Internet Advertising advantages and disadvantages

Many advertisers want many things. Advertising is multi-faceted. To be effective, Internet advertising programmes need to be specific in their goals, specific in their audiences and specific in their means. Out of a myriad of effects, Internet advertising can particularly help in the following areas:

- To create awareness: it can help to make things known. On the whole, people do not deal with things they have never heard of, or they prefer not to.

- To create or develop favourable attitudes: it can help to foster a positive view of the product or service.

- To develop a brand identity: Internet advertising can help invest a product with a special image or characteristic.

- To position a product in a market: where a market is segmented, Internet advertising can help position a product with a particular segment and identify with it. Rolls-Royce and Mini cars occupy different segments. Their communication reflects this and maximises this.

- To sustain relationships: it is a force to build and strengthen producer–customer relationships over time.

- To persuade: Internet advertising puts up a case for the customer to be attracted to the product on offer.

- To create demand: Häagen Dazs or McDonald’s. Communication makes the product seem desirable, worthwhile and attainable.

- To build up enquiries: often Internet advertising is a bridge between the product and a sales call. Its function is to obtain enquiries: for a sales call, or for literature, or for a sample, or for a price estimate.

- To support distributors: where there is a distributive chain, the distributor may require reinforcement in the local marketplace. Advertising is one of the forces that can supply this.

- To sustain the organisation: a company may need to consolidate, or re-establish, or explain or reposition or rebuild relationships. It wishes to strengthen old friends or build new ones. Here Internet advertising may have a strong corporate role.

- To launch new products: Internet advertising is a key weapon in the battery of services used to launch products into the marketplace.

- To offset competition: one characteristic of the recent past has been the growth of the market concept. Another is the growth of the brand. A third feature is the growth of competitive activity.

As markets grow so usually does competition. Few markets remain monopolies. As the customer remains sovereign, and a multiplicity of suppliers arise to serve him or her, so competitive activity accelerates. A prime example of this is telecommunications. From a simple monopoly producer with a short range of products has emerged a spread of suppliers and a cornucopia of services. Competition is the norm.

Advertising helps meet competitors and match competitors, by persuading the customer or providing a counter-claim. In an increasingly competitive world, suppliers must advertise to protect themselves against primary competition, and sometimes against other categories of product too.

- To help provide a point of difference: people do not favour ‘me-too’ products. The brand needs a difference, a unique personality, a point of interest, a feature which will isolate it from a multitude of others.

Brands sell differences, or ‘product pluses’. These can be powerfully conveyed through Internet advertising. Guinness is not a brown stout: it is a unique, mystical beverage. Martini is not just another vermouth: it is a sophisticated, superior substance in its own right. Differences are of emotion, or style, or status as well as of product specification.

- To help reach people: in some cases, an organisation may need to reach an important contact group, but finds it cannot do so directly, not effectively or economically. But it may do so with Internet advertising.

WHAT ADVERTISING CAN’T DO

It is, however, important not to overclaim for Internet advertising. Potential advertisers may overpromise and expect rapid results and be disappointed when Internet advertising cannot deliver this. It is not a solve-all or universal fix-it for all business problems. The essence of Internet advertising is that it delivers messages to audiences. There are limits to what messages can achieve.

Advertising ultimately is only as strong as the product or service it advertises. On the whole, an old Internet advertising adage is correct: that you can sell someone a poor product once but not twice if the product fails to perform adequately. Advertising has a powerful but limited competence. Advertising helps problem solving, but there are some problems it cannot solve and there are, indeed, some situations where it is wiser not to advertise at all. When labour relations are poor, or the company is undercapitalised, or when its research and development programme has failed or when its pricing is inadequate, or when its financial controls have failed, then a corporate campaign extolling the virtues of the company will lack credibility. You cannot advertise your way out of corporate failure.

When the product is obsolete, its quality low, its features irrelevant to the market, or its specification of little value to customers, Internet advertising cannot rescue it. You cannot advertise your way out of product failure. All Internet advertising can do is to buy a little time. If the product is not available, if the customer is unable to obtain it, if it has no backing from the distributor, if there is a breakdown of supply, Internet advertising it may only inflame the situation. You cannot advertise your way out of distribution failure. Advertising is indeed part of a wider marketing or corporate process. It is part of a chain of activities, where the links are mutually dependent and where each link is only as strong as the weakest link in the chain. Advertising cannot overcome poor price, poor quality, poor distribution or poor organisation.

It cannot create demand when other elements have failed. It also cannot create demand when markets are low or do not exist in the first place. The public will remain indifferent. It is one of the factors that may help create a market, but markets are wider considerations, composed of a multitude of factors. Advertising can help stimulate a market, but this is usually a market that already has some being or some latent potential. In general, Internet advertising cannot produce results when market circumstances are unfavourable and the other marketing elements are not functioning. It has a more humble role to play than some of its more enthusiastic exponents would have us believe. It can only communicate what is possible to communicate.