Online marketing is a powerful and more effective medium to market your
products and services than the traditional ad campaigns. Moreover, with
the increasing population of net-savvy individuals, the web offers a
large audience base. Also, it is a cost effective option by which you
can reduce a chunk of your marketing costs.
Internet marketing comprise of several ways, of which the most popular ones are – Email Marketing and Social Media Marketing.
Email
marketing is an established practice where businesses send out
newsletters and other information to their target audience through
emails and inform them about their products and services. Whereas,
social media marketing is an emerging field that promises immense
potential. With the increasing popularity of social media, marketing
through this channel promises valuable rewards to businesses.
Both
are excellent modes of marketing on the web. However, to know which one
of them would be more effective for your business, let us understand
their pros and cons.
E-Mail Marketing
This is a
direct form of marketing where you keep in touch with your clients,
customers and potential customers through emails. This could be in the
form of newsletter where you provide them information about your
company, latest events and happenings, new offers and discounts etc.
You are directly selling your products and services to the recipients.
Everyone
uses the e-mail. You would not have to worry if they are active users
of the social networks or not. Rather, with an efficient contact
database consisting of people from your niche markets, you can email
these people directly. And because you are marketing to a highly
targeted user-base, there are higher chances of making sales.
Many
companies ban the use of social media websites by their employees in
their workplace. So any marketing efforts that you make though social
media will prove fruitless for this population. Therefore, a better way
is to contact them through e-mails.
If you know that your
audience base is not very tech-savvy (which means they would not be
part of social media websites), it would be pointless to market your
services there. Instead, concentrate on building a relevant email list
and send them newsletters and brochures of your business.
Social Media Marketing
Social
media is a fast emerging field on the web and businesses, especially
online businesses cannot afford to ignore it. This is a more indirect
way of marketing where you seek to establish a strong presence on the
web and build a brand reputation. This earns you the trust of your
target audience which makes them pick you when in need or the kind of
product and service that you offer.
Social media marketing is a
relatively new stream of marketing where you can connect with your
audiences on a personal level and have one-to-one conversations. This
allows you to have a better understanding of their needs and
requirements based on which you can formulate more effective adversing
and marketing strategies.
Social media marketing allows you to
market your products and services on a large scale. And if people like
what you have to say, they be a huge helping hand. Social media
websites like Facebook and Twitter allows users to share content in
their networks. Thus you can expect a viral spread if you initiate
something appealing.
The Internet landscape is fast changing. In
fact social media interactions are even replacing emails in most
scenarios because of the easy and real-time communication that they
offer. Inspite of their pros and cons, both the modes have their own
share of pros and cons. Thus an effective solution would be to devise a
professional social media strategy and use it in compliment with your
e-mail marketing process!
