Offline marketing: Larger audience Expensive Can be highly targeted Tough competition Online marketing: Faster Measueable results (precisely) Can be expensive Search engine listings can be achieved for free. The bottom line is that it completley depends on the product being sold. I am an affiliate for Walmart but I do not put much effort into that campaign because I know If I want something at wallmart I GO TO WALLMART! My target market would be invalids and cripples. If I want to sell software through clickbank then online is best by far. This is not like comparing apples and oranges because alot of products can be marketed both online and offline successfully. I began my marketing career offline. I actually made a profit with my very first product which was an info guide that I delivered through snail mail. I made my first website about 12 years ago to move away from my brochure to an online web page. I liked the fact that I could see exactly how effective the response rate was. 100 websites later I believe that online marketing is the best way to test new products and market them. If the product is a success then absolutley market offline if there is a positive ROI. Andrew Smith
Andrew, Have you ever tried selling Clickbank products through offline marketing? I'd be very interested to see if it produced any sort of ROI.
HAHAHA. Thats a great question. I have, but had little success with classified ads. I used a bizopp because of the mass appeal which is what works best with offline advertising. I went back to online marketing. Not done testing though. I have made over 40k through clickbank alone.
I'm a syndicated newspaper columnist and I do find that I receive targeted traffic when I include a link to my websites with each published column. Other than that, my offline marketing success has been mixed - too often the ad is going out to a very broad demographic, unlike Google Adwords, where you can really target buyer-oriented keywords. Even with my organic SEO I'm more able to bring in visitors who are more likely to convert, in my experience. But offline marketing definitely has its place. Another good way to get site traffic is by doing radio appearances as a guest expert - as long as your website url is relatively easy to remember. This has worked well for me, both with traditional FM radio appearances, syndicated radio shows, and Internet radio. Jennifer
Andrew how come that you think the offline audience is bigger? On internet you can reach millions of people in a matter of weeks.
Lets be realistic here. TV commercials are viewed more than ads on the internet. Not to mention radio, magazines, newspapers combined.
Offline audience actually is humungous. I remembered the ads on WTOP 1500 AM and like 7 years later, I still remember their website names of the advertisers. I think like 7 years ago, WTOP charged $1500 a week for like a 45 sec radio ad with 5 - 6 runs a day.
It also depends upon the product you are gonna sell, like if you are gonna sell Puppies offline marketing is good but for puppies food online marketing is also helpful.
There is certianly an advantage in offline advertising for certain products. When an affline ad brings a person to type in your website address, they are only looking for YOUR product/service. When they are browsing through search engine listings your website in only one of many offers.