Digital Marketing is a word that can’t be explained in merely one or two sentences. I would say it’s a vast subject which starts from promotion and ends at customer’s views.
Every field or subject has its own benefits and demerits. If you want to know the advantages and disadvantages of digital marketing, you should first delve deep into its meaning and the whole terminology. But it would be a tiresome job to analyze the whole subject at once.
So for your ease I’ve put my hours into this topic and by scrutinizing the whole Digital Marketing world, I came up with some of its main pros and cons, which are absolutely worth knowing.
So without further ado, let’s dive into the details.
What is Digital Marketing?
Today all of us have cell phones, laptops, computer devices, tablets and all the electronic devices in our houses, and we utilize them throughout the day, no?
Whether there is a kid, an adult or an old person, everyone is familiar with the electronic media. You see ads, pitchy emails, brand blogs and what not, these are all of the parts of Digital Marketing.
And what’s the purpose? I don’t know about you, but as a kid I’ve always been curious to know about the purpose of these unlimited same ads, brand messages and campaigns. And I’m sure most of you have also wondered somewhere in life about these irritating ads.
I found the answer the day I started a clothing brand. I understand the power of digital marketing and how all of the campaigns boost the sales and improve the brand image.
At that time, I just saw the wonders of digital marketing and didn’t realize it has its disadvantages too. So now after deeply analyzing this subject, I’ve compiled a list of some of the main advantages and disadvantages of digital marketing.
Advantages And Disadvantages of digital marketing
You might be wondering, what can be the disadvantage of digital marketing when it is helping businesses and brands to elevate their sales. Well, they have many cons which I think everyone, whether they are business owners or consumers should know.
Well, any guesses?
Digital Marketing can be time consuming, no? And it can make your business completely dependent on technology, yes? In my opinion these are the biggest disadvantages of it, but that’s not how I’m going to share with you the pros and cons of digital marketing. Let’s take a complete look at the table.
| PROS | CONS | |
| 1- | Doesn’t require much money unlike offline promotion options. | Without Digital Marketing skills, you’ll be unable to attract clients. |
| 2- | Any person in the world can find your business and be your client. | Despite the fact that it does increase your audience, there is a lot of competition. |
| 3- | Attract your target audience by specifically showing them your product ads. | Hacking issues can disrupt your brand website and cause trouble. |
| 4- | You’ll be able to analyze the impressions and success rate anytime. | You’ll have to constantly improve your knowledge and change your strategies as with the advancement in Digital Marketing trends. |
Advantages of Digital Marketing
There are many advantages of digital marketing but here we’ll discuss just the main 2.
1) Build Your Brand
Before building a clothing brand, I always wondered that a brand is all about its name, good logo, catchy tagline and value generating products. And this is somehow correct, only those products sell better that put any kind of value in the customer’s life, but the first thing is how your client is going to find you, right?
You can open a shop in the market or put your products on the other shops while giving some kind of commission to the shop owners. But what if you don’t have that amount of money to promote your product with this method? Here comes Digital Marketing.
With digital marketing, business owners don’t even have to open a shop in the offline market, they will just have to make social media accounts, prepare their product and then promote them online, through social media ads, influencers, paid stories and posts.
These social media ads cost way less than that commission which you were going to pay to the offline shop owners for your product promotion. Crazy, no?
Now you must be wondering how Digital Marketing will elevate your sales. Well I can just assure you by this fact that 53% of people always do research online then they buy a product, and I’m one of those 53% individuals.
It only shows the importance of having an online brand, so whenever your customer has to do research before buying any of your product they can take a look at your brand and posts and after getting assurance of 100% security and excellence, they will definitely buy your product.
2) Know Your Target Audience
We all have seen TV commercials, and I’ve focused on each channel and came to the conclusion that the same ad has been shown on News channels, Entertainment channels, and cartoon channels.
Maybe businesses get some profit out of it, but in my opinion products don’t sell much if you’re targeting the wrong audience. Now for example, we all know that older people mostly watch news channels, so if I’ve to sell ladies suits, my perfect target audience would be the females aged between 20-40, right? So with digital marketing, you would be able to just show your ad to your target audience.
For example, if you’re running a facebook page and you sell ladies garments, you will just have to use the age target feature in the facebook ads section and mark it between the 20-40 age group.
What happens is that your ad will be only shown to those female facebook users that are aged between 20-40, and the chances of purchase will be much higher within your ads budget.
Disadvantages of Digital Marketing
There are many disadvantages of digital marketing but here we’ll discuss just the main 2.
1) Needs More Time
I know it really looks easy to post on social media brand accounts or to run ad campaigns and decide everything, but it is actually not.
It takes hours and hours to do research on your target audience, your competitors, the flaws, strategies, and designing posts, stories and ads.
There will be a point in your business when you will need a proper digital marketer to take care of your campaigns and everything.
1) Bugs And Hacking Issues
Of course as a Business owner whether it is small or large you’ll need a website, and you’ll have to always check its user interface, the flexibility of working on both mobile and desktop plus there can be many hacking issues for which you’ll have to properly take care by buying tools and softwares.
Due to heavy traffic, there can be many other problems, sometimes merely a bug can disrupt your site. So there can be a couple of extra headaches for you if you’re taking care of everything alone without any team.
Bottom Line
The whole crux of this post is that no matter what, if you’re a small business or have a large scale business, you should implement digital marketing strategies for it. Just like any other thing, it has disadvantages but they are hardly 5% and the rest of 95% includes the benefits. So the choice is yours!
I sincerely hope you have found the mentioned advantages and disadvantages of digital marketing helpful.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Q- What is SWOT analysis in digital marketing?
SWOT analysis is just an analysis that is used by the digital marketers to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of the brand or business. Not just that, but they also determine the reasons for which their brand is not working fine.
Q- Is digital marketing good for future?
It wouldn’t be unwise to say that Digital marketing is the future. With the day by day advancement in technology, more people are preferring to buy online instead of visiting the shop in person. And digital marketing doesn’t just help the businesses but it is also providing more job opportunities.