Digital marketing can seem like a great option for marketing your business, but there are pros and cons to the technique. Here are some of the most prominent benefits and downsides of digital marketing to help you decide whether it’s worth your time and money to integrate this method into your strategy.
Digital Marketing has opened a world of opportunity to just about anyone with a phone and a credit card. Because it’s so accessible, it can appear easy to say ‘I can do it myself’. But just because you can drive a car, doesn’t mean you should drive a ferrari. There are rules, guidelines, and best practices that you can follow to optimise the value you get from your digital efforts.
Our top three pros for digital marketing are metrics, control, and flexibility.
Let’s dive into those.
The metrics you gain access to when marketing through a digital medium are perhaps the most powerful tool for your business. When built correctly, your ads can reveal insights that would have been impossible to attain pre-digital marketing. See the people who responded to your ads, what time of the day they interacted, how long after seeing your ad they converted, if you know what you’re looking for, the insights you can gain are practically unlimited.
We’ve all planned out marketing campaigns before, worked out the key dates, deadlines, milestones. But even with all that planning, you are at the mercy of the provider you have chosen. They may have requirements on images, restrictions on copy and content - a whole list of criteria you must meet. Then, once you’ve handed the content over to the newspaper, it’s usual for there to be a back and forward between your business and the newspaper, small edits, changing the image. This all takes time, resources, and budget. When you choose digital, you’re in control - without a third party adding additional restrictions onto your campaign.
Let’s say you decide to change a promotional campaign halfway through - you want to change the discount of a product from 15% to 20%.
Traditionally you would have to begin an entirely new campaign, with huge lead times, all the emails between your business and the provider - but now you can simply log in, change two numbers, publish and you’re ready to go with your new discount. Digital marketing offers flexibility like no other marketing form ever has, completely within your control, 24/7, and the touch of your phone.
Despite this, there are certainly cons to digital marketing. We think the cons you should consider are spam, dealing with a crowded marketplace, and the difficulty of getting cut-through.
In a world where everyone can build an ad in 5 minutes, it stands that there would be a huge amount low-quality ads out there. There’s a risk that without proper training or understanding your ads might not only look like spam, but there’s a chance they may be marked low quality by the platform.
For the same reason, that anyone can publish ads, the marketplace online is crowded, especially at high points in the calendar - like Christmas and summer.
With the crowded marketplace, it’s difficult for your ads to stand out, and you have to work hard to get the cut through your ads need to be successful.
Our final thought on this topic is this:
Embrace the power of digital, but don’t underestimate the holistic approach. A well-balanced marketing strategy should employ all the tools at your disposal, so pair your newspaper ad with some related ads on Facebook. Use the taglines from your radio ad in your google search ads.
Build a strategy that works to drive your brand, and your message, to people across all mediums.
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