Internet marketing, or advertising online, offers many advantages and few disadvantages to business owners who are considering this online strategy. In my opinion the pros outweigh the cons by a wide margin as this article will attempt to show. Some of the many advantages of promoting your business online include providing you with the opportunity to reach a global market.
With the click of a mouse you can reach a world wide audience who may be interested in your product or service. This gives you the chance to increase sales and profits which couldn’t even be imagined by conducting a local or even national traditional marketing campaign.
All businesses, whether they are large corporations or small work at home enterprises, are always concerned with the bottom line. Marketing cost is where Internet marketing provides a huge benefit over more traditional offline promotional strategies. Online there are many low cost or no cost marketing strategies which provide the opportunity for massive return for little or no investment. This alone provides a major incentive to begin an online advertising campaign.
There are many marketing techniques available on the web which allows you to effectively target your market. For example you can write and distribute articles based on topics directly related to your product or service which contain links to your website. You can also exchange links with business sites closely associated with your opportunity but not in direct competition. This gives you the opportunity to attract visitors from the associated business who may also be interested in your enterprise.
Internet advertising also allows you to reach your potential customers in a variety of ways. The use of multimedia promotion is very popular online and also very effective. You can use audio, video, text in the form of articles or banners and email, or any combination of all of these tactics to get your message across to consumers.
The ease of communication on the web allows you to easily create long lasting relationships with current customers and also persuade potential clients to become paying customers. Email gives you to the opportunity follow up with visitors to your business website on a regular basis with new promotions or special discounts to help them make the final decision to avail of your opportunity.
Several other Internet marketing advantages include the immediacy of response to ads, the ease with which you can track potential customers and the no cost or low cost assistance available to help beginners develop an Internet marketing strategy through resources such as forums, newsletters and chat rooms.
Now let’s have a look at the disadvantages of promoting your company online. A Hacker breaking into your website and planting viruses or stealing information or email lists is a definite con. However there are many very effective anti-virus and security software downloads available to help protect your business. The only drawback being there are no 100% guarantees someone won’t be successful accessing your files.
If you have no experience setting up a website or marketing online the associated costs could be a disadvantage for someone just starting out on the web. However these costs can be negated in short order and turned into very handsome returns if you associate yourself with the right people. There are many experienced marketers and website designers available online who can provide maximum return for minimum investment.
Spam is probably the most recognized word in the Internet marketing and online business world. If your primary business email address falls into the wrong hands you could possibly wind up spending a lot of your time deleting unwanted messages. Once again this problem can be avoided by using spam filters on your primary business account.
Internet marketing offers many advantages, while at the same time providing few road blocks to success, with your advertising campaign. I hope this editorial makes your decision as to whether or not to take the plunge into the online advertising arena an easy one.