We are living in the world of internet. People never can imagine a day without a computer or mobile phone. Businesses are also evolved according to current trends because every business needs customers. They spend a lot on marketing (both online and offline) because they need their customers to be loyal users. But in this scenario, small businesses get stuck. It might be due to the lack of money, shop space, or employees. They may be confused to choose the right marketing methods since they can’t compete with the corporates. This article is for them. Here we discuss, What is Online Marketing and Offline Marketing? What are all the marketing strategies involved in both methods? and the major difference between both methods. Then you may choose the right method for your business. So let’s start; Online Marketing Vs Offline Marketing.
Online Marketing Vs Offline Marketing
What is Online Marketing
According to Wikipedia, Online Marketing is also known as Internet Marketing or Digital Marketing, a form of marketing and advertising, uses the internet to deliver promotional messages to customers.
Online Marketing uses many methods for creating brand awareness to attract their targeted customers. Some of the major methods are below;
Online Marketing Strategies
- Search Engine Optimization(SEO): It is a process to get web traffic from the organic search results on search engines. It is not a paid service or it is not an advertisement. We already mentioned in our previous article about how to do SEO for a new website
- Social Media Marketing: It is a process of getting traffic from social media site such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc. You can reach your target audiences through paid ads or organic posting.
- Email Marketing
- Search Engine Marketing: This is another form of paid internet marketing. You may get the visibility of your site on search results by paying to search engines.
- Affiliate Marketing: You may increase the sales of your website by sharing a part of income (commission) from the sales generated by a third website or agency. Bonus in this process is the traffic driven to your site from the third party’s website is free of cost.
- Influencers Marketing: This process is nothing but finding the industry experts to promote your products or services. As you know word of mouth will work a lot. People believe in the word of mouth more than self-promotion.
- Content Marketing: Creating content (article) on your products or services and promoting it to reach potential users.
- Lead Generation: It is a process of capturing the attention in a product or services to get more sales or leads to your business.
As you the internet has become a part of everyone’s daily life, online marketing also has become one of the best marketing methods around the globe.
Offline Marketing
Offline Marketing is also a process to create brand awareness, reach targeted users and generating leads or sales. But there is no internet involved in this method.
Commonly used offline marketing methods are;
- Television
- Radio
- Newspapers
- Banners
- Brochure
- Flyers
- Pamphlets
- Posters
What is the difference between Digital Marketing Vs Offline Marketing
The signific difference between Digital (online) and offline marketing is;
1.Cost
Companies spend a lot of amounts to promote their brand to increase their sales or services throughout. When it comes to expenses, online marketing is affordable than offline marketing. In offline, we should spend a lot of money to maintain stock, give salaries, pay rents and other bills…etc. but in online, major expenses are starting an optimized website (website with SEO), giving ads on social media or search engines which are comparatively very less expensive than offline promotions such as TV, Radio or Newspaper ads.
2.Exposure
Offline promotions have its own limit. It never guarantees maximum exposure. But online does not have any barriers. It reaches out globally and gets maximum exposure. You can sell a product globally without even setting up local outlets. It is not compulsory to have huge stocks or a big godown to store all your raw materials.
3.Convenience – 247/7 or 365 Days
There are no time barriers to internet marketing. Customers visit your web and buy your products or services at any time. Where in offline you can expect sales or customers only when your outlet is opened.
4.Personalization
Since web traffic and customer’s purchase histories are tracked, it is easy to give a specific offer to a specific category of customers. It will always help you to increase your business. Also, you can target a category of people for specific promotions.
But in large scale, offline outlets, these kind of methods are difficult to apply. Only small shops can use these methods to retain their customers.
Social Media Influence
Online stores can be promoted through social media easily. You can build huge fans/followers for your store through social media. Also, if you are providing the best services/products, people promote you well without even advertising. Directly or indirectly people start referring to your online stores. It will not only increase your traffic but also sales.
Offline also get social followers but there is a regional boundary. People may not come from another country and buy products from your local outlets.
Conclusion
We always need customers. We always would like to improve our turnover or sales. We are not trying to discriminate for those who run only offline stores. Try to build exposure in the online sector also. It will make you more profitable with less expense.
Superb article dear!!! Your writing style is amazing. Now I clearly understood the basic difference between online and offline. I am also clearly understood why business owners choose the online market. Thank you for your great stuff!!
The growth of online marketing is increasing rapidly but the traditional methods of marketing are still effective and should be a part of every marketer’s toolkit.
Great Article,
Your article contains relevant and fruitful information on online marketing vs. offline marketing. In today’s, tools and technologies are evolving pretty faster than ever. Today’s If we use right and effective online marketing strategy, we can get higher ROI as compared to offline marketing. At the present time, a lot of online marketing techniques available which are more beneficial to us than offline marketing. We can save our time and efforts through online marketing tools. Email marketing is one of the best online marketing technique to reach our targeted audience.