Marketing has always been around, but since the internet has come along the rise in online marketing has been amazing. Online marketing is the process of marketing to people over the world wide web, using digital formats such as email, websites, and the like.
While offline marketing has always been around, online marketing has become the weapon of choice for many marketers in recent years. So much so, that many marketers have reduced their offline marketing efforts considerably if not got rid of them all together.
So which should your business use, online marketing or offline marketing? Here are a few pros and cons of each:
Online Marketing Pros:
Online marketing can be very cheap in comparison to offline marketing. Most of the online services you'll need to use are either free or relatively in expensive, so you can reach more people for cheaper.
With online marketing you have access to lots of people at your fingertips. Social networking sites such as Facebook has a good percentage of the world joined, and most people are just a few clicks away.
Cons:
Some people still take real world advertising more seriously. Focus purely on online marketing and you run the risk of missing a lot of customers.
Not everyone has a computer. Even though it may seem like everyone does in this day and age, that's really not the case. Once again you run the risk of losing out on customers if you don't give people without computers the chance to see your marketing efforts.
Offline Marketing Pros:
It is a proven marketing method that converts. If you put into practice these proven methods you can get results.
There's a lot more then one method of offline marketing, so you can easily reach people without access to a computer via different methods. These methods include TV adverts, postal mailing lists, billboard posters and a lot more.
Cons
The cost of offline marketing can really add up, so it isn't ideal for people with a small budget to focus purely on this.
Offline marketing methods take time to put into place, you can't get breaking news and expect to be on the television within the hour to let people know. Mailing letters, posters, and radio adverts take time to make and distribute, so you have to do a lot of planning ahead.
Which Type Of Marketing Should We Use?
So now you've seen the pros and cons of both on and offline marketing, which should you use? Well, to be honest, you should use both. While it'll vary from situation to situation, excluding one of these types of marketing means you'll be missing out on a lot of people. You're simply not giving yourself enough reach, as not everyone's always out in the real world, and not everyone's always online.
While it'll depend on your budget and what you hope to achieve, where ever possible try to vary your marketing efforts to make sure you reach as many people as possible.
If you want to maximise your online marketing methods, you need to use the right email marketing program. Use the wrong tools and your campaign will be over even before it's begun, so make sure you look into the best mailing list companies.
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