With the advent of online marketing, it seems like traditional marketing does not even exist. If you have a useful and effective brand, chances are you are already using online marketing to promote your product and spread brand awareness.
Fortunately, online marketing has a plethora of marketing opportunities for all types of businesses out there. Whether you run a small shop or a multi-national company, online marketing tools will be sufficient for you to turn your products and services into a popular brand online.
With so many online marketing channels available these days, it gets quite challenging for brands to pick the most reliable ones. Sure, not all digital marketing platforms will work for your company. Basically, it all depends on your audience and their preferences. You need to consider your target audience and the channels through which you can and want to draw their attention.
In this post, we’ll walk you through some of the most popular online marketing tactics and their pros and cons.
Keep reading.
PPC (Pay-Per-Click) Advertisement
Google is the first place a customer is likely to come across a new brand in the market. Every time we are stuck with a question or think of a brand or a company, we Google our queries and get the relevant response. So, how do businesses use search engine’s popularity to their advantage?
PPC is the most popular internet marketing technique. Pay-per-click marketing is a paid marketing approach, in which, the company purchases ads on search engines to attract an audience to their website.
Pros
PPC can generate a significant amount of traffic to your website if done the right way. Pay-per-click can increase your conversion and customer engagement rates. Overall, it has the potential to grow your brand.
Cons
PPC has become so popular that almost all types of brands are harnessing the power of this marketing tool. This has resulted in fierce competition. PPC works only for users who manage to find the best keywords and use a smart marketing strategy to attract a desired audience.
Search Engine Optimization
Search engine optimization is more of an organic way to drive traffic to your company’s website by using competitive keywords, online SEO, link building, etc.
Pros
SEO is the most affordable and effective marketing strategy. It can help you build a loyal customer base over time.
Cons
If you choose the organic way of building your audience, it will take up to months and even years. Still, there’s no guarantee you will succeed. As much as profitable and effective Search Engine Optimization is, it requires a lot of hard work and time.
Content Marketing
Content is king! High-quality and informative content has the power to allure your audience into taking action. With the increasing demand for useful and personalized content, companies need to adopt this marketing tactic to grow their business. Content can be anything from guest blogs and written posts to visual content such as videos. Basically, promotional content dissemination of your brand is “sharing information about your business niche with your target audience”.
Pros
Content marketing makes you appear as an authentic and reliable brand in the market. High-quality and engaging content will lead people to follow and eventually buy from your brand.
Cons
Content marketing needs lots of upfront investment, time, and hard work before you can see the desired outcome. This may not work for brands that want quick results without having to spend a fortune on marketing.
Social Media Marketing
Unless you are living under a rock, you know how social media has grown in popularity. It seems like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat have become some of the must-have apps on our smartphones. With the increasing number of social media users, social media presence has become more of a necessity for brands these days. You need to have an active social media account to stay connected with your audience and keep them engaged with your brand.
Basically, there are three ways to use social media for brand marketing:
- Using organic social media marketing: Posting high-quality content and building the followers organically.
- Investing in influencer marketing: Collaborating with a social media celebrity or influencer with a large number of followers.
- Promoting your content through ads to reach out to a wider audience on the social platform.
While social media marketing can only benefit your brand in the long run, there still are certain drawbacks. Let’s have a look at the benefits first:
Pros
Social media is the ultimate platform to promote your brand without having to spend all your capital on marketing. You get the opportunity to present your brand to millions of social media users who are constantly on the lookout for something useful and interesting. If you manage to gain their attention, it won’t be hard for your business to grow and attract more followers.
Cons
Not a lot of people like social media advertising as they have started considering it mass advertisement. Again, competition in social media is growing at a fast pace. You are going to need an incredibly exceptional and 100% effective brand to catch the audience’s attention. Moreover, finding your niche market on such a vast platform can turn out to be a major challenge.
Email Marketing
Email is a traditional yet most reliable internet marketing channel for brands. You can maintain an email list, which is then used to send an email to prospects and clients who are interested in your brand. Basically, people who opt or subscribe to your newsletter will receive your company’s updates regularly. This form of marketing works wonders for all types of businesses since it involves little investment and offers the best ROI.
Pros
Nowadays, businesses can send a personalized message to the users for better response. People who have subscribed to your newsletters are likely to check your emails and take necessary actions. Email marketing offers a higher ROI since it targets the right audience i.e. only the users who are interested to do business with you.
Cons
Email marketing is a traditional marketing tactic that can tempt a fewer people to take actions. However, it is quite difficult to build your brand through emails in the long run because most of the time your users or prospects give a miss to your emails.
Conclusion
These are pros and cons of all popular online marketing strategies. As you can see, there is no single marketing channel that can guarantee success. It is, therefore, important to consider the possible drawbacks and benefits of each marketing tactic before making a decision.
So choose wisely!