Offline-Online Marketing – The Debate For Small Businesses
In the past, it has been suggested that offline or traditional marketing is the best way to:
- Spread your message locally
- Spread your message to a small targeted group
- Reach customers for a retail outlet
- Announce local events/sales
- Reach prospects not web connected
Let’s take a look at #5 on our list. Since 2005 Traditional Marketing has declined.
Why?
- 72% of the American population owns or has access to computers connected to the internet – and this percentage is increasing 10% each year
- Internet is the preferred medium to receive and find product information
- Americans spend 14 hours a week watching TV – January 2009 Neilsen ratings
- Americans spend 14 hours a week online – January 2009 Google Stats
From this information, you see that you need to continue with your offline marketing strategies; however, small businesses need to look at increasing their presence online with online marketing strategies.
Advantages of Online Marketing for Small Business:
- It’s less costly – a large CPA firm recently did a cost analysis that showed the typical 1,000-piece marketing campaign costs its clients $1,450 plus approximately 125 hours to produce. An online blog has an initial outlay of time of 25 hours to setup and 10 hours per month to maintain. You can use the blog to gather names and emails of prospective customers and create email campaigns that take only an hour or two to set up and cost nothing to send. (Note: Once you get into a large number of emails, you will want to use a company that specializes in bulk emails and this will cost approximately $50 per month)
- You can identify if your audience received your message. How do you know if someone actually received your flyer, mailer or read your ad? Unless you are running some kind of coupon that they need to bring into your place of business, you have no way of knowing if your target market was reached. With a blog you have tracking that tells you how many people have viewed what you have to say. You know how many people came to your site, how long they stayed and what they viewed.
- New customer conversion – with traditional marketing you can expect a 1-2% response rate to your marketing piece. With internet marketing, your prospect is coming to you for a specific reason and they know what they want. If you offer them something of value, they will “click through” on your offer and provide you with valuable information about themselves.
Savvy small businesses need a combination of online and offline marketing to ensure they are reaching their prospective customers. A blog is the best way to reach your prospective customer and provide a platform for marketing that will only grow over time.
