Marketing is an important strategy for businesses and it contains numerous effective tools. Traditional marketing has been in use for many years and nowadays Internet has brought new ways of doing business for companies and that has affected marketing. What are the main differences between Internet marketing and traditional marketing?
Here the 4 Ps are mentioned in comparison to each other to give a clearer idea of different issues that either traditional marketing or Internet marketing carry in their tools.
Product:
Product in traditional marketing is tangible for the customer where as through a website in Internet marketing is just a virtual image. The customer cannot experience the quality and size of the product by seeing it on the website in the same way as seeing the product in a physical store. Not being able to reach and feel the product physically, can create doubts for the customer and have an effect on his/her purchasing decision. When it comes to range of products offered through Internet compared to physical stores, there is an advantage of possibility for a company to offer a wide range of products on their website. The issues that can appear here are cost and space for inventory and store space itself, where there is a connection between cost and space.
Price
The pricing of a product can be based on the costs of its process in reaching the market. When a company does Internet marketing it has a bigger opportunity to save costs and therefore possibility to have lower prices. One of the reasons for this is the cost of space for keeping the products or the cheap way of communication through internet such as communication by e-mail. When marketing through Internet, the competition is very though which affects the pricing reasons. The competitors are a click away when a potential customer is searching for information on the Internet.
Place
In traditional marketing, companies have the opportunities to decorate the stores in order to create a specific atmosphere that can attract customers. Some attractive tools to create that atmosphere can be music, colours, etc, but through Internet marketing it is almost impossible to create a real sensation since a website is just a virtual image. Even though many of the websites try to create an atmosphere by adding the same tools for attraction, they cannot create as real experience as can be created in the physical store.
Internet helps companies to be reachable at any time, regardless of openings hours that physical stores require. Also the possibility for the customers to reach the store location online and the range of customers that can do that is much wider compared to the physical location of the store.
Promotion
When it comes to promotion, one thing is clear in difference between the communication through traditional tools and Internet and that is the speed. Speed of getting the message of advertising, news or any type of information through to customers is very quick through Internet. This is a very important issue in the competitive world of business. Another difference between promotion by Internet and promotion by traditional ways is the durability of the marketing message the marketer wants to communicate with the customers.
Another difference between promotion by Internet and promotion by traditional ways is the durability of the marketing message the marketer wants to communicate with the customers. In traditional manner, the message would receive attention during a limited amount of time, for example as it is aired on TV or sent out as paper advertising. Where on the Internet, the marketer’s message to the customers can exist constantly on the company’s website for example and it is accessible by the customers 24/7.
Through a website, a company can present itself in many ways where the customer can study different aspects of the company and get to know it well where as this is not possible in the same way through traditional tools for promotion.
The tools for traditional promotion can be used mainly in communicating the message shortly and consistently. There is of course the burden of maintaining a website or online commercials that consumes time, resources and money. But this should be weighted out by the accessibility and opportunity they provide. Another issue is the damage that a failed or crashed website or other Internet service can have on a company’s image.
Now you decide which one is better???
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