Offline & Online Marketing – Part 2

In my last post, I had mentioned few points which differentiate online & offlline marketing. Here's few more to read:

Availability of Products & Services

In offline Marketing, the customer even after having looked into the ads in various media, has to look for some retail shop to purchase it or has to come to your place for more information about your product. Sometimes, the products is also not available in the local retail shop, thus you need to distribute your product to almost every rural & urban areas for better sales of your products & services. Its more on Rust Marketing than the pull effect.

In Online marketing, your Targeted Customers are one click away. Means they can easily get to your website for more information about your products & services and as well can order it without going to your office or moving away from its own desk.

Fast Conversion/Sale

In web or online marketing, the products is sold in a few clicks of a mouse

Whereas, 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.

Whereas in offline business, the office or retail shop will be available for fixed office hours. That’s means the customer can find the product only during the office hours.

Customer Contact

In online Business, every sale lead has the customer information like its name, address, email id etc.

In offline business, only large products like refrigerator, television etc has buyer information but small or daily goods, there are no buyer details.

Phone Directories vs. Search Engines

In offline Marketing, Phone directories are effective way to make sure your business is located in right category for targeted customers. Customers do look in phone directories to find contact details of the business providing the products & services you are looking. Please note getting your business listed in phone directories cost you a lot. Also it doesn’t give any statistics of how many people saw your listing or came from it.

In web marketing, many directories are there which provide you free listing in their website. These listing helps you bring lots of traffic to your website & also ranking in search engines, which is another effective media to bring traffic to the website. Please note it’s all free of cost.

The most important advantage in offline marketing is Trust. Yes, till now many users are afraid of using online shopping because of fraud, hacking, misuse etc. Also, in offline business, user can check the products first & then need to pay but in online you need to pay first & then u get the products via shipping.

Conclusion:

In the coming Era, we definitely gong to see lots of web marketing, but that doesn’t mean the business don’t require offline marketing. Both should be equally balanced by any business to maximize the profit.