The way in which consumers are buying products is changing, which means businesses also need to shift in-line with their promotional strategies. The changing trends have made the choice between offline or online marketing more complex – which one deserves a greater share from your marketing budget? Let us discuss each one separately to find out.

Offline Marketing

Offline marketing is an obvious choice for any business especially those with local customer bases. For the year 2016, 20% of the companies worldwide plan to increase their budget to improve their traditional marketing strategies.

Most recognised forms of offline marketing techniques for ROI

• Impressively, catchy, and handy business cards that reflect the role of the company.
• Capitalise on merchandise such as pens, envelops, bookmarks, etc.
• Making print material such as flyers, pamphlets, and booklets more colourful and well-designed.
• Exclusive discounts and packages for holidays and other important events.
• Newspaper or magazine coverage in a famous publication.
• Billboards with creative ideas to attract local public.
• Live events, meet-ups, and discussion sessions.

Why Offline Marketing is still very effective?

• With offline marketing, it is easier to target specific audience. For instance, make a list of magazines that talk about products like yours and post an ad through it.
• Assuming that your target customer doesn’t get a ton of junk mail each day, they’ll likely be more receptive to taking a look at your message as opposed to it auto-filtering to their spam folder.
• There is no substitution for a well-designed flyer to advertise your business, which is always gone through by receivers.
• Offline marketing is tangible and tactile,giving your clients an opportunity to experience your product and have live interaction with the company.
• This is why 34% of marketers are looking at investing in direct mail marketing in 2015.
• With traditional offline marketing methods like direct mail, recipients are more likely to physically pick up your information, read it and have an actionable response.

Areas of Offline Marketing where businesses spent their budget

Global ad-spend in 2012 VS 2015 show that Television was on top of the list with 40.3% in 2012 and 40.2% in 2015. Ad-spending on newspaper were 18.9% in 2012 and reduced t 15.8% in 2015.

Which is the most trending offline marketing strategy?

• For offline marketing, organising events is considered as the most effective way to marketing products.
• Events create a platform to deliver information through demos and speakers and an opportunity to impress if done properly.
• This takes serious investment through: venue, speakers, media sponsors, content, social, giveaways and even catering. This is the reason why 45% of the advertisement budget is spent.
• If a full event is excessive then exhibiting at an industry event is another great way to raise brand awareness or demo new products.

Online Marketing

Internet marketing or online marketing, is becoming a turning point for every kind of business today. This year, around 65% of the companies worldwide have planned to increase their digital marketing budgets up from 68% last year.

Most recognised forms of Online Marketing techniques for ROI

• Social media advertisement is one of the most prevalent online techniques to launch and promote products and services.
• Social media engagement has also played a significant role in creating brand awareness and improving connectivity with audience.
• Search Engine Optimisation has helped companies to reach out specific audience who are looking for their product or service.
• The increasing use of mobile apps has also enabled companies to make their products’ buying procedure easier and more time saving, and to their prompt feedback.
• Websites and blogs are considered useful to create an effective online presence and keep the audience engage and updated.

Why Online Marketing is considered the best of all?

• Cost Effective – Business owners can create, deliver and execute an online marketing campaign to attract viewers, spending only what’s necessary to reap maximum rewards later on.
• Ease for statistical measurement – Virtually all elements of an online marketing campaign can be traced and tested in some way.
• Tracking and measuring can be done instantaneously by clicking on the ad and visiting the website, as well as other target actions.
• Pay Per Click Advertising is notably the most effective means of generating immediate traffic, leads and sales to a website.
• Online marketing campaigns can be implemented much faster than traditional forms of advertising, reaching a targeted audience within a matter of hours or days.
• Online marketing provides a greater flexibility level whereby campaigns can be altered to test new markets, evaluate new programmes and make changes more specific to a targeted market.
• Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) campaigns who specialise in helping companies best market their products and services online can successfully place them on the top or first page in search engines.
• Target Audience Closeness – Online advertising, especially social media enables marketers to get close to a targeted audience and remain that way.

Areas of Online Marketing that businesses are expected to increase expenditure on:

In 2016, the average firm will allocate 30% of their marketing budget to online marketing, this rate i expected to grown to 35% by 2019.

Search engine marketing (SEO and SEM) will capture the largest share of online spending with online display (banner ads, online video, etc.) taking the second largest share.

Social media investments will continue to grow as an overall share of online spending, but will only represent about 15% of the total online spending.

Mobile marketing has grown to a point that it’s no longer tracked in the forecast and it’s presumed to be considered across all channels.

Which is the most trending online marketing strategy?

• Around 64% of the marketing budget of a firm is spent on the improvement and maintenance of its website.
• The cost from building websites stacks up due to the skills needed: coding, visual design, UX design and copywriting.
• 62% of marketers say website traffic is the most reliable metric for assessing content marketing success. However, achieving a better conversion rate for visitors to websites is number 1 priority.

Comparing the ROI of online vs. traditional marketing

While more client-side marketers said they could measure the return on investment (ROI) from digital tactics, 50% over traditional 47%, the digital figure was down from 55% in 2012, and continued to decline. By comparison, the percentage able to measure traditional marketing ROI was up from 44% last year.

Can Online and Offline Marketing work together?

• There’s no need to choose between offline and online marketing strategies.
• Instead, offline techniques can be used to supplement online marketing efforts of a company and make its marketing strategy as a whole more robust.
• The combination of both approaches can bring your marketing full circle by increasing your firm’s visibility and bringing more attention to your online brand.
• According to some estimates, 84% of the internet users worldwide watch videos online, and more than half millennials watch TV shows on a tablet, desktop computer, or smartphone.