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.

Offline & Online Marketing – Part 1

In my last post you read about marketing & its type i.e. Offline Marketing (also known as traditional marketing) and online marketing (also known as web marketing). So lets see the comparison of both:

Techniques:

In offline marketing (traditional marketing), you can give add in Newspaper, Magazine, TV, Radio. Also personal brochures, business cards, Give-away like pens, cups and t-shirts, an assorted other promotional items, sponsorship in various events, banners, hoarding and many more.

In online marketing (web marketing), you can go for SEO, SEM, PPC, Email Marketing, Affiliate marketing, banner ads, directory, yellow page submissions, blogging, social book marking & networking and many more.

Target Customers:

Offline Marketing: Well the targeted customers largely are local or national.

Online Marketing: Can set the targeted Customers to local, national, intenational or global. By default, it targets global.

ROI (Return on Investment):

Offline Marketing: The calculation for ROI becomes difficult because you can say that the customer has come seeing the TV Ad, Newspaper Ad or what unless & until you have some coupon to the advertisement or asked directly to customer.

Online Marketing: Every PPC, SEM campaign referrers can be monitored. Thus you can easily calculate ROI or CPA (Cost per Acquisition). It is effective way to calculate your ROI.

Cost or Budget:

Offline Marketing: A large amount of money is required for traditional marketing. Cost of hoarding, newspaper ad, magazine ad and so on…. Also it’s for small time period, i.e. till you have paid rent for the space.

Online Marketing: One can set up online marketing with a nominal amount of budget also. Also few techniques like SEO can be used for long term as well.

to be Continued....

Marketing

In general, marketing means to supply goods & services to the targeted customer efficiently and profitably. Every organization requires marketing of their products & services. And if properly analyzed, planned & executed, marketing can results in good ROI compared to your competitor.

I believe, there are two types of marketing – Offline & Online. Offline marketing generally refers to media advertising, sales promotion, publicity, and personal selling, branding and to the various methods of promoting the product, brand, or company.

Online Marketing refers to lead generation activities such as SEO and SEM, affiliate marketing, banner ads, emails, articles, PPC and much more.

Well I believe in this Era, both ways are equally important for any business. Many people have started looking for their need in the internet. Shopping, Banking, Information, Books, Entertainment…. all can be done through internet. And the rest of the population who are still not using internet comes to know about the products & services by word of mouth (personal selling), media advertising (TV, Radio, Newspaper) etc.

So to target the global market, both ways are equally important.