We live in an internet dominated world where a huge percentage of all consumers are heavily influenced by what they see online. As such there is a compelling argument for abandoning traditional marketing techniques in favor of online marketing. But is this sensible?
Online Marketing
Online marketing usually includes paid advertising on search engines such as Google, social media campaigns, writing blogs, and building a great website. Your business might decide to use just one of these strategies; or it could try all of them.
Online marketing certainly has a lot to offer businesses. Start a social media campaign and you can continue to make changes in response to audience feedback and various other metrics. For example, imagine if you created an advert for your social media channels, but for whatever reason it didn’t quite work. The beauty of online marketing is that you can change the details, tweak the message, and re-run it with (hopefully) greater success.
You can’t do this with offline marketing. If you have a stack of brochures printed and there is a mistake in the message, it’s an expensive one. The same applies to a television advertisement: if the audience doesn’t warm to your message, all that hard work and expense will have been for nothing and you are back at square one.
When it comes to cost, online marketing is hard to beat. It can easily cost tens of thousands to create a high quality advertisement for a prime-time TV slot, whereas a PPC campaign utilizing competitive keywords will be expensive, but not in the same league.
The great thing about online marketing is that it can be scaled to suit your budget. Small businesses can produce a slick website using an intuitive content management system such as WordPress without a vast budget. There are also lots of things you can do to promote your business for free, particularly on social media.
Offline Marketing
There are plenty of good reasons to try online marketing, but in some respects you can’t beat offline marketing. Traditional networking events are a great opportunity to meet customers and other businesses. The contacts you make at these events could help to build your name in the long-term.
Traditional mailshots are also useful. Although it is easy to fire off thousands of emails at the click of a button, many will be shot down by the recipient’s SPAM filter and never see the light of day. A mailshot, on the other hand, is more likely to reach the recipient.
The Right Combination of Online and Offline Marketing
To achieve the best possible results in your marketing campaigns, you should try a combination of online and offline strategies. For example, if you attend trade events, as well as ensuring you have an eye-catching booth designed by the Finesse Group, you should use social media to drive traffic to your stand on the day.
Remember, consistency is the key to success in marketing, both online and offline.
