Every marketing expert will tell you that online marketing is a multi-billion dollar industry, and with good reason!
Since the beginning of time, marketing has been the process of getting people to acknowledge your product or service and hopefully, one day, to purchase or use it. With the invention of social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook, the lines between marketing and sales have blurred, and real-time communication has blurred the lines between marketing and customer support.
In recent years, the internet has made it possible for customers to research your product or service and find out if it’s right for them. They can do this on massive online databases like Amazon or Walmart, or at least, they can try. In most cases, these databases are not accessible by customers, especially if they’re not based in the United States.
What this means is there’s a whole lot more competition in the online market than there was in the traditional market. The good news for entrepreneurs is that there are more channels for distribution than ever before, so thanks to the internet, everyone can be an entrepreneur.
Pricing And Discounts
One of the major distinctions between online and conventional marketing is how marketers approach pricing and discounts. In the offline world, a product or service was generally priced at a fixed rate, and even if there were discounts available, they were usually offered for limited periods of time and only on certain products. In the case of digital marketing, marketers can adjust the price and discounts of each product or service based on market demand and competition.
This allows entrepreneurs to easily experiment with pricing and discounts. If you want to trial the effect of high-priced products on your bottom line, you can do so without having to commit to a large order. You can also use this strategy to determine which products or services are performing well and which ones need some work before they’re worth selling.
Market Research
In traditional marketing, market research was limited to surveys and questionnaires, which were filled out by groups of people, usually customers. With the advent of the internet and online marketplaces, market research has become much easier to do. On websites like SurveyMonkey, you can complete surveys and questionnaires on an almost instant basis, and with a little bit of sleuthing, you can figure out what products or services are trending in your industry.
This ease of access to market research has made a massive difference in the digital marketing world. It used to take a lot of time and effort to find out what products or services are viable in the marketplace, but thanks to the internet, this information is at your fingertips. If you want to find out what products or services your customers want, you can do so easily and cost-efficiently.
Product Launches
Product launches are another aspect of traditional marketing that haven’t changed much in terms of approach, but the method of distribution and the target audience have. When a new product is launched, whether it’s a physical product like a car or a digital product like an app or a song, the marketers will usually do something to get the word out about it. They might launch a massive advertising campaign, hold press conferences, or even make an official product announcement on social media.
These methods usually work well in the offline world, but thanks to the internet, everyone can be a marketer and everyone can do a product launch, whether it’s a physical product or a service. If you want to launch a product or service and you don’t have the money to do so with traditional marketing, you can use digital marketing to launch your product or service and gain valuable feedback from potential customers. You can also use this opportunity to engage with potential customers through content marketing, building up a following on platforms like Twitter and Facebook.
Customer Service
One of the major differences between online and conventional marketing is how marketers approach customer service. In the offline world, people usually expected to receive excellent customer service from businesses that they patronized. To this day, many people still expect great customer service even when interacting with businesses through digital channels like social media or email.
In the world of digital marketing, customer service has shifted from a focus on providing excellent service to gain loyalty to a focus on establishing yourself as a reliable source of information and education about your industry. Thanks to the internet and online marketplaces, it’s much easier to research the quality of customer service, and you can get an idea of what kinds of experiences your customers have had by simply looking at the bad reviews and poor ratings that most businesses accumulate online.
It’s not enough anymore to just have excellent customer service–you have to have excellent customer service at extremely affordable prices! High-quality customer service at a great price point is something that most businesses can’t provide, but with the right combination of marketing and sales, you can make sure that every customer feels like they’re getting exceptional value.
Sales
If you’re in sales, you know that there are many differences between marketing and selling. Marketing is all about getting people to know and like your product or service, and selling is all about getting people to buy your product or service.
In the world of online marketing, sales has taken on a new meaning. Thanks to the internet and online marketplaces, marketing and selling have merged, and lead generation, email marketing, and social media all contribute to sales.
The internet gives everyone the opportunity to be an expert in their industry, which means that competition is always going to be fierce. Thanks to the internet, the old paradigm of marketing as separate from sales is falling apart, and entrepreneurs are finding new ways to merge the two.