There is no doubt that starting a business is a challenging task. Any business owner, at present, will have endless options, especially in digital marketing. The question is what should a business owner do?
You cannot sideline digital marketing these days because it is THE most important weapon for any business to grow. There are multiple mediums of digital marketing. Every medium comes with its fair share of advantages and disadvantages.
When it comes to the optimal utilization of digital marketing, it is important to remember that every business is unique. Yes, two businesses can be of the same industry, but that doesn’t mean the goals and objectives of the businesses are the same.
The important thing is to sync your digital marketing strategies and use digital marketing platforms according to your business goals. In this blog, we are going to share the pros and cons of the top 5 digital marketing platforms. However, before we get into that, let us offer a brief summary on the top 5 digital marketing platforms.
What are the top 5 digital marketing platforms?
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Search Engine Optimization
There is nothing more important to digital marketing than search engine optimization (SEO). Why? Because SEO is the best thing that can get your website ranked in SERPs, help you reach your target audience, and increase organic traffic. All these are extremely important, whether it is a well-established business organization or a simple startup.
Yes, it is true that Google algorithms can be confusing but if you can get a hold of the SEO of your website, trust me, you are sorted. It is always a better option to have an SEO expert on board if you want to get your websites ranked. You can always learn some basics. However, it will be better if you take the help of a full-time SEO professional.
Search Engine Optimization tricks are pretty much simple. For instance, the new HTTPS requirements will impact your website rankings. How? If you are using HTTP pages, Google algorithms will consider it as a non-secure page and this is why it will suggest you switch to an HTTPS format. If you don’t shift to an HTTPS format, your website rankings will be hampered.
Even a simple change in the image alt-tag, title, Meta descriptions and keyword research are also considered as doing SEO for your website. The goal of SEO is to direct more traffic to your website from your target audience.
These are the consumers who are actively looking for similar products and services that you offer. Thus, you have to think about SEO as a necessity. The reason is, almost every user starts their search for a new product or service with a search engine.
80% of the consumers will do their search online before buying anything. More than 30% of the searchers will click on the first page results.
Pros and cons of search engine optimization
Pros | Cons |
| Free of cost | SEO doesn’t guarantee results |
| Can help in improving localized traffic | Difficult to measure how well every tactic is performing |
| Works as a proof for mobile-friendly and responsive sites | Black hat SEO strategies will lead to penalties |
| Good SEO shows you are professional and your site is secured, also no grammatical errors | SEO is vulnerable, a single change in SEO can downgrade your website tracking |
| Long term benefits like ranking well for your niche will pay off in years to come | Results take time |
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Email Marketing
Yes, it might sound a bit old school, but email marketing is still one of the best digital marketing strategies. This is a great way to generate more quality leads than most other marketing methods. It helps in increasing sales and conversion rates.
One of the best things about email marketing is if you are suffering from over budget in digital marketing, then email marketing can offer you an affordable solution. In some cases, it is free, unless you are using some outsourced services.
Since you can combine email marketing with other marketing methods, it is also one of the most-integrated marketing methods. Email marketing helps in shortening the sales cycle if you can use compelling content.
Email marketing is a bit more focused on retaining existing customers, and also gaining new ones. It is a great technique for building brand awareness and encouraging repeat purchases.
An important part of email marketing is developing and refining your campaigns. It offers users with valuable information. The idea is, your users may not need your products or services, but they will remember the brand name. This brand awareness encourages them to buy from your company when they are ready to buy.
A great benefit of this digital marketing strategy is you will be able to segment your audience and personalize the email campaigns. For instance, you can create a campaign for the users that bought a certain product or visited a certain webpage.
80% of the companies use email marketing, right from the manufacturing operations, retail stores to the technology business. It helps in creating 50% more sales and generating leads.
Pros and cons of email marketing
Pros | Cons |
| An affordable way to engage your audience | People get too many emails, so they have a tendency to ignore |
| A great tool for other platforms to use (Facebook custom ads) | Email marketing doesn’t grow itself. It is a by-product of content marketing, PPC, and social media marketing |
| Helps in building customer relationships and enhance brand recognition | Poorly designed emails will not get delivered. Thus, high-quality design is important |
| Email marketing campaigns can be created and launched quickly | The files have to be small enough for easy download |
| Email marketing campaigns are customizable, the data and analytics are easy to capture and track | Requires proper resources and skills |
| 3 out of 4 people use email. It is a real-time digital marketing option. | |
| Can be created in flexible designs |
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Pay per Click (PPC)
PPC is a type of paid advertising that depends on an auction-based system. A lot of us might not be aware of how PPC works. It works in a pretty simple way. You bid on certain keywords where you want your ads to show up, the ad will trigger a search when a user’s search includes the keyword. Then your ads come up at the top of the search results above organic listings. If the user decides to click on the advertisements, you pay for that click.
So what happens is, the search engines are bringing you clicks and you are paying the search engines for those clicks. You only pay for the results. You can use PPC to advertise on the search engines and also on social media platforms as well. The end-goal of PPC is to reach users with transactional queries. This means PPC will get you those users who are ready to buy your services or products. This is a form of target marketing.
When they click on the ad, they come to the landing page and see the Call-to-Action. It could be signing up for an email newsletter, purchasing a product, or any other action. PPC is one of the most cost-effective strategies. It drives your website to the top search result. This can help in the organic search result ranking in several pages.
Google handles more than 60,000 searches per second. This is why it is a go-to platform for the PPC campaigns. A lot of companies invest their PPC budget in Google Ads that offer an impressive ROI. In fact, businesses earn $8 for every $1 spent on Google Ads.
Pros and cons of Pay per Click
Pros | Cons |
| Offers retargeting and remarketing of viewers | PPC is not free, the ads will disappear when the campaign ends |
| PPC gives you measurable and analytical results | It is not a sure-fire way to increase conversion |
| Allows you to track ROI and conversion pixels | Requires a lot of activities like testing landing pages, keywords, bids, and ad copies |
| PPC offers quick results and is affordable | |
| Allows you to track the ads in real-time | |
| Drives better control and exposes your business both locally and globally |
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Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing is more focused on increasing brand awareness and conversions. The social media campaign can feature on different social media platforms according to your target audience. Some of the popular social media platforms include:
Along with focusing on social media platforms, it also focuses on advertising as well. It also helps in building an online reputation of the company. This is why social media marketing emphasizes on creating informational and promotional content along with interacting with users on different platforms.
The reason why social media marketing is so important is that 70% of the consumers today, use social media to seek customer services and make buying decisions. Since customer services can make or break a brand reputation, you cannot ignore your social media presence and responses. People these days use social media to connect with companies.
If you are not active on social media, then you are leaving users with very limited options to contact your business. This also leads your consumers to overlook your company. Regardless of your industry, social media serves as a digital word of mouth promotion.
Pros and cons of social media marketing
Pros | Cons |
| A low-cost digital marketing option | Sometimes it can be time-consuming if not targeted properly |
| Can cater to a wide array of audience | Can generate negative brand perception in a short time |
| Increases visibility, brand awareness, and brand recognition | ROI is hard to justify |
| Helps in increasing accessibility for customers and also increases customer interaction | |
| It is fast and nurtures brand loyalty | |
| Good for customer service |
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Content Marketing
In content marketing, the businesses focus on creating content to reach out to the consumers. It can be any form of content, video content, a blog post, pictures, infographics, GIFs, and more. The end goal is to provide valuable information to the user. It should not be a sales-oriented copy, it has to be informational.
For instance, when you run a business that sells ski and snowboard supplies, you can write an article about what a beginner requires for his/her first outing. You can also create content on what kind of accessories will be suitable for ski performers or how to take care of the ski board. All these are individual pieces of content that you target with specific keywords.
Regardless of the format of your content, it has to be relevant and beneficial to your audience. Considering a technical standpoint, content writing & marketing should also focus on optimizing the content for the search engines for improving the visibility in the search results.
The best part of content marketing is it is 62% less than the traditional marketing strategies. It is a long-term and ongoing strategy that offers an impressive ROI. More than 60% of users prefer that companies create content to help them stay updated.
At present, online viewers have a lot of power. They can choose to read content or ignore the content of your company, irrespective of promotional or informational content. This is why it is important to provide quality content. With the ability to connect with your users through your content, you can increase leads and conversion.
Pros and cons of content marketing
Pros | Cons |
| Content marketing helps in building authority and is affordable | Sometimes can be expensive, especially for video and podcasting |
| A long-term process that creates lasting effects on users | Takes time, creativity, and diverse skills |
| Can be used in other forms of marketing and in customer services as well | Requires paid advertising promotions |
| Enables you to reach the right audience | |
| Provides better results and is cost-efficient |
In conclusion, it can be said that these are the top 5 most used digital marketing platforms and strategies that ensure optimal ROI. This is why it is important to make effective use of all the above-mentioned platforms by analyzing the pros and cons of every digital marketing technique. Hope this blog helps you in using the right digital marketing platform for your businesses.
