Marketing is an integral part of running a successful business, and it has evolved over the years and will continue to do so with time. Marketing includes publicity, advertising, merchandising, sales, distribution channels and much more. Present day businesses have two ways of spending their funds allocated for marketing, namely the Internet marketing, and the traditional marketing.
It used to be challenging to decide whether to follow an Internet marketing strategy for your business, or to go with the traditional marketing plan. But now with the Internet age taking over our lives, it has become particularly crucial to adopt Internet marketing into your business strategies.
Internet marketing, as well as Traditional marketing, both have their pros and cons, however a combination of both would be the best option for any kind of business.
Traditional Marketing
Traditional marketing relies on direct selling, such as media (TV commercial and Radio) and print media, such as billboards, magazine ads and flyers. It also includes the use of a large amount of printed material, like brochures or catalogues for promoting the products or services.
Traditional marketing – Pros:
- To reach certain type of target audience, you may need to depend on traditional marketing only. An example will be reaching out to retiring CEOs, as a majority of them are not accustomed to the ways of various platforms offered by the Internet.
- An important aspect of traditional marketing is selling through personal contacts. For certain products, direct selling through personal contact proves to be the most successful way of marketing.
- Many continue to prefer being approached personally and given some printed material that they can read at their convenience.
Limitations of Traditional marketing
- Costly: Advertising on radio and TV is very expensive and often beyond the reach of small businesses. Even printing product brochures, flyers and business cards is quite expensive.
- Results can’t be tracked easily: In case of traditional marketing, quantitative analysis is very difficult. You may need to try a few things before discovering the most viable option.
- Almost always requires external help: You need to seek help from other professionals for advertising on radio/TV or designing and printing the catalogues and mailer.
- Forced: Usually, traditional marketing is forced upon users, who generally don’t like it.
Internet Marketing
This style of marketing relies on utilizing the Internet. This holds true for virtual companies, which depend solely on the Internet for promoting their business, and also for companies which exist physically and want to exploit the web for advertising their goods or services.
Internet marketing includes the planning and designing of a business website, and creating an online presence for the company website and brand with the help of search engine optimization. It also makes use of social media, email marketing and advertising through the net.
Internet Marketing – Pros:
- Result can be tracked and analyzed.
- Decision taking can be based on tracked and analyzed results.
- Social media has now become an integral part of Internet marketing, and it is a very sophisticated and effective evolved form of word of mouth marketing Social media allows businesses to straightway access various groups and individuals in order to laser target their reach. Moreover, social media enables business to develop relationship with their clients without involving any third-party.
- It is highly cost-effective.
- Small as well as large business can benefit from Internet Marketing.
Limitations of Internet Marketing
- Creating and keeping your content updated, which is an essential feature of this kind of marketing, demands a lot of your time.
- You may not see results for the 1st couple of weeks or even months.
- Direct Selling will hardly work in Internet marketing.
If you are a small business just getting started, then Internet marketing is the best way for you to move forward. With all the information available online, it won’t be so difficult to start marketing your website on your own. For those who want a professional’s help, can always research online and hire a professional SEO expert. Hope this article was of help.