“If you make customers unhappy in the physical world, they might each tell 6 friends. If you make customers unhappy on the Internet, they can each tell 6,000 friends.” – Jeff Bezos
Online marketing, or widely known as digital marketing, is indeed a powerful mean of advertising. Information travels at an insane speed on platforms such as YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, etc. These social media platforms are only gaining more and more attention.
These days, influencers on social media no longer create a long post or video dedicating to a promotion. They instead produce short and engaging videos where they introduce a product, or use it and record it in a creative and fun way. Tons of less than a minute or two marketing videos with special effects and editing have been created this way. As a result, the viewers keep scrolling through their feed and end up watching hundreds of short videos a day.
The competition must be wild. Now imagine that your brand is not even one of the competitors.
As people spend more time on social media, brands have started to track their footprints more closely and put advertisements everywhere to catch the eye of the social media users. Thanks to the Internet, it does not take long for an advertisement or a piece of content to go viral.
Some fundamental benefits of using online marketing:
- Brand awareness: Online platforms open doors for wider reach of audience
- Increased sales: Research show that companies that generate leads online generally attain greater profits
- Increased brand engagement: Social media platforms enable various ways to engage with customers e.g. Instagram Q&A story
- Lower cost: Methods such as email marketing has noticeably high ROI
- More space for creativity
On the contrary, it can be rather easy for rumours to spread across social media. As Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, expressed above, it is better not to upset people that are active on the Internet. In short, you may want to deal with angry customers in private, unless you have other plans for your brand.
Having said that, it is certainly useful to keep up with the latest trends and what your rivals are doing on the Internet. Marketers can be benefited from the widespread influence of social media one way or another. Your brand may “blow up” before you even know.
