Web Marketing Vs Offline Marketing
William King asked:
One of the most critical aspects of running a business is marketing. It encompasses every customer related task from creating awareness to customer satisfaction and retention. One may go as far as to say that a business cannot survive or even start up without it. In the current scenario, marketing has become a complex and sophisticated function, especially now that an increasing number of businesses choose to start up online. Now, along with the traditional offline marketing tools, there are a number of web marketing tools and methods available. These web marketing methods must be mastered for any level of success in online business.
The differences that separate web marketing from offline marketing are as below:
• Snail mail vs. email – Email marketing is low cost, efficient, instant and effective means of generating customers. Snail mail is slow, generally more expensive and is losing some of its efficacy with the influx of TV and Internet.
• Limited radius of impact vs. unlimited – The target audience is global in the case of web marketing with the Internet shrinking the world. The radius of offline marketing is limited by physical, political and time barriers.
• Web customers are looking for a product or service similar to yours – The beauty of being an online business is that people log on to look for a service or product that you can offer. Whereas, offline businesses have to rely more on push marketing than the pull effect.
• Long, complex process of making a sale vs. instant conversion – A few clicks of a mouse and the product is sold, in the case of web marketing. Offline marketing process is time and manpower heavy, from generating leads to making a sale.
• Fixed office hours vs. 24 hour store – An online business can sell its products 24 hours a day while an offline business will open and shut at particular hours.
• Advertising in print, TV and radio is expensive – While you can easily offer content, audio and video clips on the Internet for a very low cost.
• Pay for time spots vs. unlimited time and space – Ads in offline marketing mediums are for a limited time only and you pay for time slots and space. In an online marketing scenario, you would keep your ads up for a longer time and pay much less.
• Cost per incremental customer – This cost is very low for web marketing based concerns, whereas this cost is appreciable in case of offline marketing efforts.
• Targeted approach vs. blanket approach – The above reason leads offline marketing businesses to target and select carefully, eliminating a lot of potential customers, who may buy in the future if not the present. However, low incremental costs result in online businesses covering a broad spectrum of the market.
• Segmentation – Preferences are much easier to track for an online business and this means that segmentation is simpler. The web marketing effort has the information it needs to customize its pitch at once.
• Customer contact – Access to customer information is automatic in the case of online businesses and the web marketing process is simplified and made efficient. Databases and mailing lists are created in an instant. On the contrary, offline marketing efforts for the same require time, employees and money.
There are many benefits to both web marketing and offline marketing, and it is best to use a judicious mix of the two.
One of the most critical aspects of running a business is marketing. It encompasses every customer related task from creating awareness to customer satisfaction and retention. One may go as far as to say that a business cannot survive or even start up without it. In the current scenario, marketing has become a complex and sophisticated function, especially now that an increasing number of businesses choose to start up online. Now, along with the traditional offline marketing tools, there are a number of web marketing tools and methods available. These web marketing methods must be mastered for any level of success in online business.
The differences that separate web marketing from offline marketing are as below:
• Snail mail vs. email – Email marketing is low cost, efficient, instant and effective means of generating customers. Snail mail is slow, generally more expensive and is losing some of its efficacy with the influx of TV and Internet.
• Limited radius of impact vs. unlimited – The target audience is global in the case of web marketing with the Internet shrinking the world. The radius of offline marketing is limited by physical, political and time barriers.
• Web customers are looking for a product or service similar to yours – The beauty of being an online business is that people log on to look for a service or product that you can offer. Whereas, offline businesses have to rely more on push marketing than the pull effect.
• Long, complex process of making a sale vs. instant conversion – A few clicks of a mouse and the product is sold, in the case of web marketing. Offline marketing process is time and manpower heavy, from generating leads to making a sale.
• Fixed office hours vs. 24 hour store – An online business can sell its products 24 hours a day while an offline business will open and shut at particular hours.
• Advertising in print, TV and radio is expensive – While you can easily offer content, audio and video clips on the Internet for a very low cost.
• Pay for time spots vs. unlimited time and space – Ads in offline marketing mediums are for a limited time only and you pay for time slots and space. In an online marketing scenario, you would keep your ads up for a longer time and pay much less.
• Cost per incremental customer – This cost is very low for web marketing based concerns, whereas this cost is appreciable in case of offline marketing efforts.
• Targeted approach vs. blanket approach – The above reason leads offline marketing businesses to target and select carefully, eliminating a lot of potential customers, who may buy in the future if not the present. However, low incremental costs result in online businesses covering a broad spectrum of the market.
• Segmentation – Preferences are much easier to track for an online business and this means that segmentation is simpler. The web marketing effort has the information it needs to customize its pitch at once.
• Customer contact – Access to customer information is automatic in the case of online businesses and the web marketing process is simplified and made efficient. Databases and mailing lists are created in an instant. On the contrary, offline marketing efforts for the same require time, employees and money.
There are many benefits to both web marketing and offline marketing, and it is best to use a judicious mix of the two.
Merging Your Online and Offline Marketing
Kaye Z. Marks asked:
There’s no reason for you to consider your offline and online marketing completely separate entities.
There are those companies out there who think that to achieve success online you need to use a completely online approach to your marketing and anything else will be counter productive. You’ll also find those who avoid the internet like the plague and think you don’t need to have any part of their business online at any time.
To avoid one or the other is to lose a good potential for additional business. Both approaches target different people, and you are able to gain support from both types of people if you know how to best combine these two forms of separate marketing.
Who says you can’t have ads online that direct people to your physical location? I’ve seen plenty of ads online that are for completely offline businesses. Now, you can still often find a website for them that gives people additional information about the business, but still directs them to the actual store.
This is easily accomplished, especially since it is rather cheap to set up a website that can provide people with extra details about your company.
Offline companies taking advantage of online approaches happens far more often than the online companies doing the same. Instead they try to avoid printing anything for their advertising if they can help it, but the offline forms of marketing are often going to work well with the same people who spend a lot of their shopping time on the web.
Try some greeting card printing that you can use to send people your web address along with a request to give you a chance. The great thing about this is that because an online business is so easy to gain access to, you’ll have a much better chance of gaining a person’s attention, and getting them to immediately log onto your website.
Because of that ability to immediately try out your website, your greeting card printing will be particularly successful, even more so than if you had a normal offline business that people needed to drive to in order to check out.
And this is just one way of taking advantage of offline marketing to boost up your business. Brochures can be just as effective for an online company as they would be for an offline one. If you avoid anything but internet advertising you’re losing access to some very long standing and great styles of marketing.
No company should ever block themselves off from effective styles of marketing no matter what kind of business they use. Take a look at the entire marketing field and decide on what will work best for your company.
You don’t want to fail to capitalize on a great style of marketing simply because you didn’t think it would work with your company.
There’s no reason for you to consider your offline and online marketing completely separate entities.
There are those companies out there who think that to achieve success online you need to use a completely online approach to your marketing and anything else will be counter productive. You’ll also find those who avoid the internet like the plague and think you don’t need to have any part of their business online at any time.
To avoid one or the other is to lose a good potential for additional business. Both approaches target different people, and you are able to gain support from both types of people if you know how to best combine these two forms of separate marketing.
Who says you can’t have ads online that direct people to your physical location? I’ve seen plenty of ads online that are for completely offline businesses. Now, you can still often find a website for them that gives people additional information about the business, but still directs them to the actual store.
This is easily accomplished, especially since it is rather cheap to set up a website that can provide people with extra details about your company.
Offline companies taking advantage of online approaches happens far more often than the online companies doing the same. Instead they try to avoid printing anything for their advertising if they can help it, but the offline forms of marketing are often going to work well with the same people who spend a lot of their shopping time on the web.
Try some greeting card printing that you can use to send people your web address along with a request to give you a chance. The great thing about this is that because an online business is so easy to gain access to, you’ll have a much better chance of gaining a person’s attention, and getting them to immediately log onto your website.
Because of that ability to immediately try out your website, your greeting card printing will be particularly successful, even more so than if you had a normal offline business that people needed to drive to in order to check out.
And this is just one way of taking advantage of offline marketing to boost up your business. Brochures can be just as effective for an online company as they would be for an offline one. If you avoid anything but internet advertising you’re losing access to some very long standing and great styles of marketing.
No company should ever block themselves off from effective styles of marketing no matter what kind of business they use. Take a look at the entire marketing field and decide on what will work best for your company.
You don’t want to fail to capitalize on a great style of marketing simply because you didn’t think it would work with your company.
