Advantages of Online Marketing

There are plenty of advantages of online marketing over traditional marketing. As a search marketing specialist who manages hundreds of clients on a daily basis, many companies have adopted a holistic approach when it comes to promoting their business. For small to medium businesses, taking their businesses online really is a critical step in branching out their business.

Let’s take one of my friends’ company as an example. He owns a pest control company that conducts termite and other pest treatment. After using SEO services for just over a month, he is starting to see results already – the website’s organic traffic has increased by 30 percent and sales have gone up by 10 percent already. SEO has really taken the company to the next level. From their business point of view, there is really not much effectiveness to advertise on magazines or TV because pest or bed bug control is not something that people would normally need in a regular basis, unlike skin care or hair products. In other words, if your readers are not going to use your service anytime soon, chances are they will forget about you just in a snap. So why even bother to promote your business there?

When someone puts in a keyword on search engines, he or she already has an intent of using your product or services, meaning that your target audience is much more focused already compared to the readers of magazines or newspapers. If you appear at a top-ranking position, there is a high chance that users will arrive at your website. Of course, whether the visit or inquiry actually turns into a sales depends on a lot more outside factors, such as your site’s design and usability, but you have reached the first step already getting more leads through the internet.

With the example above, you can see why online marketing has more advantages over traditional means – it is more targeted and measurable. You can look at behaviour of each user and arrive at conclusions about your website’s usability and content. It takes many rounds of testings to fine-tune your website and it is a consistent effort to be made. Moreover, if you do SEO in-house like my friend does, it practically costs nothing because search engines do not charge you for optimizing your website. For small businesses who have very limited budget on promotion, online marketing, specifically SEO, is definitely the way to go.

Of course, with the above being said, marketing strategies should really depend on your business nature. Some businesses such as beauty products rely heavily on print ads because there is a large basis of target audience among female readers. However, like many other businesses, they have taken their marketing efforts to the internet as well to capture audience effectively.