The right marketing mix: online vs. offline

Affiliate, content, social, mobile – when it comes to online marketing, new trends just keep on coming! You’d need to read up on the different strate­gies prac­ti­cal­ly every day to stay up to date. But there are still many classic marketing measures that haven’t yet ventured into the world of online business. This is because many business owners are still skeptical and have many unan­swered questions: 'What are the pos­si­bil­i­ties of online marketing?', 'What are the pros and cons compared to tra­di­tion­al marketing?' and 'Is it even worth investing in online marketing?'

From Google and Amazon to Facebook and Twitter, prac­ti­cal­ly everyone uses social media, makes online purchases, and uses the world wide web to research products, services and all kinds of offers. In the US, over 285 million people (88.5% of the pop­u­la­tion) use the internet. E-mail use is rife too with only 9% of the pop­u­la­tion having never sent an e-mail. Statista goes into even more detail about internet use in the US. With all these facts and figures it no wonder more and more busi­ness­es are relying on online marketing campaigns.

There are many different options in marketing that you can use to reach out to customers and promote your products, both online or offline. Here’s a selection of different marketing tools for both sectors:

Media, radio, TV, and news­pa­pers all belong to classic marketing channels, and have been reaching large audiences for decades. Together with other offline and direct marketing strate­gies (e.g. outdoor ad­ver­tis­ing), these classic methods have a strong presence and often a wide reach since they also speak to those who aren’t that internet savvy.

A dis­ad­van­tage of outdoor ad­ver­tis­ing and print ads, however, is that they have a fixed position. This means you’re paying for an ad that will be seen by many people, but you don’t know how many of them are actually in your target group. This results in a high scat­ter­ing loss. Online ads used to be ex­clu­sive­ly bought and shown on specific sites, but now it’s possible to show online ads to a par­tic­u­lar group of people. Read more about this in our article on real-time ad­ver­tis­ing.

Strong brand identity

Tra­di­tion­al marketing, such as on the radio or in the form of large-scale posters or ads in magazines, builds a strong brand identity even if it is subtle. TV ad­ver­tis­ing can prove costly which is why many startups con­cen­trate more on the favorable online marketing sector. But don’t shy away from tra­di­tion­al ad­ver­tis­ing just because of the high costs! Whether you choose outside ad­ver­tis­ing, flyers, posters, trade fairs, or spon­sor­ships, a com­bi­na­tion of different strate­gies builds the foun­da­tion for brand awareness. Tra­di­tion­al marketing con­tributes to brand identity and has a strong presence in the everyday life of potential customers.

Flexible actions and per­son­al­iza­tion rarely possible

Classic marketing measures generally don’t leave much room for spon­ta­neous changes. Once an ad or a poster has been printed, or a com­mer­cial has been filmed, no further mod­i­fi­ca­tions can be carried out. If one of the ads receives negative feedback, it can’t be changed. It’s also difficult to address people in­di­vid­u­al­ly since the same newspaper ad (for example) is seen by all readers, whether they’re part of your target group or not. In the online sector, it’s possible to show different ads depending on the visitor’s profile, their online behavior, and any personal in­for­ma­tion that’s known about them.

An obvious advantage that online marketing has over tra­di­tion­al marketing is audience targeting and re­tar­get­ing, marketing measures that match ad­ver­tise­ments exactly to each in­di­vid­ual recipient. You can determine which user groups should see which ads when it comes to search engine ad­ver­tis­ing e.g. with AdWords campaigns or banner ad­ver­tis­ing in display marketing.

Per­son­al­iza­tion 3.0

Through various targeting tech­niques, you can obtain precise in­for­ma­tion about the buying habits of in­di­vid­ual users. The newly acquired data can then be used for ad­ver­tis­ing in online marketing. This also ensures that a man in his mid-30s who’s in­ter­est­ed in soccer and NASCAR doesn’t get any ads for cosmetic products and spas. Every user leaves a digital footprint that the online marketer can then use to their advantage. Therefore, the results are based on millions of pieces of customer data that have been collected and combined. This is possible thanks to data man­age­ment platforms. DMPs collect data from customers by analyzing cookies, among other things. They can be seen as giant ware­hous­es that store customer data, analyze it, and make it available when needed. DMPs issue this data to marketers to help them when placing their ads online so that they can reach the exact users that belong to their defined target groups.

Unique per­for­mance measures

Using online marketing tech­niques, you can observe how effective your ad­ver­tis­ing measures are (if at all). An­a­lyt­i­cal tools and tracking tools can be used to see who views which ads and how often they’re clicked on. When it comes to offline measures, there aren’t so many ways to track your success. If you rely on outdoor ad­ver­tis­ing, you can only estimate how many people have seen your advert. You can then only gather a rough estimate of how many people have gone on to buy the product shown in the ad, by carrying out customer surveys, but this process is un­re­li­able and time consuming. However, when products are purchased online, it’s possible to measure per­for­mance and success rates precisely. It’s possible to monitor an ad’s CTR (click-through rate) as well as the con­ver­sion rate, which reveals how many users have bought the product after seeing the ad.

By carrying out detailed per­for­mance mea­sure­ments, marketers in the online sector can determine quite early on how well an ad­ver­tise­ment is faring. If an ad or blog post is neg­a­tive­ly perceived, its creators can react quickly. Online, it’s possible to change ads within minutes, respond to social media posts quickly, and change texts at the drop of a hat. The same can’t be said for print media, where mistakes are im­pos­si­ble to fix once the advert has been published. Online marketing also offers the advantage of being able to com­mu­ni­cate in real-time over social media, via creating a dialogue with customers as well as re­spond­ing to current events.

In many ways, online marketing comes out on top when up against offline marketing. With modern tech­nol­o­gy, you can find out a lot about potential customers and therefore customize your ads to suit their needs. Here is a com­par­i­son of the facts once more:

Every company needs the right marketing concept as its foun­da­tion in order to reach customers and build re­la­tion­ships with them. This concept usually combines online and offline marketing measures. The measures you use should be de­ter­mined by the group of users you wish to reach with your offer, rather than your personal pref­er­ence. A target group con­sist­ing of teenagers is unlikely to be reached with an ad­ver­tise­ment in a national newspaper, but on popular social media platforms such as Snapchat or Instagram, you’re more likely to be suc­cess­ful. On the other hand, if you want to appeal to those with less internet expertise, you should invest in offline marketing and use it on tra­di­tion­al means of ad­ver­tis­ing. A detailed target group analysis is therefore the basis on which all further goals and strate­gies should be built.