive

Most savvy consumers dislike intrusive traditional marketing methods like direct mailing, print ads and television advertisements. When someone buys a newspaper or magazine, they want to read interesting articles not are bombarded with irrelevant ads. While mediums like television can still be useful for maintaining awareness of large corporate brands, it is not an effective medium for most small and medium-size businesses. With online marketing, you can target consumers precisely when they are searching for products and services that your business can provide.

10. Holds Their Attention

When people read the newspaper or a magazine they may scan over the advertisements beside the article but there is no way to engage their attention. With online marketing you can encourage them to take action, visit your website and read about your products and services which results in vastly increased “stickiness” of your marketing message.

Source: www.marketingsmartt.com

The benefits of e-Marketing over traditional marketing

Reach

The nature of the internet means businesses now have a truly global reach. While traditional media costs limit this kind of reach to huge multinationals, e-Marketing opens up new avenues for smaller businesses, on a much smaller budget, to access potential consumers from all over the world.

Scope

Internet marketing allows the marketer to reach consumers in a wide range of ways and enables them to offer a wide range of products and services. E-Marketing includes, among other things, information management, public relations, customer service and sales. With the range of new technologies becoming available all the time, this scope can only grow.

Interactivity

Whereas traditional marketing is largely about getting a brand's message out there, e-Marketing facilitates conversations between companies and consumers. With a two-way communication channel, companies can feed off of the responses of their consumers, making them more dynamic and adaptive.

Immediacy

Internet marketing is able to, in ways never before imagined, provide an immediate impact.

Imagine you're reading your favorite magazine. You see a double-page advert for some new product or service, maybe BMW's latest luxury sedan or Apple's latest iPod offering. With this kind of traditional media, it's not that easy for you, the consumer, to take the step from hearing about a product to actual acquisition.

With e-Marketing, it’s easy to make that step as simple as possible, meaning that within a few short clicks you could have booked a test drive or ordered the iPod. And all of this can happen regardless of normal office hours. Effectively, Internet marketing makes business hours 24 hours per day, 7 days per week for every week of the year.

By closing the gap between providing information and eliciting a consumer reaction, the consumer's buying cycle is speeded up and advertising spend can go much further in creating immediate leads.

Demographics and targeting

Generally speaking, the demographics of the Internet are a marketer's dream. Internet users, considered as a group, have greater buying power and could perhaps be considered as a population group skewed towards the middle-classes.

Buying power is not all though. The nature of the Internet is such that its users will tend to organize themselves into far more focused groupings. Savvy marketers who know where to look can quite easily find access to the niche markets they wish to target.

Marketing messages are most effective when they are presented directly to the audience most likely to be interested. The Internet creates the perfect environment for niche marketing to targeted groups.

Adaptivity and closed loop marketing

Closed Loop Marketing requires the constant measurement and analysis of the results of marketing initiatives. By continuously tracking the response and effectiveness of a campaign, the marketer can be far more dynamic in adapting to consumers' wants and needs.

With e-Marketing, responses can be analyzed in real-time and campaigns can be tweaked continuously. Combined with the immediacy of the Internet as a medium, this means that there's minimal advertising spend wasted on less than effective campaigns.

Maximum marketing efficiency from e-Marketing creates new opportunities to seize strategic competitive advantages.

The combination of all these factors results in an improved ROI and ultimately, more customers, happier customers and an improved bottom line.

Source: www.quirk.biz

What is e-Marketing and how is it better than traditional marketing?

Marketing has pretty much been around forever in one form or another.

Since the day when humans first started trading whatever it was that they first traded, marketing was there. Marketing was the stories they used to convince other humans to trade. Humans have come a long way since then, (Well, we like to think we have) and marketing has too.The methods of marketing have changed and improved, and we've become a lot more efficient at telling our stories and getting our marketing messages out there. E-Marketing is the product of the meeting between modern communication technologies and the age-old marketing principles that humans have always applied.

What is e-Marketing?

Very simply put, e-Marketing or electronic marketing refers to the application of marketing principles and techniques via electronic media and more specifically the Internet. The terms e-Marketing, Internet marketing and online marketing, are frequently interchanged, and can often be considered synonymous.

E-Marketing is the process of marketing a brand using the Internet. It includes both direct response marketing and indirect marketing elements and uses a range of technologies to help connect businesses to their customers.

By such a definition, e-Marketing encompasses all the activities a business conducts via the worldwide web with the aim of attracting new business, retaining current business and developing its brand identity.

Why e-marketing important?

When implemented correctly, the return on investment (ROI) from e-Marketing can far exceed that of traditional marketing strategies.

Whether you're a "bricks and mortar" business or a concern operating purely online, the Internet is a force that cannot be ignored. It can be a means to reach literally millions of people every year. It's at the forefront of a redefinition of way businesses interact with their customers.

Source: www.quirk.biz/

What is Online Marketing?

Introduction

Online marketing or internet marketing is a relatively new, but rapidly expanding and fundamentally important aspect of strategic implementation. Indeed in many organizations, it may be regarded as a functional aspect of marketing strategy and certainly of the business model.

Final Touch Inc considers online marketing very different from ordinary business marketing and brings six categories of organic benefit: costs are reduced, capability is increased, communications are refined, control is enhanced, customer service is improved and competitive advantage may be achieved depending on the competitor’s reaction.

Analysis

Online marketing processes include not only e-marketing and sales, but supply chain and channel management, manufacturing and inventory control, financial operations and employee’s workflow procedures across an entire organization. Essentially e-business technologies empower customers, employees, suppliers, distributors, vendors, and partners by giving them powerful tools for information management and communications.

Online marketing or e-marketing is always confused with e-commerce. Any business marketing using online media is known as e-marketing, while on the other spectrum, if there is financial transaction involved with the electronic process using internet technologies, it is e-commerce.

Since a web presence is essential for a business to grow in all dimensions, a dynamic website, blog and social media activity, is the best way to develop sell your products and services to prospective local and international clients.

Customer satisfaction is the most important aspect of business development through e-marketing. There are certain online marketing tips that can truly enhance the worth of your business. The website needs to show complete contact information, this will help customers to rely on the company that if something goes wrong, someone will be there to listen to them. Impressive profile of products or services search engines is great idea of marketing business through online sources.

Data warehousing to map customer needs that is FAQ`s, auto replies, built in call back facility and queries recording is also essential in this regard. Customer relationship management CRM needs to be focused separately. E-branding, that is, to make your site attractive through animations and slide shows inclusion.

Conclusion

Driven by competitive pressures, companies are employing online marketing for a variety of purposes. Its main advantage is the increase in revenues through optimal customer and partner management. Online marketing strengthens the operational core of a business by reducing the amount of loss and instability.

In addition to this, it fortifies interactivity that is pull mechanism and push model. Industry structure enhances customer relations and removal of intermediations, agents and distributors. Hence e-marketing has been playing a role of bridge between businesses and end customers in a most effective manner.

Source: www.focus.com