Online Marketing Vs Offline Marketing

As I have been working as an offline or traditional marketer for most of my career so sometimes I wonder how the conventional marketing channels will successfully work in days to come as digital marketing is the big thing now and will become bigger in coming days as the internet/data penetration increases with more online transaction happening.

Now there are few major issues with offline marketing while comparing with online, these are

      I.           Method of tracking effectiveness of campaign in online marketing with data & analytics tools is far more superior to offline marketing.

    II.           Offline can be costly due to labour, production, distribution and ad space cost associated with it.

 III.           More effectively targeting customers based on their interest, behaviour and demographics also giving online an edge over the offline marketing channels.

There are few positives also while using the traditional marketing channels

      I.           I believe we are more focussed while going through the printed traditional ads as we don’t come across distracting notifications or pop ups in between.

    II.           In many cases you cannot ignore the offline marketing ads as people will surely encounter them as they set their foot in the outside world, it might be outdoor ad, radio ad or even a leaflet/poster/banner.

 III.           Reach of Television ads are still significantly high compared to YouTube video ads in country like India although YouTube ads are more engaging, targeted and trackable and the future.

 IV.           One more important thing is still there are lot many people who are for some reason stays offline & you can only target those using conventional marketing channels.

In the end I just feel that instead of thinking these online and offline channels as competitors we can use them together for boost of brand awareness, increase leads and conversion and surely the bottom line. Please find below few examples of the same

a)    We can always use online call to action to offline promotional materials like leaflets, posters or hoardings to get the target customers to act as per our marketing objective; it will also help to measure/track the campaign effectiveness.

b)   We can always find out a creative which is performing better in online through A/B testing and the same creative can be used in offline POSM’s, print ads.

c)    While doing BTL activation for any product we can have a selfie contest which can be later asked to be posted in the social media platforms and tag the brand as a customer promotion.

d)   There can be offline promotional event to capture the email address of the customers for email marketing campaign.

e)    One more integrated approach can be use of the online data of customers to be used while targeting them through traditional channels.

f)     You may be watching some big sporting event like La Liga on a social media but still you cannot ignore the advertising boards placed around the sporting ground which are part of traditional marketing.

So the bottom line is there are several ways that an online and offline channels can work together to boost the overall marketing effectiveness.

Would like to know your views on the same