The US online advertising market is poised for rapid growth this year, with spending expected to exceed $31 billion, according to a new forecast by eMarketer. Yes. Rule of game has been changed. Online Marketing is not an option any more. It’s must. If you are not found online, your competitors are gaining the business. Online marketing will bring you many advantages:

#1. Increased Flexibility: You can make changes on the fly.
One benefit of marketing online versus offline marketing such as placing traditional advertisements in magazines, newspapers or on television is that you can change them on the fly. By monitoring and tracking how your advertisements and marketing efforts are doing you can make the decision to change a graphic or wording and do it without any problems. You can quickly put an end to an unsuccessful campaign, or invest more resources into a successful campaign. This is not the case with traditional marketing and advertising.

#2. Enhanced Tracking: You can track real-time results instantly.
Marketing online allows you to track real-time results using online analytics to make a determination on how your marketing campaign is performing. There are ways to track traditional marketing efforts, but most the time it cannot be done in real-time. This can mean success or failure to your campaign.

Online analytics give you the chance to benchmark your campaigns and then follow the results in real time. If a campaign isn’t performing well, you don’t have to wait a month to find out (like offline metrics).

#3. Targeting: You can target specific demographics in your advertising.
Marketing online allows you to target specific demographics such as gender, age and location. You can even target specific income levels, education levels and occupation. You can do this in traditional marketing, but it’s not as easy and is often a guessing game. While magazines, newspapers and television shows all have “target audiences,” such targets can be fairly broad and imprecise. Often, a large segment of the target will have no interest in your product or services.

Online marketing gives you the opportunity to be far more targeted towards the specific audience you are aiming for. By way of example, Facebook advertising can be narrowed so effectively that you can deliver an ad to a handful of people.

#4. Myriad Platforms: Variety of methods in marketing online including email, audio, video, blog, social media and newsletters.
There are so many options when marketing online. You can use audio, video, blogging, email, social media and ongoing newsletters. If you were to do the same thing in traditional marketing you would need to select several media outlets to cover your bases, not so when it comes to marketing online.

#5. Instant Conversion Ability
When you market online you have the ability to convert a customer instantaneously. This is not the case when evaluating marketing options in traditional media such as magazine ads, newspapers or television. Traditional off-line advertising and marketing typically requires you to be extremely patient in getting results. When you are marketing online you cannot only capture a potential customer’s information, but you can capture a sale instantaneously by a few clicks of a mouse, when it comes to offline marketing it takes more time to convert a customer into a sale not to mention the person power it often requires.