With the decline of traditional media, digital marketing is becoming the new prevailing practice for many marketers. However, what exactly are the advantages of digital marketing? More importantly, will they benefit your business more than traditional methods?
Let’s answer these questions and illustrate once and for all the benefits of digital over traditional marketing! Thus, in this article, we will be exploring the top 5 advantages of digital marketing!
1. Wider Reach
Nowadays, to say that the Internet has become an integral part of many Malaysians’ lives is incontestable. One need not look further than the ever-increasing number of people going online daily for work, school, and fun as proof.
In accordance with that, the first on a list of five digital marketing advantages is its sheer reach.
Compared to traditional marketing methods, you can reach a far broader customer base through digital marketing.
Think of it as a net: the wider the net, the more you can catch, and there’s no wider net than the internet.
Puns aside, let’s bring up a website all Malaysians know of to help illustrate: Shopee.
Shopee advertises almost exclusively through online platforms. Its marketing approach puts a spotlight on reaching a broad and varied customer base through advertising on multiple channels.
At the time of writing, it is one of the leading e-commerce platforms in Southeast Asia.
From this example, we can see that an individual business is capable of garnering a lot of online attention. In this case, employing traditional methods would be almost completely superfluous.
2. Cost-Effective
The second of the digital marketing advantages that will certainly make the more frugal businessman (or woman!) happy is that it’s cost-effective.
By advertising digitally, you can anticipate spending a fraction of what you would have if you used traditional methods like billboard advertisements and the like.
This is due, in part, to substantially reduced production costs since spending anything on materials is unnecessary.
When it comes to marketing, every single ringgit within the budget should be maximised to its fullest potential. Why, then, would you waste money on printing posters and renting billboards when you could just hire digital media experts?
3. Targeted Advertising
The third of the digital marketing advantages is the ability to target audiences through a strategy known as “targeted ads”.
Whether you’re a business owner or a veteran consumer, you’ll probably recognise this term. You’ll also probably know, even loosely, that it is a way to personalise ads for individuals.
This is possible through the use of data to identify and target ideal customers by analysing consumer behaviour and preferences.
By doing this, you can create advertisements that have more appeal to individuals‘ wants than the indeterminate wants of a group. This also allows those ads to reach people who are already inclined to buy the advertised products and services.
The result is a much wider sales funnel. This means the gap between the number of potential customers and purchases becomes narrower, and just like that, sales are maximised.
Traditional marketing has no such concept, which makes this a very powerful advantage of digital marketing.
4. Increased Engagement
Digital marketing is also beneficial in that it gives businesses opportunities to interact with customers on a personal level.
Let’s say you were to market on a platform that exists as Malaysia’s most and least favourite app simultaneously: Twitter. Potentially, you could connect and build relationships with every person who mentions buying your product.
From there, you are presented with an opening to score some loyal customers if you aim your cards right.
Despite mixing metaphors, increased engagement with customers also presents you with a unique opportunity to foster a positive image.
For many younger consumers, image is everything. Millennials and Generation Z, in particular, have been known to boycott services and products with poor image, irrespective of quality.
This makes it rather obvious why increased engagement would be among the digital marketing advantages compared to traditional methods that rarely, if ever, allow for such interactions.
5. Real-Time Results
In the world of business, real-time results are invaluable. And so the fact that digital marketing allows tracking makes the method all the more priceless.
Mainly, it permits you to immediately see the impact of your efforts by tracking website traffic, social media engagement, etc. With this, you can react immediately to changes in consumer behaviour and adjust strategies or optimise campaigns for maximum results.
The effect of this is that you could enhance your return on investment (ROI) and stay ahead of the game.
How? Well, with real-time result tracking, you can identify the best-performing strategies and marketing channels. This enables you to optimise the allocation of resources, saving both time and money.
By prompting quick decision-making, you could pull ahead of your competitors and, perhaps most importantly, maintain relevance.
With traditional marketing, results take time to come in, and some ventures, like trying to get testimonials, may not generate results at all. Which is why this is one of the more crucial advantages of digital marketing.
Conclusion
To conclude, digital marketing provides businesses with numerous advantages over the almost obsolete traditional marketing methods.
From reaching a wider audience to cost-effectiveness, targeted advertising, increased engagement, and real-time results, digital marketing has diversified the way businesses market their products and services.
Embracing a digital marketing plan can allow your business to stay ahead of the competition and achieve your marketing goals more effectively with less of the hassle that comes with traditional marketing, so there’s really no reason not to get into digital marketing today.
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