Offline or Online marketing - which is best

As a relatively new start up www.altaimage.com.au I'm wondering what the best success rate is for the different marketing arenas - I seem to get very little from online based ad campaigns yet a lot of push through from offline, print media, radio etc?

Just wondering what the deal is and what other people have found, can't really sit back and measure my success or failure rate in on and offline marketing without having some sort of benchmark so be good to get some honest feedback from what others have found. And who rates Google adwords as a must have on a weekly basis?

All the best everyone
Scott at alta|image

 

In the end, you need both. In your case, I can see why offline is much better than online. I think this based on your product/service.

Something that might help you is to do some basic SEO on your site. I really don't see any attempt at SEO. By basic, I am just talking about making use of meta tags, such as title, description, h1, h2 etc and some basic keyword research. Unless you get a huge number of backlinks, you won't see daylight with regards to search engine placement. As a customer, I would expect those SEO basics as part of the service if I hired you all to do a website for me. Even your URL does not tell me anything about what to expect on your site.

When I arrived on your site, I didn't see anything to click on. In fact, I really had to look hard to find your menu on top of the page. The first thing I saw was the huge banner, than Shop Online? The fact that Australians spent money shopping online means absolutely nothing to me. Your homepage should reflect what your site is about. Make it easy for people to see what you have to offer, and make it even easier to show them how to get there. Instead of Shop online, web ready, head office, tell the folks what your are all about. Make us want to stay on your site and have an easy navigation system. This is especially true with a site that deals with web design)

Hope this helps a little..

 

I agree with Zeekstern, you need both. But online ads are cheaper, and easier to target the right people (especially if you use PPC). At the college where I work we have almost stopped using print ads, but we still visit schools and do a lot of face-to-face marketing (and it works great).

 

Totally different types of marketing, so I don't see how you can compare the two.

 

Both are equally important and depends on what u wanna market as Online marketing has different types of strategies and offline has another type of strategies..

 

I'm in agreement with the others in that both methods will bring you the best results. However, in my experience, offline marketing brings the most immediate results simply because it carries the shortest learning curve. Of course that depends a lot on what you're marketing, what you mean by marketing, and whether you have support of an experienced entrepreneur or company behind you.

Advertising can also be expensive. In fact, it's one of the biggest expenses of all successful companies. And this even more true if your advertising is ineffective due to inexperience.

I tell all struggling new entrepreneurs that the quickest way to earnings is to enroll in a solid company with a solid ground breaking product who provides you with professionally developed marketing tools. Then all you have to concentrate on is sharing the information in those tools with others. If you have to learn how to develop a website and implement SEO practices yourself, it's gonna be a long time before money of any consequence comes in.

Really, it's just the KISS principle. Keep it Simple Sam. Just do one thing at a time. The short learning curve with a company like that gets you money coming in almost immediately. If you choose the right company, you basically ride the coat tails of the most successful marketers there are. Marketers who have a huge budget to get things right. A new entrepreneur won't have that kind of experience and budget for years!

So if you take this short cut, THEN you can divide your 'work' time each day and learn the ropes for additional types of marketing. Then you can learn how to develop websites. Then you can learn SEO strategies. But in the meantime, you'll be making some decent money while you're in the SEO boot camp.

Just a suggestion, but spoken from someone who has tried it both ways.

 

I found online marketing to be better

 

First off all, it depends from your services and products.

If your product and service is local I think best marketing is offline, not online. If you products and services are global best is online marketing

 

It depends a lot about the service or good you are selling, and who your target market is. Personally, I run a web/graphic design firm as well and I find that offline marketing is much more important, but that necessarily isn't the case for all services. I just tend to find that businesses that are ready to buy your service are technically investing in developing their brand and marketing. In that case, this investment can be huge to the success/failure of the business therefore more times than not they feel more comfortable having a meeting face to face, and the way to get to these people is through offline sources. However, it is also important that you market online so these companies trying to stay local can actually find you. This shouldn't be as tough list yourself in multiple address book services, local directories, etc.

Nevertheless, my most successful marketing method is I go to different businesses, ask for a manger, and give them a hard copy of my portfolio. It tends to work a bit better if you pick an area and look for these businesses online that way you know if they have a website yet or not. If you can't find one, its worth dropping by and leaving a portfolio, business card, flyer, etc. and giving them some information on how you can help them. Sometimes you'll get there and they'll say they already have website, at that point you switch to selling an SEO campaign since you couldn't even find them online

 

A marketing strategy depends a lot on the product or service you provide. Research and trials will show what works best. Build on success.
It will pay to think through the marketing strategy before you choose a product or service.

 

i think it totally depends on the kind of products you have to offer. If the audience who is using your products used to believe in face to face conversation that you do not have any chance for online advertising. ven if you get some of the inquires from online advertising you have to follow by phone or personal visit.

 

I must agree that it depends on your product/services.

And who/where is your target group? Are they local people?

 

I agree with the 2 top posters. You need both. The reason why online method is not working is maybe because you are doing it wrong. Try to study your methods and change your online marketing style. Find out what works best for you and once you have found that method, improve it for better results.

 

I think online and offline are both important strategies at their place. However you can reach to all people using offline marketing as still Indians do not get proper online service and 100% people are not using Internet.

 

Both are different and this depends on the products or services which you wanna introduce
and also depend your scope of the business

 

Dear Both are Most important but Online marketing depended only 40% and offline marketing depended on 60%.

 

Yeah both are important. But online marketing can take forever to build up, where offline is a bit faster, although you may not get the traffic you want.

 

Both, specially if you can fuse the two models that can be very profitable.

 

I read your question and I wondered the same thing myself,
from what I understand a "Business Builder" probably
shouldn't worry about this too much, but I could be wrong
so here's what I found...

Once you've built your masterpiece, you have to spread the word. Submitting your Web site to search engines, directories and related sites is critical to success. The real Web-savvy companies have whole teams of geeks who spend their days figuring out how to get better rankings in search engines.

Unfortunately, there's a lot of fools' gold, bad advice and even downright scams in the Web site promotion field. If you go about promoting your site the wrong way, you can actually hurt traffic instead of helping to build it. Here are 10 things you should definitely not do, no matter how tempting some spam message makes it sound:
1 - Spam Not!
This is the cardinal rule of Netiquette. Mass, unsolicited e-mail is not acceptable, anywhere, for any reason. There are hundreds of hustlers out there trying to sell you databases and software that you can use to spam, but don't believe their promises. Spamming will make enemies for you, not friends. It can also get you barred from large ISPs, crippling your traffic.
2 - Don't shell out big for submission services.
Submit your site to 500 search engines for $19.95! Bad deal. There aren't 500, or even 100, search engines worth submitting to. The 19.95ers simply run your URL through an auto-submitter (like Selfpromotion.com or submitit.com), which you can do yourself for free. If you want a professional to submit your site, plan on spending a few hundred bucks at most, which should buy you a careful and thorough job. I myself currently offer a basic submission service for $350, and I admit that I'm a little pricey. Insist on receiving documentation of everything that's been done, including all e-mail autoresponses from the search engines.
3 - Don't waste time on the flotsam and jetsam of the Web.
Submit your site to the major search engines and directories, perhaps using one of the auto-submitters for some, and doing others individually. There are about 30 that are worth submitting to. Then seek out specialized directories that are appropriate for your site (travel, investment, shopping, country-specific, etc.). Don't waste time with obscure search engines and kids' links pages. There are billions of pages like this, but they get zilcho traffic. Your time is better spent carefully crafting your submission to Yahoo.
4 - Don't rush through your Yahoo submission.
Yahoo is by far the most important directory, and the hardest to get into. Submissions are reviewed by real editors, so follow the instructions to the letter, and really try to convince them that your site is a useful resource. Some good tips are to be found on the rather obscure page called "My Site on Yahoo," and selfpromotion.com also has some good Yahoo tips.
5 - Never submit your site until it's open for business.
Test your site thoroughly, and make sure every section is complete before you begin submitting. Most surfers will never return to a URL where they found a dead link or an "under construction" sign.
6 - Don't forget to integrate your URL into your business.
It's amazing how many companies spend big bucks to build a Web site, then balk at the cost of printing new business cards to include the URL. Your Web site URL should be on every piece of company media from letterheads to coffee cups - anywhere that a phone number would be included.
7 - Don't mess with black magic.
There are a lot of sneaky tricks discussed in the various Web promotion newsgroups and mailing lists, that claim to improve your search engine rankings. Loading your page with invisible keywords, creating special "doorway" pages with magic dust on them, and secret programs (for $19.95) that "force-feed" your page to search engines. Don't fool with it. The search engines and directories wage an ongoing battle against those who would "beat the system," and they can and will bar you if they suspect you of "spamming" them. Do use META tags, keywords in titles and body text, and that sort of thing, but don't overdo it, and always follow the submission rules.
8 - Don't put anything in your Web site directory that you don't want the public to see.
Most of us have a few "test" pages, or perhaps pages of personal material, that we keep on our Web server, but that isn't meant to be seen by the public. Straight search engines like Excite and Altavista, however, will automatically "spider" and index every page on your site, unless you tell them not to. Create a text file called "robots.txt," and place it in your Web site's root directory (usually the "htdocs" directory). This file has a list of pages or directories that you want to keep the spiders out of, and it looks something like this:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /test/
Disallow: /temporary/
Disallow: /templates/

This tells all visiting spiders not to fool with any of the 3 named directories. Note that the directory names must end with a "/".
9 - Don't neglect to measure your traffic.
Some wise man said, "If you can't measure it, you can't manage it." Be sure to keep your server log files safe, and use the software tool of your choice to analyze them. Your ISP may offer one or more free tools for your use. Getstats is one popular free one. If you can shell out a few hundred bucks, high-powered traffic analysis packages like Hit List or Web Trends can really help you boost your traffic by telling you how many hits are coming from each search engine, and what keywords people are searching on to reach your site.
10 - When you're finished, don't stop!
Site promotion is an ongoing process. Once you've made your submissions, check back a month later, and you'll find that some of them didn't take. Resubmit as necessary, but don't overdo it. Always be on the lookout for new sites that might be willing to give you a link, and for new (but legitimate and preferably free) promotion opportunities.

 

online marketing and offline marketing have difference , you can be your own boss with online marketing but offline marketing is not , it means you should work for someone, on the other hand online marketing is the best way for making money , everyone can earn unlimited income with online , in my opinion i prefer online marketing .

good luck