Can Offline Marketing Still Compete in the World of Online Advertising?

 

 

Online advertising has clear advantages over offline. Online is cheaper to run with the use of social media sites. Online also provides better accuracy to target a designated demographic. Online is available at any time day or night, meaning people get to decide when they want to access it, making it more convenient. Marketing a product this way can be much more personalized. Targeting your audience through social media is very adaptable and easy to change even once it’s posted and gone live.

 

Offline marketing can be a costly exercise depending on how you carry it out. Take television advertisements for example; regardless of how small the campaign, it will be expensive. So for many small businesses this is not an option. Also, these kinds of methods are not as measurable as online advertisements. The use of analytics makes online campaigns very traceable. As the resources to succeed through offline marketing are so costly, it can be hard for a company to establish itself as an expert.

 

Despite all this information, how can offline still compete in today’s fast moving world? They are both different and can cater to different audiences and reach many types of people.

 

 

 

Online advertising can be a little too much. Have you ever been online and just felt overwhelmed by the amount of advertising on some sites? It can be suffocating on some websites. Because there is so much information online it can often feel like you’re drowning in an overload of advertising.

 

Because of this constant bombardment we eventually get used to it and begin to filter out adverts online. We fail to recognize them once you have had overexposure. This conditioning happens to those who are frequently online. They filter out messages and become immune to the messages.

 

If you practice online advertising you need to make sure it looks professional and authentic or it will be ignored. As this is such a popular option among many small businesses, it means more competition on these platforms. There are many more competitors, all fighting for the same position. This will limit the exposure between them.

 

By having social channels people online can provide negative feedback which will be online for the public to see. So unless you have enough manpower to fix any problems straight away you could expose yourself.

 

 

A big plus of offline marketing is that it you are targeting a more general demographic. This allows you to capture parts of the market you would otherwise miss. Online also tends to isolate older generations. This gives offline advertising more of a foothold in that portion of the market. Offline provides a more personal feel as it isn’t as available as online but it gives more of a human interaction and feel.

 

This method of marketing gives businesses more credibility, because people can see the tangible aspects of a business and its products. Even now, not everyone has access to the Internet. Offline marketing is perfect for targeting this audience that online advertisements cannot reach.

 

Another plus to offline marketing campaigns is that up until the recent explosion in computer and mobile marketing, offline is how marketing has always been done. This means the cause and effects of advertising have been analyzed for a 100 years or more. Not only have the best methods been established, they have been proven to work and you can pretty much guarantee their success based on hard facts.

 

 

 

Clearly, offline marketing can still compete in today’s world of online advertising. It plays an important and vital role in reaching people that online can’t reach. Both online and offline marketing will spark an interest in people to do some research for themselves. Once that interest has taken hold and they get answers to the questions they have, the product will be sold. Online or offline, the consumer will ultimately decide which is best for them.