Digital marketing efforts can be more effective than traditional marketing initiatives when campaigns are tested, measured, and optimized.

You’ve probably heard of the term ‘digital marketing,’ as it is one of the buzziest newer business terms, more than once by now. But what is it, precisely? How can businesses benefit from learning about how to execute them?

If you guessed marketing campaigns implemented online, you’re not that far off. The more standard definition would be marketing strategies that use online-based media (think phones, laptops, and tablets) to market a product, software program, or service. After everything that’s happened this year, there’s never been a better time to try digital marketing. But how can you be sure it’s the right move for you?

Today, we’re going to talk about some of the pros and cons of transitioning into a digital marketing career or executing your own campaigns for your business.

How can digital marketing improve your business? Why should you consider implementing such a campaign? What are some of the primary benefits?

You Marketing People understand the pains that come part-and-parcel with traditional marketing campaigns: exorbitant costs, less accurate response methods, fewer audiences reached, longer execution time, and, most importantly, decreasing interest in traditional marketing methods. This waning interest, in tandem with the lightning-quick evolution of online technology, has produced a prime environment for digital marketing campaigns to flourish.

For starters, digital marketing campaigns cost a fraction of their traditional counterparts to run and evaluate. Social media marketing paid campaigns provide an excellent example of this. For just under $3, you can reach over 1000 people through a social media campaign. Compare this to direct mail campaigns, which can reach the same amount of people for a whopping $57. That means direct mail campaigns are nearly 20 times as expensive as social media marketing campaigns. Running an advertising campaign on Pinterest or Instagram could be even less than that.

The last promoted Pin campaign we ran here at FemFounder.co to launch our latest PR course, we only spent .55 per qualified lead, and the last Facebook ad campaign we ran, we only spent $1.00 to acquire each new customer. And according to WebFX, driving web traffic from Pinterest is generally .10 to $1.50 per engagement with the minimum bid starting at .10. Additionally, Wordstream.com reports that Facebook ads cost approximately $1.72 per click across all industries.

Digital marketing campaigns also let you zero in on your target audience at a granular level. Unlike traditional marketing campaigns, you can choose the precise consumer who will see your ads through filters by location, interests, age, annual income, ethnicity, gender, interests, and family size, for example. You can also test and measure the effectiveness of any campaign you run with free online tools. Digital marketing is a great way to reach targeted consumers at a reasonable price.

What are some digital marketing cons? What should you be aware of before developing and executing a digital marketing initiative? How can a digital marketing campaign hurt your brand if you’re not prepared to monitor the web and social media?

Of course, not all that glitters in online ads is gold and effective. The same goes for digital marketing, too. Unlike traditional marketing campaigns, digital marketing campaigns tend to make less of a visual impact on their viewers and, therefore, are likely to be less memorable. The internet is a pretty crowded place as it is, so you’ll have to work harder to make your campaign stand out.

Moreover, any negative reviews that your campaign garners can exacerbate an already bad situation. People can see just about everything that happens online. They’ll probably know the fallout of a bad digital marketing campaign as well, which could translate to lost revenue and a chunk of time dedicated to damage control. In other words, your brand’s reputation is more at stake online, so you’ll have to execute your campaigns more delicately than you would via traditional marketing methods.

Lastly, your online digital campaigns are more likely to get overlooked by consumers. In the era of the unmonitored spam folder, thousands of smart email marketing campaigns go unnoticed every day, leaving digital marketers scratching their heads. So ensuring that your emails are deliverable and only distributed to people who signed up for your email list will help increase deliverability. Some sophisticated strategizing may help you overcome this obstacle, but it will require the help of someone who knows what they’re doing.

As you can see, digital marketing is not the foolproof marketing industry that many tech entrepreneurs and aspiring digital marketers might make out to be. However, that doesn’t mean that digital marketing hasn’t come about in a dazzlingly opportunistic age for it to grow, evolve, and thrive. Only time will show how digital marketers and savvy entrepreneurs fine-tune their skills in response to the increasing diversity of online commerce.