Do you run a brick-and-mortar business facility, or do you prefer conducting your business online? Either way, properly marketing your business to customers is crucial for making a reasonable profit. Even a few years back, this usually consisted of putting some ads on leading newspapers, booking a 10 second slot on television, or even renting a banner by the side of a major highway.

Thankfully, those times may be over pretty soon, largely due to e-marketing getting more and more popular with each passing day. There are several advantages of e-marketing that make it a lot more appealing than traditional methods. These include:

1. No initial investment: How much would it cost you to create an account on each of Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, and post some updates on those accounts? Absolutely nothing! This is the beauty of e-marketing – unless you are after some special features available on the social networking websites, you do not have to invest a single penny in it. All you need is a sound social media marketing plan in place, and an urge to interact with potential customers on a regular basis.

2. Extensive reach: If you rent a billboard, then you can only count on people who drive on that road to cast a glance at it. If you run an ad on a newspaper or a television channel, then also the number of persons you can possibly reach is limited to the number of subscribers and viewers respectively. However, if you run a social media marketing campaign online, then your audience is as many people as you can possibly include in your network. With time, this number can easily reach thousands, without you having to invest anything at all.

3. Targeted marketing: Let us suppose you are promoting a special offer on skateboards. How many senior citizens do you imagine will be interested in it? This is a major problem with traditional marketing methods – you can never be sure of approaching the target audience through it. However, if you are building a network on Facebook or Twitter, you can actually approach people who are likely to be interested in your business or special offers. Thus among e-marketing and traditional marketing methods, the former is more likely to succeed, and that too, without upsetting your monthly budget.