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There are many businesses that seem to have split in half. They have their traditional brick and mortar location, which relies on their traditional advertising and marketing strategies. Then, they have their online location, which operates based on an entirely different set of assumptions and strategies.
The fact that this has happened is understandable. The newer technology of the internet can seem radically different from traditional ways of doing business. Adopting new technology can invariably lead to some level of disconnect with other aspects of an endeavor and its routines.
Some people have gone so far as to intentionally create this division. They see their storefront as a means of doing business with one set of clients, and their website as a means of reaching another.
That approach, however, falls far short of being successful, and should be abandoned as soon as possible, whether it was intentionally implemented or was an accidental outgrowth of the way things “unfolded.” That's because the distinction between those two groups of customers is becoming increasingly artificial.
The same person who may walk by a storefront this afternoon may very well be surfing the internet tonight. More and more people are relying on the internet to find information and places to spend their money on the products they need.
Demographically, those who use the internet do tend to be a little younger and tech savvy than those who don't, but the overlap between “net customers” and “walk ins” is growing so rapidly the division no longer makes a great deal of sense.
As such, it is important for companies to understand that they can and should integrate their online and offline marketing strategies to work with one another in a mutually reinforcing way. There are specific tricks on both sides of the equation, of course, but in the bigger picture, marketing is marketing and one's overall strategy should reflect that fact.
Does your business have on online presence? If so, is it successfully integrated with your other marketing strategies? Do the two elements feed off one another and work together to improve your bottom line?
If you are like many business operators, you probably answered “no” to those questions. If that is the case, it is time to consult with knowledgeable guides who understand marketing in both the traditional and online senses and who can help you devise a plan to put both aspects of your sales efforts on the same page.
Integrating online and offline marketing isn't necessarily a complicated proposition. In fact, it can be relatively easy. It's also effective. By combining the two elements into one seamless strategy, a business can obtain results that dwarf previous fragmented efforts.
Like it or not, the coming of Internet Marketing has sounded the death-knell for traditional methods of marketing and associated advertising. Newspapers are rapidly shedding staff; even the UK's Channel 4 Television can no longer survive without merging with another channel due to the drop in advertising revenue it had previously relied upon.
So why is offline marketing dying off?
Compare the traditional direct mail marketing technique with online email marketing approaches. Take a sales letter and mail it out to 10,000 people. Add up the cost of stationery and postage, even with discounts for mass postage, you need a good budget. Now compose an email, add your database of 10,000 customers and email it directly to their inbox in less than 10 seconds. The cost is nothing and you essentially require no budget.
Furthermore, recent research indicates that direct mail only generates a 2% response rate; email marketing generates 5 times as much. Offline Marketing cannot compete with these results.
Is it a surprise that traditional offline marketing methods are dying off? Their share of the market shrinking, revenue receding as the online marketing sector grows and takes over the lion's share of the market?
If we contrast the range of offline marketing, we easily reveal an important weakness in the traditional approach. Offline marketing is limited by geographic location. Newspaper circulation or television/radio broadcasting range limits the effectiveness of the offline marketing campaign. Online marketing campaigns are geographically limitless. If you wish, you can advertise your product or service to millions of people across the entire world.
Broadcast and print advertising has always been expensive, and in their dying days, they still won't compete with the Internet on cost. Online marketing offers targeted marketing, rather than blanket marketing at a fraction of the cost.
That neatly brings us onto the ability to target your exact customer. Offline advertising can only attempt to do this by hoping enough men are watching football, or women are watching Desperate Housewives. With the online alternative, you can target the very customers that are already looking for your products or services. Again, offline marketing cannot compete with this level of accuracy in finding customers and bringing them to your website.
Using Internet Marketing rapidly reduces the time between a potential customer seeing your marketing and responding to it. Online marketing promotes immediate reaction, generating immediate revenue. Your customer sees your ad. The customer reads your ad, they like what they read, they check the price, and it's good. They click to add the product to the shopping cart; they fill in their details and click to pay. Within three clicks or so, you've made a sale. Traditional marketing methods simply cannot produce these rapid results, or the volume of increased business that they are capable of producing.
Whilst some people will cling on to offline marketing, suspicious of the Internet's success, their competitors using online marketing are increasing their sales by the hour.