Online Marketing

Marketing is a widely used term to describe the communication between a company and the consumer audience that aims to increase the value of the company or its merchandise or, at its simplest, raises the profile of the company and its products in the public mind. The purpose of marketing is to induce behavioral change in the receptive audience.

Let’s see what are the real advantages and disadvantages of online marketing.

Advantages:

1. One of the most important advantages is the fast availability of the information. The clients/users can easily get information, by navigating the internet, about the products that they wish to purchase, and besides that, they can check the information at anytime of the day.

2. It allows the companies to save money, an aspect that is really taken into account by the companies since the online marketing campaigns don’t require a large amount of investment.

3. The previous mentioned aspect, gives less importance to the differences between large and small companies in some way, thus increasing the competition and giving that way advantages to the customers.

4. Presence on the Internet can help the expansion of the company from a local market to national and international markets at the same time, offering almost infinite expanding possibilities.

5. On the internet everything can be measured, thus it’s easier for the companies to know almost instantly if their campaign is working or not, what company or user is interested in their products, from what cities or countries are they, etc.

Disadvantages:

1. Slow internet connections can cause difficulties. If the companies build too complex or too large websites, it will take too long for users to check them or download them and they will get bored eventually..

2. The e-commerce doesn’t allow the user “to touch” the merchandise before purchasing it. Because of this, some salesmen are starting to guarantee the possibility of returning the product. In Germany, where a law that regulates e-commerce and guarantees the customers the total refund of the money exists since 2000, the electronic commerce is very popular.

3. Other factor is the payment: many users still don’t trust in the electronic methods of paying and give up buying online because of this.

4. One of the major disadvantages may be the lack of trust of the users because of the constant virtual promotions that appear to be frauds. This is an aspect that deteriorates the image and reputation of quality and honest companies.

5. Other disadvantage is the cash on delivery system, since it doesn’t guarantee the 100% purchase of the product. This is also the case of thousands of users that dedicate themselves to daily mock big companies by ordering on the internet using false identities.