Traditional Marketing V/s Internet Marketing

Traditional Marketing V/s Internet Marketing

Marketing over the years more so recently has started being used interchangeably with advertising. Now since the explosion of the internet; advertising paradigms have been constantly changing.

The first Web advertisement was placed on the Hot Wired web site in October 1994. AT&T, MCI, Sprint, Volvo, Club Med, ZIMA were the first to try it out and the Internet advertising has come a long way since then. Here, I would attempt to compare Internet Advertising with Traditional Advertising:

Let’s have a look:

Traditional Advertising:

Ø  Traditional advertising is static.

Ø  Space is not a restricting factor

Ø  The proportion of advertising to editorial is high sometimes 50:50.

Ø  Does not evoke immediate action.

Ø  Response to the action is not immediate.

Ø  Advertisements are passively received.

Ø  Advertising does not always target a much focused audience.

Ø  Advertisements are ubiquitous.

Whereas Internet Advertising :

Ø  It is dynamic with multimedia- supporting text and graphics video sound all together.

Ø  Space is a problem, as regards size of the banners etc.

Ø  A web page would be 91% editorial and 9% advertising.

Ø  Invokes immediate action as you at-least need to click on the ad.

Ø  First response is immediate as when the user clicks, the person is directed to other web page with more details.

Ø  The user has high attention level and concentration while using the net, and hence they notice the ad. (please refer the chapter)

Ø  This can be much focused.

Ø  Advertisements catch users when they are on the lookout for some thing. For example the search is for travel on a search engine there are ads of travel agents on the net.

Thus we see that advertising is changing and so are the rules for advertising on the internet. So while designing or formulating any advertising strategy for a brand on the internet a manager has to take in to account factors like: -

1. The Internet has made a huge impact on advertising. Companies should be careful as regards joining the IT bandwagon. They should not advertise on the net just to project themselves as a techno savvy company or maybe because their competitor is doing the same thing. It should be a well-planned campaign full of specific information and attention catching.

2. The 'net' charges are on the higher side (though there has been a steep decrease in the rates in the last few months). Hence people would be wary of the fact that ads consume a lot of online web time and hence they avoid clicking on average ads. Therefore, advertises should be designed in such a fashion that they attract attention and induce people to click on the net.

3. One more thing would be to generate 'search' specific advertising. This would mean that if I give a search for books on the search engine, the ads displayed would be related to the books.

4. Generally, people perceive the ads to be time consuming and full of unwanted information. Care should be taken to design the ads in such a way that the information they provide or the hyperlinks they provide to a site gives adequate and specific information.
5. The ads and the subsequent information on the web site should be constantly updated and highlighted in the ads and thus induce repeated clicks on the ad.

6. Last but not the least; the ads should be designed so as to attract attention of maximum number of people and inducing them to click, failing to do so the advertiser ends up defeating his own purpose.