Studies by reputed analysts like Gartner reveal that today more and more consumers are using research on mobile phones, the Internet, and social media for doing preliminary price and product research before arriving at the final purchase decisions. Internet marketing effectively enables you to cement bonds and relations with prospects and customers through low-cost personalized communication regularly, reflecting the definite shift from mass marketing. Many companies are expanding their marketing budgets to compensate for the growth in online marketing. Everybody is looking for methods for better marketing while saving as much money as possible. The only way to get past this conundrum is to enumerate the online marketing benefits. Marketing a business online brings to the fore benefits that are not available in the traditional marketing form. Here are some of the striking benefits/advantages of Internet marketing or the advantages of online marketing.
11 Advantages of Internet Marketing
Following are the advantages of internet marketing or online marketing –
1. Utmost Convenience Guaranteed
Internet marketing allows your business to be open 24×7 without any worries about store opening hours or overtime pay to staff. When you offer your products online, it becomes immensely convenient for customers too. They would be free to browse through your online store whenever they feel like and place orders whenever it is really convenient for them to do so.
2. Greater Reach Assured
Internet marketing assures much greater reach and accessibility. Now it is much easier to overcome barriers of distance. You could now sell products across the country without really having to set up local stores or outlets. Internet marketing helps to widen your target market. You could now think of opening even an export business without opening distributor networks in different countries across the globe. However, if you wish to pursue selling internationally, you need to use localization services to ensure that all your products are just perfect for local markets and comply with local business standards and regulations. Localization services would be including product modification and translation for reflecting local market variances and inconsistencies. If you contact reliable SEO services, you would learn more in detail.
3. Cost-Effectiveness is a Salient Feature
It is a fact that marketing your products online would be less expensive than marketing them via any physical retail outlets. You would not have to worry about the recurring property rental costs and maintenance expenses. Most importantly, you don’t need to buy stocks for display in a store. You could be ordering stock in line as per demand thus, keeping your inventory expenses low.
4. Personalization Made Possible
Thanks to Internet marketing, you could now go about personalizing offers to your customers simply by creating a profile of their preferences and purchasing history. Simply by tracking the product information and the various web pages visited by the prospects, you could now be successful in making targeted offers reflecting their interests. By tracking website visits, you could gather information relevant to planning effective cross-selling campaigns for increasing the customer’s value of sales.
5. Building Robust Relationships
The Internet effectively provides a key platform for building bonds and cementing relationships with your customers and resulting in a definite increase in customer retention levels. When a customer makes a purchase, you should send a follow-up email confirming the transaction and thanking the customer. Emailing customers regularly regarding special and personalized offers would go a long way in further maintaining the relationship. An Internet-marketing company could consider inviting the customers to submit product reviews directly on their website. This would be generating a true sense of community.
6. Benefits to Customers
Customers can now stay updated through emails, websites, and online adverts, and of course, social networking sites. Customers now have easy access to the Internet even when they go through tablets and smartphones. Customers are now able to make a comparison of products and services online. They no longer need to visit different shops or hop from one store to another physically. Today, the customer can compare the features and prices of a wide array of products simply by opening tabs. Another biggest advantage of Internet marketing is that online pricing is really transparent. Customers are now able to take advantage of any change in prices, special offers, etc. Customers have complete access to all kinds of pricing information 24×7.
7. Changing on the Go
Compared to traditional forms of marketing such as magazine adverts or newspaper and television advertisement slots, the first online marketing benefit is that you can make changes from any place. You can track advertisements. You can judge the response to a change in certain visuals or content more accurately with online marketing. It provides accurate data of the interest generated by the advertisement. With traditional marketing methods, though, changes mean that an entirely new advertisement needs to be taken out and do not immediately take effect.
8. Results
The ability of online marketing to view results and monitor their fall and rise through web-based online analysis programs makes the marketing program more worthwhile. This makes it possible for companies to scrap vestigial advertisements and focus on what actually generates interest. If quick and effective changes are not made to the advertising campaign, then it may fail.
9. Demographic Targeting
When advertisements are placed online, they can be targeted towards a specific group dependent upon gender or age, or even geography. You can target specific income groups and groups with certain educational qualifications or those in certain professions. E-mail solutions by enterprises can have monthly or weekly newsletters sent over the internet, which showcase the company’s latest research and findings related to a certain product or service. This can create additional awareness of the company and result in interest in other products of the company. Traditional marketing is basically like shooting in the dark compared to the directness of online marketing.
10. Inclusion of Media
Marketing online can include various types of media such as email, audio files, blogs, videos, social media links, and newsletters. Access to several media outlets makes it possible for the online marketing group to target a more specific audience with better results. Various enterprises can develop e-mail based solutions for their marketing campaigns with customers being informed about the latest developments and offers. Traditional marketing does not account for so many media outlets, and thus, those that choose to market online find that they receive more attention than those that do not.
11. Conversion Rate
Online marketing arms the company with the ability to convert a prospective customer into a customer almost immediately. The sale of a product is only a few clicks away from its advertisement. Traditional advertising relies on the customer remembering the advertisement and taking action on the advertisement to go out and physically purchase it. However, online, the advertisement or marketing campaign can capture someone’s imagination and then lead them to purchase the product or service in a few short moments. This is especially useful as it takes advantage of a customer’s immediate desires. One may see an advertisement in the newspaper and want to purchase the product but may forget, later on, that does not happen with online marketing. The essence of online marketing lies in creating strong ties and relationships with the target audience. It is better to create an environment where customers can get useful data and information regarding the product than to set out a search to gather customers. The best way to advertise is to get the reader of the advertisement themselves to spread the message. This can only happen with an attractive and meaningful advertisement. An advertisement should always respect the audience and the market and focus entirely on the audience’s needs and the market to achieve one’s own needs and ambitions. The online marketing technique allows companies to provide a quality experience while viewing the marketing campaign and can entice more readers, viewers, and subscribers to purchase the advertised product or service. Now you got the advantages of online marketing. Internet marketing indirectly helps in reducing the personal carbon footprint. When people buy online, they would not need to go out shopping in their cars, and as such, You would reduce the carbon footprint on an individual basis.
