Traditional Marketing Versus Online marketing
“Marketing” is basically anything you do that promotes your business. This includes things like researching your target audience, buying advertising or offering free samples. Traditional marketing is generally delivered either in person or in print. Online marketing, however, is a little different. It uses networks, interactive media and word of mouth to promote your business.
The beauty of Internet marketing is that it allows you to reach a massive audience, relatively quickly and inexpensively. It saves on time, money and resources. When you create hard copies of catalogs, brochures, white papers or any other marketing materials it cost money to print, store and ship them as well as costs associated with the people handling the logistics and mailing lists. Electronic versions don’t require any of that. Another benefit to online materials is the ease of updates. You don’t have to send revisions to a printer or new documents to each person on your mailing list. It’s simply updated on your site. And distribution costs are essentially the same no matter how many people you reach out to.
Another great aspect of Internet marketing is your ability to provide more information about yourself and create more trust around your company. When someone goes to your site you can establish an “about us” section that talks about your values. you can also have a press page or a testimonials section. All of these things build trust between your potential customers and your company.
Also, you can create several versions of your marketing materials for different audiences, allowing you to further meet your customers different needs. This flexibility is truly an advantage in online marketing.
However, with all the positives to online marketing there are also some negative aspects. Because of the ease there are a lot of false promises and scheming companies. This has made people generally more skeptical of online promises in marketing copy. Additionally, people tend to skim whatever is on a web page in front of them meaning they will likely miss your points unless you know how to write well for the web. This is particularly true for certain companies such as mortgages and insurance.
Finally, people who are looking online have hundreds of thousands of choices for what they need. Creating a company that stands out is very important when someone is looking for what you sell. It’s a very challenging process of trial and error that many people don’t have the experience or knowledge to accomplish. This leads to outsourcing certain tasks and that may lead to you having less awareness of your marketing campaigns and how they are working.
The biggest difference is that when you participate in traditional marketing you know who is seeing your efforts and if they are making any responses. It is much easier for someone to be anonymous online and have no commitment what-so-ever to your product or company. There is very little interaction between you and the customer and so there is very little loyalty or trust. Building a relationship with visitors to your site is a big challenge, but it will pay off in the end by removing customers’ objections or questions and creating trust.
Comments are closed.