Digital marketing is an established trend now. You can keep your ads on Facebook and reach thousands of people instantly. The online contents such as images, videos, text and blogs are creating more impact than ever. However, the advantages and disadvantages of digital marketing should be analyzed before diving in this field.
Hence, in this article, we are discussing pros and cons of digital marketing:
Pros of Digital Marketing
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Wide reach
One of the good aspects of digital marketing is its ability to reach a wide range of people. An advertisement on a digital platform can be displayed to the USA, Europe or any part of the world. You don’t need to travel those places to promote your business. Hence, the volume of potential customers is infinite for a business. This would not be possible with a traditional marketing system.
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Customer targeting
The benefit of digital marketing includes the ability to target the promotion to the intended customer. Each product is designed for the specific customers, lipstick for girls, men perfume for boys, school bags for students and so on. With digital marketing, you can choose whom you want to show your products and whom to avoid. Moreover, the ads can be customized as per the nature of potential customers. These little variations make significant improvement in your promotion.
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Cost-effective
Digital marketing is cheaper than traditional marketing. You can start to promote your products starting from as low as $1 and reach up to 1,000 people with that budget. The common way of measuring the cost of digital marketing is through Cost per Click. CPC shows how much it costs for you so that one person clicks on your ads. For example, the average CPC is about $0.20 means that you need to spend $0.20 to find one person who is interested in your product and clicks the ads to find the details. If you spend $1, you have 10 potential customers. You can find details about pricing here.
The benefit of digital marketing includes saving time also. You don’t need to hassle about printing posters, dealing with newspapers and television. You can simply put your ads on a digital platform on your own. Moreover, use of automation such as chatbots reduces the cost of marketing.
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Measurable Metrics
The measurable metrics is probably the best feature of digital marketing. You can keep track of how your promotional activities are doing once you launch them. In television, you will never know how many people watched your ads. In Facebook, you can see how many people watched, liked and responded (comment) in your ads. You can easily receive the feedback whether or not the advertisement is helping you. These metrics help to devise new marketing plans based on data driven approach.
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High Conversion Rate
Conversion rate means the number of people who buy your products through your ads. High conversion rate is a sign of a good marketing campaign. Digital marketing has a higher conversion rate in comparison to traditional marketing because you can target specific market segments with personalized ads.
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Customer Interaction
Digital marketing enables two-way communication between business and customers. People can easily interact with business for particular ads or products. The easy flow of information boosts the customer relationship for long term benefits. Similarly, constant feedback from customers helps to improvise the product and service quality.
Cons of Digital Marketing
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Copying
The contents on the digital platform are open for everyone. There is always a risk that other business or competitors will copy your contents. You should be careful to design your digital marketing campaign to avoid such issues. Focusing on brand image is the best way to avoid this problem. Customers will always perceive branded products as better than that of the copied version.
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Competition
Digital marketing is cheap and effective. No wonder everyone is doing it. Hence, the competition to promote a product is high. Digital marketing has also increased the transparency. People can now access information on more products and their prices. Hence, business should compete on price and quality with other competitors.
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Needs Skilled Resources
Digital marketing is a tech-dependent transaction. You need particular skills to handle and understand the mechanism. The knowledge on content writing, SEO optimization and Social Media Marketing are basic requirements for digital marketing. You can hire an agency, such as xyz, to avoid this obstacle.
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Complaints and Feedback
Any complaints and feedback by the customer are visible to everyone. You should address those complaints as soon as possible. Otherwise, the negative message is likely to travel a long distance. The negative promotion will leave a dent on your brand for a long time.
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Security and Privacy Issues
One of the disadvantages of digital marketing is the issue related to security and privacy protection. Unethical hacking of the business pages can compromise the information of the business itself as well as that of customers. Similarly, copyright issues are equally troubling while developing a content. In some countries, there are heavy penalties for such issues.
Verdict on digital marketing
Digital marketing is a new future of marketing. The pros of digital marketing like wide reach, cost effective, measurable metrics and customer targeting is far better than cons of digital marketing such as copying and security issues. However, it will be handy to learn the basics of digital marketing beforehand. The knowledge on paid social advertising, email marketing, content marketing and data analysis are good ways to begin a digital marketing.
Overall, digital marketing is the next strategy that every business should undertake.