Advantages of Advertising Online vs Traditional Ways of Advertising - Case Study Example

The advantages of advertising online vs traditional ways of advertising By and al Affiliation Department Name Date Over the last two decades, technology has immensely transformed businesses especially since the dawn of the internet. With the massive increase in internet companies have been spending more and more investing in IT. The result of investment in IT by companies is demonstrated through exponential growth in the internet’s “footprint” since the internet became accessible to consumers. According to Hazan & Banfi (2013), the growth of technology and its adoption accelerated the expansion of internet-capable devices such as tablets and smartphones and this led to the acknowledgment of internet as a key tool of communication, a marketplace, a workplace, learning centre, and more. In commerce, the internet has become a communication tool between companies and customers where companies establish brand relationships, and sell products. In addition, the internet is a source of information regarding consumers’ intelligence since consumers spend hours on the internet leaving behind crucial information that reveal their interests, their purchases, and the contents of their communication. Analysing such content opens doors for much understanding of consumers and improvement of products to meet customer needs. With the adoption of Information technology into organizations and the growth of technology, companies have been greatly affected, especially in terms of advertising their products. This paper evaluates the advantages of online advertising and compares it to traditional ways of advertising. The traditional forms of advertisement evaluated in this paper are categorized in to broadcast, print, telephone, and direct mail (Lavinsky, 2013). Conversely, online advertising modes today include search engine marketing, social network advertising, mobile advertising, affiliate marketing, and display advertising. Some aspects of comparison include target audience, direction of communication, interactivity, effective connectivity that results in integrated customer experience, and content management. Online advertising is known for its immediacy in publishing of information without any limitation by time or geographic constraints. This is possible given the increased accessibility to internet which then means that despite geographic location of the consumer, access to the internet gives company advertisements and campaigns a global coverage. The result is increased customer base, customer information or comments about the products, and customer purchases. Conversely, traditional advertising is directed from a single source to a large audience such as one print advertisement for multiple readers (Janoschka, 2004, p. 17). The number of readers reached are however dependent on the geographical area reached. Besides variations in geographic areas, online and traditional advertising differ in the form of advertisement adopted. With the inception of online advertising, communication between the advertiser and the customer is two-way and this makes it possible to track the number of impressions an advertisement gets and the number of visits registered in the company website targeting particular adverts (Cunningham & Brown, 2010, p. 92). Other forms of advertisements encouraged through online advertising include comments, likes, shared links, and online purchases. For instance, a company can use comments from their Facebook page to improve their products or customize them to meet customer needs. In addition, some companies have established online support using Skype or online chat that makes communication a new form of many-to-many communication that makes group communication interactive and simultaneous through sound, video, and text (Eastin, et al., 2011, p. 643). This is unlike the traditional one-way communication where consumers never have the opportunity to offer their feedback and no engagement is done between communication partners (Janoschka, 2004, p. 17). In addition, online advertising dominates over traditional advertising in that it promotes more interactivity. According to Gao (2005, p. 72), web advertising introduces interactive features both from available media and adds novel interactive capabilities of its own. Interactivity refers to the element of enabling customers to control the information they view, the duration they view it, the frequency of viewing it, the order of viewing, and the time. This is common, especially in web advertising where users control navigation on the web, and the time embraces issues like timely feedback and time needed to retrieve information (Chi, 2011). Interactivity goes beyond facilitating two-way communication to focus more on the design of control systems such as navigation tools, and also the interaction with messages obtained from the computer and other people. In this case, interaction mostly focuses on time or the influence of speed on computer-based messages, and the speed that messages are processed by individuals (Gao, 2005, p. 73). This means that user interactivity is more of a user-oriented interaction with other users, machines, or messages targeted towards experiential element of interacting process. For instance, interactivity is a fundamental element of successful online newspapers since it promotes loyalty as publishers can communicate through newsfeeds, digital versions of traditional print, and blogs (Broekhuizen & Hoffman, 2012). With traditional advertising such as newspapers and magazines, the communication is mostly non-personal and does not address an individual but a target group. Thus, it is difficult to address individual receivers like is the case in face to face communication since doing so would mean limiting feedback channels (Janoschka, 2004, p. 17). Through the use of internet, online advertising makes it possible for consumers to receive not only large amount of information, but also real-time information quickly and over long distances (Rosen, 2012). With traditional print media, information advertised is not easily changed is limited by cost and space. High cost involved in traditional media mean that the content of any advertisement is limited and potential consumers at times need further clarification. With online advertising, the advertiser can use as much information as they need to convince the customer to about their product without being deceptive to mislead or affect the behaviour of consumers with regard to the service. Most of all, online advertising requires lower budget compared to traditional mas media advertising (Eastin, et al., 2011). For instance, in order to advertise through broadcast, the advertiser has to issue much money compared to having the same advertisement done over the internet through social media, mobile or web-based advertisement. In addition, it will cost a company more dollars to begin a mass media advertisement campaign compared to online campaign that can realistically result in so much starting capital. For instance, one can begin a search engine campaign with budgets as low as $5. In addition to low costs of accessing online advertisements, consumers are presented with integrated online experience. According to Edelman (2010), the consumers are today presented with the opportunity to continually interact with company brands as they become more informed about the product purchasing decisions. Through the management of contacts arising from such interactions, organizations use digital channels to unify their experience and prevent opportunity leakage by tightening coordination of end-to-end experience. This coordination of customer experience result in increased consumer engagement, capturing of qualified leads, and establishing customer loyalty. Other end implications on the company are increasing sales conversion rates, and reinforcing the bond between customers and brands after sales made. Based on the findings from Oracle (2014, pp. 1-2), integrated customer experience provides a solution to the challenge that finds wireless operators forgetting customer information from one point to the other in isolated advertisement channels demonstrated in traditional forms of advertising. The result is that the customer experience becomes frustrating, time consuming inconsistent, and unpredictable. For instance, an advertisement in print media requiring sending applications through postal mails is deemed time consuming and very frustrating. However, through integrated customer experience in online advertising, activities and information are unified, coordinated, streamlined, and synchronized such that they flow through different channels. For instance, an online advertisement from social media can provide links to company websites and other channels. Through such investments, companies are assured of a singularly pleasant customer experience that guarantees that the company benefits from long-term profitable growth (Robbinson & Brown, 2010). According to Robinson and Brown (2012) having integrated customer experience results in making the company think like the customer by fitting into their imagination, and high quality experience obtained from online. Online advertising is also attributed to the development of company investment in content management since information from integrated customer experience is continually increasing way beyond advertising. According to Lieb (2012, pp. 2-3), online advertisement has led to companies using content marketing to augment traditional advertising or to completely replace traditional advertisement. Investment in content management comes at a time when companies need to use content to inspire customer engagement throughout the buying cycle and in the definition of continued relations with prospective customers. This means that successful investment in content result in upgrades, cross-selling, upselling, referrals, and reinforcement of existing customers. From the traditional advertisement perspective, creating and disseminating large content involved numerous barriers such as paper, printing, warehousing, processing, developing, and postage among others (Lundstrom, 2014). Through online advertising, such logistical and physical hurdles in content creation and dissemination are eliminated. However, companies have to consider other commitments that come with online content management as a result of online advertising, especially if they have to deliver their content consistently to specific clients. Some of the commitments involve experimentation, originality, critical thinking, and persistence among others. With such commitments, companies will have much content that customers can pull on demand such as subscribing to alerts or becoming fans on Facebook, or having content that is tailored to their needs based on past behaviour (Edelman, 2010). Bibliography Broekhuizen, T. & Hoffman, A., 2012. Interactivity Perceptions and Online Newspaper Preference. Journal of Interactive Advertising, 12(2), pp. xx-xx. Chi, H.-H., 2011. Interactive Digital Advertising vs. Virtual Brand Community: Exploratory Study of User Motivation and Social Media Marketing Responses in Taiwan. Journal of Interactive Advertising, 12(1), pp. xx-xx. Cunningham, C. & Brown, S., 2010. Local Online Advertising For Dummies. illus ed. United States: Willey. Eastin, M., Daughterty, T. & Burns, N., 2011. Handbook of research on digital media and advertising : user generated content consumption. Illus ed. Hershey, PA: Information Science Reference. Edelman, D., 2010. Four ways to get more value from digital marketing. McKinsey Publication, March. Gao, Y., 2005. Web systems design and online consumer behavior. Illus ed. Hershey, PA: Idea Group Pub. Hazan, E. & Banfi, F., 2013. Leveraging big data to optimize digital marketing. [Online] Available at: http://www.mckinsey.com/client_service/marketing_and_sales/latest_thinking/leveraging_big_data_to_optimize_digital_marketing [Accessed 21 December 2014]. Janoschka, A., 2004. Web advertising : new forms of communication on the Internet. Illus ed. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Lavinsky, D., 2013. Is Traditional Marketing Still Alive?. [Online] Available at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/davelavinsky/2013/03/08/is-traditional-marketing-still-alive/ [Accessed 21 December 2014]. Lieb, R., 2012. Content marketing : think like a publisher-- how to use content to market online and in social media. Illus ed. Indianapolis: Que. Lundstrom, L.-I., 2014. Digital Signage Broadcasting: Content Management and Distribution Techniques. Illus ed. London: Taylor & Francis. McKinsey&Company, 2012. Perspectives on Digital Business, London: McKinsey Center for Business Technology. Oracle, 2014. Oracle Cross Channel Customer Experience for Communications, United States: Oracle. Robbinson, F. & Brown, J., 2010. How to Make Your Company Think Like a Customer. [Online] Available at: http://www.accenture.com/us-en/outlook/Pages/outlook-journal-2012-make-company-think-like-customer.aspx [Accessed December 2014]. Rosen, J., 2012. Who Do Online Advertisers Think You Are?. Forbes, 30 November. Read More