Characteristics of the Internet as a Marketing Medium

The potential for utilizing the internet as a marketing tool is enormous. On a global basis, there is access to a far larger audience. We can not only reach a larger audience with these technologies, but we can also track and analyse our marketing and reach.

Interactivity
Digital ads can be used to to interact with the target audience in many different ways. Whether its offering information in the form of a video or ebook in exchange for an email address from the consumer, or bringing them straight to your landing page or product catalog, digital ads can provide lots of interaction between consumer and the ad.

Intelligence
The amount of feedback given to us on our digital ads is massive. We can see the how many clicked our ad, how many saw it, how many converted to a sale, and more. This information can be used to optimise the digital ad. For example, a company is getting lots of reach and clicks, which they are very happy about. However the conversion rate is very low. They learn from this that there is most likely a problem with their landing page as people are not converting. They can then update their landing page to try and improve their conversion rate.

Independence of Location
Users can be targeted by continent, country, city, and even mile or kilometre radius. This provides us a lot of leeway in how we spend our advertising money and ensures that only relevant users see the ads. This is extremely useful for brick and mortar businesses. A local restaurant can target consumers in a 5km radius of their restaurant, which will much increase their likeliness to convert into a visit to the restaurant.

Integration
Many different digital tools and services for ads connect together so they can share data. If you integrate a Facebook Pixel into your website which collects data on how users are interacting with your website, this data can be imported to your Facebook ad campaigns. Google is a great example of this and offer many different tools such as google analytics and google performance planner which can integrate with your google search, display, shopping, or app ads to optimise your bidding and key performance indicators.

Individuality

Individuality is an extremely powerful asset to digital ads. The ability to target users by interest and age means you can put tailored ads in front of people who are most likely to interact with them. User personas are fictional figures produced to represent a user type who would use a site, brand, or product in a similar way. A product or service could be targeting a few user personas. An example would be a company selling a mid-range microphone. This company could have a few user personas including a gamer aged 19 who plays games online with their friends, and a content creator aged 28 who makes podcasts or YouTube videos for their audience. The company can then target these two user personas.

Businesses may engage their customers and give an exceptional experience by integrating these aspects, all while optimising their digital ads and growing their brand.