Virtual Marketing

If you have been in business for a long time, the odds are you’ve seen the landscape change drastically. From the era before the internet was ubiquitous in every office and household with traditional and print advertising and marketing strategies, to the early internet years of transition and today with much more data on how certain digital marketing strategies work on the internet to provide results. The world has changed — specifically the business landscape — immensely even just in the 2020s alone, not to mention the previous 20-30 years before that.

Is your business still relying on billboards, mailers, newspaper advertising or other traditional marketing methods? While some of those may make sense and provide results for your business, your company’s success is undoubtedly being held back if you haven’t engaged in virtual marketing.

What is Virtual Marketing?

While traditional advertising is often physically present or physically apparent in the periphery of a viewer, like billboards or a magazine ad or even a trade show, virtual marketing is pretty self-explanatory on the other end. Virtual marketing is the engagement of advertising or marketing strategy that isn’t in-person, with strategies almost entirely deployed on the web.

Downsides of Traditional Marketing

Tired of spending nearly an employee’s yearly salary on a little booth for trade shows? How about the shipping costs around the country to move those booths to each destination, not to mention flying your team to those places, putting up for hotels, only to get a few tire-kickers? Spending excessive money on trade shows, live conferences or seminars can destroy your business’s profit margin on the leads and deals you do complete. While they can be strategically valuable for various instances, going to as many trade shows as possible is an incredible expense.

The same can be said about other traditional advertising. The cost of mailers and billboards without any tracking of leads whatsoever can make it so the return on investment isn’t feasible for your business.

Benefits of Virtual Marketing

All of the excessive spending on travel, billboards or trade shows can be minimized with virtual marketing techniques, shrinking the need for travel and expanding to new audiences online.

Virtual marketing’s most simple aspect for businesses is a website and search engine optimization. By having a strategically designed website and content that is optimized for search engines, your business is engaging in virtual marketing for potential clients on the web. Additionally, by utilizing PPC ads, social media or webinars, you reduce the cost of moving from place to place to promote your business. With virtual marketing, you can do it from the comfort of your own office at a fraction of the cost.

While the cost will also be more manageable, one of the best benefits of virtual marketing is analytics tracking. Now, by focusing on marketing your business via website, paid search ads or webinars, you can keep track of the people who visit your website, participate in your webinar, and see improvement over time and easily track what potential leads or business you get from what venture.