The Strengths and Weaknesses of Etools

Digi Jem
Mar 4, 2015
4 min read

The digital market is a fast, dynamic and effective way to launch a new marketing campaign. In order to compete with their rivals a business will need to use digital marketing and e-tools just to stay visible in their market. They will have to consider which e-tools will benefit their campaign by evaluating their strengths and weaknesses.

Outlined below are some of the strengths and weaknesses of the most popular e-tools currently used in digital marketing campaigns:

E-Tool: Social Media

Facebook is a social network that many businesses use as an e-tool to market their products and services. As of September 2014 Facebook has 1.3 billion active users worldwide[1].

The main strengths and weaknesses, in my opinion, of Facebook as an e-tool are as follows:

Global Reach

Strength: Facebook increases the reach of a business thus creating a more diverse market for its products/services globally.

Weakness: Legal issues may arise depending on the global location of a business; what is legal in one country may not be legal in another.

24/7

Strength: Facebook is 24/7 365 so, in fact, your business is always open facilitating the customer to browse at their convenience.

Weakness: Operating 24/7 365 is time consuming and may have an adverse effect on the customer experience, e.g. if there is a delay in responding to a query because a customer has requested information out of business working hours.

Rich Media

Strength: Facebook is interactive and lets a business demonstrate a product/service with added content such as videos allowing a customer to see what the product/service the business is promoting.

Weakness: Interactivity of the product/service is visual rather than tactile and many customers prefer to be hands on.

Control

Strength: By using Facebook a business can control the message of their campaign by focusing and adapting their campaign to trending topics on Facebook/Twitter or a story that is headlining in traditional media.

Weakness: The content of your message, especially using trending topics, may be seen to be inappropriate and/or insensitive, resulting in the message being lost in the controversy.

Feedback

Strength: Positive feedback received on Facebook can be used on all marketing material and is immediate allowing the business to utilise the results of their campaign across all media.

Weakness: The converse is true. Negative feedback can have an adverse effect on the business and the business may have to spend more money and time to counteract the negativity.

Twitter is another social network used as an e-tool in marketing campaigns by many businesses. As of July 2014, Twitter has more than 500 million active users globally.[2]

The main strengths and weaknesses, in my opinion, of using Twitter as an e-tool are as follows:

Global Reach

Strength: A business can increase their reach globally by tweeting and interacting on Twitter, creating brand awareness and new customers.

Weakness: As with Facebook the global nature of Twitter may cause unexpected legal issues costing the business time, money and negative feedback.

24/7

Strength: Twitter is a dynamic and interactive e-tool allowing a business to interact with its customers in real-time giving them instant feedback and enabling them to roll out new campaigns in response.

Weakness: Operating 24/7 365 is time consuming for a business, and may involve more effort to stay ahead of their market. As Twitter operates in real-time tweets may only be visible for a short period of time as topics trend and descend quickly.

Connectivity/Interactivity

Strength: By using creative and effective tweets to exchange information, a business can promote their products/services by tweeting in real-time. Interacting with customers in real-time allows a business to get to know their customers wants and needs, increasing their market knowledge and revenue.

Weakness: Tweets are only 140 characters long which is limiting in itself. As a business is dependent on a short message to be seen and retweeted to increase their market presence, tweets need to catch attention. Additional revenue may have to be allocated to marketing/advertising strategies in order to retain their customers’ attention.

Feedback

Strength: Twitter offers a business the opportunity to request feedback, testing the market for a product/service. This feedback allows a business to tailor their campaign quickly and effectively ensuring a business does not waste their resources on ineffectual marketing strategies.

Weakness: As Twitter is a public forum negative feedback can have an adverse effect on a business as they cannot control or contain the spread of this feedback and this may damage the business’s reputation and customer service.

E-Tool: Email Marketing

Strength: As customer has signed up for the e-mail newsletter they have already shown an interest and a business can retain this customer by providing the most up to date information via email.

Weakness: The customer may block emails and/or register them as spam.

E-Tool: Technology

Strength: To retain and/or increase a business’s customer base and revenue, a strong online presence is vital. A business can strengthen their online visibility by using the most up to date technology.

Weakness: The effectiveness of using progressive technology may have a limited reach as the customer they are targeting may not have access to the most up to date equipment/resources.

E-Tool: Rich Media

Strength: Using various rich media e-tools, such as YouTube, Pinterest, a business can promote a product/service with added content such as demonstration videos. This drives traffic to the business’s website and/or increases their footprint online.

Weakness: A business is dependent on users viewing the added content. Piracy and copyright infringements are more likely to occur with digital content and a business may need to consider legal action, such as instigating “cease and desist” notices which may, ultimately, result in court proceedings.

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