 |
| GaryVee by GaryVee |
Online marketing is becoming a hot topic in every business sector and gradually plays a truly important role in any company's multi-channel marketing strategy or its integrated marketing communication.
Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) is a marketing concept that ensures all forms of communication and messages are carefully linked together.
At its most basic level, Integrated Marketing Communication or IMC means integrating all the promotional tools, so that they work together in harmony. Promotion is one of the Ps in the marketing mix. The promotion has its own mix of communication tools.All of these communication tools work better if they work together in harmony rather than in isolation. Their sum is greater than their parts - providing they speak consistently with one voice all the time, every time.
Tools of Online Marketing:
Display advertising - Display advertising conveys its advertising message visually using text, logos, animations, videos, photographs, or other graphics. Display advertisers frequently target users with particular traits to increase the ads' effect.Web banner advertising - Web banners or banner ads typically are graphical ads displayed on a web page. Banner ads can use rich media to incorporate video, audio, animations, buttons, forms, or other interactive elements using Java applets, HTML5, Adobe Flash, and other programs.
Frame ad (traditional banner) - Frame ads were the first form of web banners. The colloquial usage of "banner ads" often refers to traditional frame ads. Website publishers incorporate frame ads by setting aside a particular space on the web page.
Pop-ups/pop-unders - A pop-up ad is displayed in a new web browser window that opens above a website visitor's initial browser window. A pop-under ad opens a new browser window under a website visitor's initial browser window.
Floating ad - A floating ad, or overlay ad, is a type of rich media advertisement that appears superimposed over the requested website's content. Floating ads may disappear or become less obtrusive after a preset time period.
Expanding ad - An expanding ad is a rich media frame ad that changes dimensions upon a predefined condition, such as a preset amount of time a visitor spends on a webpage, the user's click on the ad, or the user's mouse movement over the ad. Expanding ads allow advertisers to fit more information into a restricted ad space.
Interstitial ad - An interstitial ad displays before a user can access requested content, sometimes while the user is waiting for the content to load. Interstitial ads are a form of interruption marketing.
Text ads - A text ad displays text-based hyperlinks. Text-based ads may display separately from a web page's primary content, or they can be embedded by hyperlinking individual words or phrases to advertiser's websites. Text ads may also be delivered through email marketing or text message marketing.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) - Search Engine Marketing, or SEM, is designed to increase a website's visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs). Search engines provide sponsored results and organic (non-sponsored) results based on a web searcher's query. Search engines often employ visual cues to differentiate sponsored results from organic results. Search engine marketing includes all of an advertiser's actions to make a website's listing more prominent for topical keywords.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) -Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, attempts to improve a website's organic search rankings in SERPs by increasing the website content's relevance to search terms. Search engines regularly update their algorithms to penalize poor quality sites that try to game their rankings, making optimization a moving target for advertisers. Many vendors offer SEO services.
Sponsored search - Sponsored search (also called sponsored links or search ads) allows advertisers to be included in the sponsored results of a search for selected keywords. Search ads are often sold via real-time auctions, where advertisers bid on keywords.
Social media marketing - Social media marketing is a commercial promotion conducted through social media websites. Many companies promote their products by posting frequent updates and providing special offers through their social media profiles.
Mobile Advertising - Mobile advertising is ad copy delivered through wireless mobile devices such as smartphones, feature phones, or tablet computers. Mobile advertising may take the form of static or rich media to display ads, SMS (Short Message Service) or MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) ads, mobile search ads, advertising within mobile websites, or ads within mobile applications or games (such as interstitial ads, "advergaming," or application sponsorship).
Email Advertising - Email advertising is ad copy comprising an entire email or a portion of an email message. Email marketing may be unsolicited, in which case the sender may give the recipient an option to opt-out of future emails, or it may be sent with the recipient's prior consent (opt-in).
Benefits of Online marketing:
• The Internet gives you a wide access to your potential customers. It has been estimated that a couple of billion people around the world use the Internet, and more are becoming aware of the Internet with each passing day. So, marketing your business to such a large group of people is only possible through the Internet. The Internet is the only medium that is able to cross geographic and national boundaries.• The cost of promoting your business on the Internet is cheaper than other mediums of marketing. This makes it easy for small and mid-sized businesses to advertise their products.
• The Internet allows the ability to stay connected with customers on a real-time basis. If any discount going on, then it is easier to send an email to customers and they can buy the product instantly. The Internet also allows sending of multiple messages at the same time, which saves the tedious task of sending a newsletter to every client.
• Internet marketing facilitates an instant feedback from the customers. Customers can share about their experience after using the product.
• Internet marketing saves a lot of time and effort. Instead of having a customer service representative to answer the queries of customers, one can put all the information about the product or service on the Internet so that customers can go through it. The most common way of doing it is to have a section dedicated to frequently asked questions (FAQs) about the product so that customers get all the required information about the product or the service.
• Internet marketing allows businesses to be available 24/7, which means increased sales and profits.
Limitations of Online marketing:
• Although Internet marketing allows a wider reach, the start-up costs of a website can be high. This includes the cost of the required software and hardware and maintenance costs.• There are still a lot of customers who use the Internet just for having more information about a product and prefer to buy it in person. For example, Internet marketing allows a customer to view how a phone looks like and its technical specifications, but customers prefer having a look at the phone in the store to get a hands-on experience.
• There are a lot of customers who are not proficient in using the Internet and focusing solely on Internet marketing can cause you to lose these customers.
• The rules of the trade change rapidly in Internet marketing, and it requires constant attention and monitoring to ensure that your marketing strategy does not look out-of-date.
• The biggest disadvantage of Internet marketing is its vulnerability to fraudulent activities. There are a lot of illegitimate websites out there which look similar to original websites and rob the customers of their money. Spamming is also one of the biggest challenges for Internet marketing and confidential data can be easily stolen by hackers.
• Internet marketing lacks the human touch that is involved when a customer buys a product from a salesperson. This hampers the prospects of relationship building which plays an important part in repeat sales and word-of-mouth publicity.
• Internet marketing depends heavily on technology, which is vulnerable to technical faults. For example, if a customer clicks on your advertisement but due to a technical glitch, is unable to buy the product, he may easily become irate and take his business somewhere else.
Although there are some challenges involved in Internet marketing, it can be safely said that Internet marketing has led to increased transparency and ease of buying products. The need of the hour is to counter the challenges so that Internet marketing proves to be truly beneficial for all.
Online Marketing Effectiveness on Integrated Marketing Communications - as posted on here first.
