Meaning of E-Marketing:
E-marketing refers to the use of digital channels and technologies to promote products or services. E-marketing encompasses various features and strategies to reach and engage with target audiences online. Web marketing, digital marketing, internet marketing, or online marketing are all of these words are synonymously used for E-Marketing (Electronic marketing).
E-Marketing is utilizing web-based features and applications for advertising and marketing efforts to draw traffic to your business. It is a digital advertisement that targets internet users. Businesses and product manufacturers use e-marketing to build or maintain a brand image and market products and services to consumers.
The Internet's introduction has completely changed how people market their products. Although advertisements using traditional media (television, newspaper, magazines, and radio) continue to be effective, more and more people and companies prefer web marketing because this method is much cheaper and has a much bigger scope.
Generally, consumers use mobile Internet and social media to research product features and prices before making final decisions: Hence, E-marketing becomes important because it supports the consumers in purchasing decisions.
Features of E-Marketing:
Buyers have many options:
When customers spend money, they want the best product in terms of quality, utility, and price. Internet marketing gives them the opportunity of choosing from a variety of options. If there are multiple choices, people can compare and buy the product that best suits their needs. Even if you are located in the remotest part of the world, you can get the product you want delivered to your doorstep.
Accessibility:
This provides more detailed information to customers about the institutions' products and prices, while activating the ability to compare a group of products. Therefore, commercial institutions seek to develop their products based on the wishes of existing customers, and in an effort to reach new customers.
Cost-effective:
Compared to traditional marketing techniques, internet marketing is cheaper. Internet marketing has paved the path for creating a level playing field for all businesses irrespective of their size. Customers can access the internet on any device, which enhances their access to products and services available online. Businesses can market their products on internet platforms with minimum technical investment and technical support.
Worldwide reach:
The ultimate goal of marketing is to reach and connect as many audiences as possible. Internet marketing can reach and communicate with customers and prospects in any region. For instance, a company in the remotest part of the world can have its own market share globally due to the internet. This ensures that buyers and sellers located in any part of the world can carry out transactions wherever they want on the internet.
Advantages of E-Marketing
1. Global reach
While traditional offline marketing is limited by geography, online marketing is not. This opens ups opportunities for easily and affordably creating international marketing campaigns. Even a small business can reach an international audience by opening an e-store. So, with a little innovativeness, businesses can gain global visibility and reach.
2. Convenience
It can help companies do marketing 7 days a week and 24 a day. The time restrictions are nonexistent, as web marketing empowers conduct marketing 24 hours a day and even on holidays and weekends. This significantly increases sales and profit. Offering your products on the Internet is also convenient for customers. They can browse your online store anytime and order when it is convenient for them.
3. Affordable
Businesses need not spend much money and resources to market themselves online. A study by HubSpot says that it costs 61% less than conventional offline marketing. This significant cost reduction is brought about by the elimination of expenses related to traveling, printing, etc.
4. Innovation
The Internet presents fresh opportunities for new products or markets.
5. Reducing costs
Traditional advertising on television, newspapers, magazines, and radio, can cost millions of dollars. Compared to the other media of advertising, it is more reasonable. If you’re using unpaid methods, then there is almost zero cost.
6. Facilitates personalization
Unlike conventional marketing, where personalizing all of your marketing messages is almost impossible, online marketing not only enables it but also simplifies it. Online marketing opens the door to personalized marketing. With the proper planning and marketing strategy, customers feel that this ad is directly speaking to them.
7. Improve customer interaction
Keeping clients happy has become much more economical for companies. By putting information on frequently asked questions on their website, organizations are saving costs by reducing the number of customer service representatives. Moreover, the organization can get the immediate product.
8. Improve Service: The company website can include interactive queries of containing stock availability or customer service questions.
9. Results are track able and measurable
Web analytics and other digital metric tools enable businesses to track and analyze the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns online. These give you detailed information about how customers respond to your advertising, visitors interact with your website, and more.
10 There are no time and space constraints: Unlike traditional methods of marketing, internet marketing has no time and place limitations. Traditional methods of marketing or offline marketing are confined to direct sales, TV, radio, mail advertising, and print media that can reach only a specific group of consumers. On the other hand, the internet is a medium where the exchange of information transcends the barriers of time and space. Businesses and firms can reach audiences anywhere in the world and at any time.
Disadvantages of E- Marketing
1. Time consumption
The biggest demerit of online marketing is its time-consuming nature. Over time, you’ll understand what works for your brand and what doesn’t. Then you can organize your strategies and use the right techniques to lower time consumption. So, before you enter online marketing, you should have a proper plan with strategies that work.
2. Security and privacy issues
Security and privacy are major concerns when it comes to digital marketing. It is crucial for businesses to safeguard customer data. When customers aren’t confident that a brand or business doesn’t care about their data security, they won’t engage with it. One effective approach is to utilize vulnerability scanners to find security issues.
3. Excess dependency on technology
Online marketing entirely relies on modern gadgets, internet technology, and technological devices. So, you need to invest in these to do online marketing. Further, you can’t reach those people who aren’t adept at using these devices.
4. Technological issues
When you face technological issues such as a crude website design, slow page loading speed, website downtime, poor site navigability, poor search engine optimization, and more, you tend to lose web traffic. When such issues are faced, people go to your competitors who are technically sound and offer a seamless experience online.
5. Global competition
Online marketing gives every business a global reach. This also means that you have to face international marketing competition. You’ll have to find and apply tactics to fight numerous competitors who are also targeting the same audience. For you need to stand out from the crowd to attract the attention of your consumers.
6. Facing negative feedback and reviews
Unlike conventional marketing, online marketing faces the risk of instant spread of a bad reputation. For, any negative comment, review, feedback, or criticism about your brand can go viral quickly, damaging your brand’s image. So, your customer service team has to be quick in effectively handling customer issues.
7. Anti-brand activities
It is also known as cybersquatting, the possibility of anti-brand activities is another demerit of online marketing. In such cases, an individual or a group of individuals can affect a brand’s reputation by falsely spreading rumors about your brand with the intent of spoiling it.
8. Internet Fraudulence
Established brands face the risk of internet fraudulence, where an unauthenticated party can use unethical and fraudulent practices such as using a brand’s trademarks and logos in their marketing. This can defame the concerned established brand. Besides, it can also lead to some financial loss. Such occurrences can also take things out of your control.
9. Possibility of strategies being copied
When an online business does well by coming up with innovative tactics, its competitors tend to copy those. This kind of piracy of a brand’s promotional techniques and strategies is another disadvantage of online marketing.
10. Inaccessibility
Although online marketing gives brands a global reach, not all regions or people of the world are reachable through it. For instance, in rural areas where internet service providers aren’t available or internet connection is poor. Further, illiterates and elderly people who do not use the internet aren’t reachable through digital marketing.
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