Online vs. Offline Marketing: The Difference

It is true that one of the core parts and live-wire of any sustainable business is marketing. Yes, this is simply an act of advertising a brand, product, or service to the potential customers with the hope of making sales and getting profits. So in other words, marketing is like a business telling the public that they provide a particular service. In this era of proliferation of digital technologies, we have witnessed a paradigm shift of marketing into online. However, businesses still engaged in offline methods. Here, we shall look at the comparison between the online mode of marketing and the offline mode.

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Online marketing

This is the type of marketing that leverages on the power of the internet and other online technologies or tools to create awareness for a particular product and service or even the business itself. The methods and tools to accomplish this include but not limited to; social media (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, etc), SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), Email, Website/Blogs, etc.

Advantages of online marketing

• Convenience: Online marketing offers a whole new level of convenience. As long as you have access to an Internet-enabled gadget, you can market your products without even moving from your house.

• Wider reach: With online marketing, you are not limited to a particular geographical locality because with the power of Internet, you can connect the world and have a global reach.

• Easier customers' feedback: If your marketing is done online, it will be easier to get feedbacks from customers and potential customers on your products and services.

Disadvantages of online marketing

• Increasing rate of competition: Some of the internet media where people can advertise their products offer free service or just a little premium payment, and as such, it has seen the influx of people advertising their products and thus, creating insane competitions that one's products' advertisements might be sunk inside tons of others.

• You may need to build a level of trust first so as to get the patronage of people through online marketing. This is because of the cases of cyber crime that has been witnessed.

• To effectively maximise online marketing, you may need to either learn the nitty-gritty of the online marketing or pay for the services of professionals.

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Offline Marketing

This type of marketing strategy focuses extensively on the traditional method that does not require the application of the internet. This type includes but not limited to Newspaper advertisement, word-of-mouth, journals publication, flyers and pamphlet, etc.

Advantages of offline marketing

• Longer impression: Most time, some of these online ads just flash and leave in seconds (like the advert that is normally played at the start of YouTube videos), and as such, has limited impression. But with an offline method like the flyer or newspaper, once the potential customer still possess them, it will still be creating the required impression.

• Can get to the people that do not have online presence: Obviously, there are people that do not have access to the Internet, like the people in the hinterlands et al. Offline methods of marketing can be useful to get to such people.

• Higher trust rate: more often than not, people tend to trust more the people they see physically than who they meet online. By utilizing the traditional methods of marketing like the word-of-mouth, you tend to relate more with the potential customers and earn more credibility and trust.

Disadvantages of offline marketing

• Some of them involves a lot of cost: in organizing offline marketing, you may need to print flyers, create billboards, pay for newspapers columns, and even pay for the services of the people that will undertake these tasks. All these will build up to the overall cost of marketing and may involve a lot of funds.

• It is limited in reach: Offline marketing is normally bound by a particular locality and may not be effective for global reach.

• It involves a lot of time investment: Take the sharing of flyers for example; someone may spend the whole day to share marketing flyers and may end up not going pass their neighbourhood.

Now that we have seen the advantages and disadvantages of both the online and offline marketing, it is worthy to note that a business can also utilise both of them and combine both of their strengths for effective marketing strategy. However, one thing to note is that, as a business or service provider, you should focus on the best ones for you and the ones that work for you.

Thanks for reading