Unique Characteristics of the Web as a Marketing Medium

Unique Characteristics of the Web as a Marketing Medium

When used correctly, the potential the web provides as a marketing medium is limitless. Through the use of online applications, you can access millions of individuals worldwide but also, by applying E-Tools to your marketing plan you can track and analyse whether your approach is successful or not, making the web a boundless, efficient and unique platform for marketing in general.

In this blog i will identify the unique characteristics of the web as a marketing medium.

·         Viral Marketing: Viral marketing is any marketing technique that induces websites or users to pass on a marketing message to other sites or users, creating a potentially exponential growth in the message's visibility and effect. A popular example of successful viral marketing is Hotmail, a company now owned by Microsoft that promoted its services and its own advertisers' messages in every user's email notes.

·         Global Marketing: Global marketing is more than simply selling a product internationally. It includes the whole process of planning, producing, placing, and promoting a company’s products in a worldwide market. Large businesses often have offices in the foreign countries they market to; but with the expansion of the Internet, even small companies can reach customers throughout the world.

·         Rich Media: Rich-media refers to pictures, videos, words and gifs that can be attached to a business’s website, allowing users to have a better visual perspective of the businesses products/services. Rich-media is often associated to social media sites such as Facebook, where the business can put visuals of their products/services to where millions can see it.

·         24/7: 24/7 means that the internet is usable all day, every day, no matter what time it is. You can always open your laptop, go into the internet and see advertisements for products, shops, or websites. The internet never sleeps.

·         Push vs Pull: Push Marketing focuses on taking the product to the customer, and putting the product in front of the customer at the point of purchase. This type of marketing strategy hopes to minimize the amount of time between a customer discovering a product and buying that product. To accomplish this, companies use aggressive and wide-reaching ads to make the biggest and most immediate impact they can on customers.

Pull Marketing is where interest for a specific product or service is created within a target audience that then demands the product from channel partners. This causes the product to be "pulled" through the manufacturer's sales channel

·         Google Analytics: Google analytics is the most popular tool you can use to measure those who visit your website. It can give you all of the information you need on what people have done on your website, such as – where people are clicking into your website from, how many people are going further than the home page, what the most visited page on your website is, etc.

·         Feedback: Feedback from consumers about products/services can be put up quickly as the internet allows for instant replying to other users. This instant feedback allows business to improve on their weaknesses instantly such as poor packaging or function flaws on products.

·         Social Media: Social media marketing refers to the process of gaining traffic or attention through social media sites. Social media itself is a catch-all term for sites that may provide radically different social actions. For instance, Twitter is a social site designed to let people share short messages or “updates” with others. Facebook, in contrast is a full-blown social networking site that allows for sharing updates, photos, joining events and a variety of other activities.

·         Website: Possibly one of the best things about digital marketing is the Website. There are so many things that can be done on a website and if you ever feel like your website is a bit out of date, or not as appealing as other websites, you can update it whenever you feel like it.

·         Cost: Digital marketing can be so much cheaper than traditional marketing. There is so much you can do on the web for free, like creating social media pages, websites, etc. that you would not be able to do when using traditional marketing. For traditional marketing you must pay for paper, printing, ink, and much more.

·         Search Engine Optimisation (SEO): Search Engine Optimisation or SEO is the activity of ensuring a website can be found in search engines for words and phrases relevant to what the site is offering. In many respects it's simply quality control for websites.

·         Speed: Digital Marketing can be put in to use with the touch of a button. You can have a full social media page or website set up in very little time to promote almost anything.

·         Online Help: Online help is a way that business can connect with customers that have queries about products/services that the business may offer through ‘live chat’ on their website. This is also a gateway for customers to send a business feedback about the businesses products/services. This feedback can be positive or negative and allows the business to improve their products/services.