Offline Marketing VS. Online Marketing

Online business owners seem to have forgotten the revenue that could be gained by tapping on the largest pool of potential clients – the offline world. Most online businesses focus the bulk of their marketing and advertising campaigns online that the less virtual world has been given very little thought. In this article, you will understand why there is wisdom in marketing and advertising in the real world.

Fast results
Online marketing strategies like search engine optimization or SEO are very effective. No doubt about that. However, in yielding fast results, strategies like SEO are a lagging behind. It takes weeks, even months, before SEO efforts start getting results. It could take a long time before search engines identify a website and put it up on its high-ranking list.

The same is true with banner adverts. Although a bit outdated already, many online companies are still using banner ads to divert traffic to their websites.

These strategies, along with a few fresh ones, drive results. However, the results are not often guaranteed to be created within a short span of time. Offline marketing and advertising, on the other hand, tend to have stronger impacts than their online counterparts. Perhaps the result stem from direct contact with real consumers. Perhaps consumers have a higher trust level on advertisements that they get to see and touch personally. There are many factors why consumers prefer offline marketing. Whatever the reason, one thing remains true – old school marketing strategies have been dishing out good, concrete results long before online marketing entered the scene.

Standing the test of time
If there's one thing that is sure to happen to your online marketing strategies, it is that these will change over time. Whatever work you have invested on your website, banner ads, and SEO, these will surely change as websites and web pages come and go. On top of these, search engine results aren’t permanent. These fluctuate overtime. Whatever ranking you had last week may be changed this week. As the old saying goes, "nothing is permanent except change." The adage is truer in the virtual world than it is in the real world, though.

An online entrepreneur using offline marketing, however, doesn’t have to worry about that matter. Offline marketing strategies are more or less permanent than their online counterparts. At the very least, they are far more predictable. If you place advertisements on a billboard, you can expect to have that advertisement for as long as that billboard is up. If you have sent out direct mails to your customers and potential customers, you can expect to have those mails delivered to their mail boxes. If you're paying for radio or TV ads, you can expect nothing less than having some people hear or see your ads. That much cannot be said about online marketing strategies.

Make no mistake though, online marketing has its many uses and advantages. It is just that in some areas, offline marketing seems to have the edge over its virtual counterpart.