Although online and offline marketing are both promotional strategies, they still differ greatly from each other. It is true that a business should use these strategies together in order to create effective brand awareness and, more importantly, reach a much wider audience. But for you to use them according to your business needs or wants, you need to determine the differences between the two.
What is Online Marketing?
Online marketing refers to the process of catching the attention of potential customers, well, online. It can be done through various forms, such as articles, images, videos, flash animation, etc. Here, all of your marketing strategies are planned in a way that they become a decent tempt to visitors. This information is strategically placed on a website’s main page or front page to intrigue and engage key audiences. Online marketing can be done in a lot of ways, all of which are designed to attract traffic. It includes the following:
- Content Marketing
- Email Marketing
- Online Classified Ads
- Search Engine Marketing
- Social Media
- Video Blogging
- Website/Blog
What is Offline Marketing?
Offline marketing, on the other hand, is also a process of creating brand awareness and reach. However, it is only deemed effective if and only if a customer’s needs and wants are satisfied. In a plethora of occurrences, some business owners tend to adopt marketing mix strategies when it comes to promoting their products or services. At the end of the day, the goal of offline marketing is to gather leads. This is why this marketing strategy is perfect for businesses that have no website or its website is still under construction. Like online marketing, offline marketing also has a number of forms, such as print and non-print media. It includes the following:
- Banners
- Brochure
- Flyers
- Newspapers
- Pamphlets
- Posters
- Radio
- Television
- Online Marketing Vs. Offline Marketing
As mentioned above, there is a huge difference between online marketing and offline marketing. While you now understand how these two are delivered accordingly, they also differ in terms of benefits.
#1. Cost
It holds true that companies spend a lot of money just to promote their brands in hopes to increase sales/revenues. But when it comes to expenses, online marketing is quite affordable compared to offline marketing. In the latter, you get to spend money just to maintain television or radio ads which can be quite expensive. But when using online marketing, all you need is to jumpstart a website. From there, you can resort to adding ads on search engines and social media, both of which are relatively less expensive than having to pay ads on television or radio.
#2. Exposure
Unfortunately for offline marketing, it has its own limits. For starters, it can never guarantee a maximum exposure. Online, however, does not succumb to any barrier. Its reach can be global, and thus achieves maximum exposure. You can sell products or services globally without the need of setting up local outlets.
#3. Personalization
It is given that all purchase histories, webpages, and traffic are tracked. Hence it is so much easy to provide a specific offer to certain categories of customers. This allows you to further increase your business’ growth, not to mention the fact that you can easily target a category of people for certain promotions. On a large scale, applying these methods using offline marketing can be a difficult feat to conquer. Unless, of course, if you have the resources.
#4. Convenience
This is perhaps the number one reason why businesses nowadays are more into online marketing than offline marketing. When you have a website, your customers can simply visit it and buy products or services directly. And they can do these anytime and anywhere as long as they have an internet connection. Whereas in offline, you can only expect customers to engage with you when your outlet is opened.
Conclusion
While online marketing seems to be a much easier route compared to offline marketing, it is not a 100 percent guarantee. In fact, online marketing is best for startups, as it provides an exciting challenge of reaching people across the globe. Offline marketing, on one hand, is more on dealing potential customers on a face value. This is why despite the rapid popularity of online marketing, offline marketing continues to be a game changer. It is still capable of putting any business in the limelight.
If you find a way to combine these two marketing strategies, then the better it would be for your business. And if your goal is to ensure efficiency and all-around targeted results, then it is important that you work on both of these marketing techniques. Doing so can guarantee you success, provided that every component of these marketing techniques are applied accordingly. You just need to focus more on creativity and time, something that could benefit your products or services the moment they are provided to your customers. At the end of the day, your business growth heavily relies on your marketing efforts, so pick whichever method is right for you.
