Online vs. Offline Marketing - It’s no contest!
The debate between online and offline marketing may rage on but for the vast majority of those in the business of marketing, it has been fairly obvious for some time that it is not a matter of one trumping the other. There may well be a few luddites around who maintain online marketing is a false dawn of some kind but they are a dying breed. Undoubtedly, there are aspects of an online marketing campaign that can appear worrying or potentially risky. The number one concern for many companies is security,not necessarily their own, but rather the possibility that consumers may be scared of filling in personal details for fear of being exposed to fraud. No matter how established and trustworthy a company is, there will always be a subset of the population, particularly those of an older generation, who have great difficulty putting their faith in the security of the web. The other factor of online marketing that can easily put off consumers is spam and junk mail. Many people have stringent filtering on their email accounts to such an extent that promotional offers end up going straight to a junk folder and never even get read. At the same time, there are elements of shopping online that can be very attractive to consumers. There is a definite convenience to purchasing products without having to ever leave your house, not to mention it being so much easier to simply click a mouse than to make a trip to your nearest store. Online marketing can also achieve many things that offline approaches simply cannot. With social media in particular, it is now possible to spotlight a target audience with greater efficiency. The information provided on the 'about' section of a Facebook profile, for example, is enough demographic information to keep any marketer occupied for days. Through the analytics of SEO and PPC advertising, it is simple to monitor how many people have visited your webpage, how often, for how long and even who referred them. This gives just about the clearest possible indication of the rate of investment for your marketing campaign. Certainly the more pressing issue is how to integrate both online and offline methods in a way that allows them to complement one another rather than conflict. This is not always easy. The most important thing to bear in mind during an integrated campaign is the stability of your branding. Transpose the colours, logos and taglines that consumers associate with your brand onto all websites and social media platforms. Make sure that all promotional offers match up and maintain the philosophy of the business throughout. One problem that can face many larger businesses is that employees who specialise in online marketing do not maintain constant communication with those working on the offline parts of the campaign. It is important that both departments have regular weekly meetings to ensure 100{06e29518e582b1cc2da09f8f2ea316dadc41c520023bcca83a4deb5e6ad0a3c6} continuity. Integration is definitely tricky but get it right and there is potential for a huge increase inrevenue.