I was watching Harry Hill’s TV Burp on Sunday afternoon and it was whilst he was refereeing a fight between a “commercially available instant noodle product and River Cottage’s immediate noodle pot based item” that a rather random thought occurred to me.

What would happen if online marketing was to have a fight with offline marketing? Which one would win? Which one is more effective? Well for me it’s easy. Though I love the more traditional offline forms of marketing I think there is only one winner… and it’s online all the way.

So what am I basing this view on?  Why do I think online marketing is the heavyweight powerhouse of the marketing mix?  Well, my view is very much dictated by four key factors.

Round 1:  Smart talking

Historically, marketing dialogue has always been rather one-way; a business talking at a customer in the hope that what they have to say triggers a positive response.  However, with the explosion of social marketing this one-way dialogue is now very much a two-way conversation between business and customer.  The customer now has a voice.

Online marketing, and specifically social media, has empowered the customer and although some may view this as being quite a scary thing, it really shouldn’t be viewed like this.  If you have your house in order, a customer’s positive comments via a blog or social network, such as Facebook, can actually act as an effective customer acquisition tool.

Round 2: Speed of hand

Then there is the speed with which you can drive campaigns through to implementation.  Imagine the scene; a key competitor announces it is dropping its prices by 10%, over the course of a key trading period.  In a reactive measure, the board states that it’s absolutely essential that you mirror the competitor’s pricing strategy and informs your marketing department that you need to announce this price drop to the marketplace. How do you do it? Well, realistically the quickest way is online. You could have a PPC campaign up and running by the afternoon, or an email designed and distributed to your customer and prospect data pools by the close of the play.

Offline just can’t compete with this speed.  Whereas with email marketing all you need to do is source a creative agency and an Email Service Provider (ESP), with offline (i.e. direct mail) you’d need to jump over so many more ‘timely’ hurdles.  You’d need to approach an agency to create your direct mail piece.  You’d need to source a printer, or possibly even two, depending on the format.  Then you’d need to organise the fulfilment and source a distributor.  By the time the direct mail piece actually lands your competitor has probably had two weeks of maximising their pricing advantage.  By going down the online route, on the other hand, you’d have had time to distribute an email message, analyse the results and send a refined version (maybe even two!).

Round 3: Targeted attacks

Another area where I believe online has the advantage is when it comes to targeting.  We’re all working hard to ensure our marketing messages are as relevant as they can be in terms of timing and content, and that they are being sent to the most relevant customers.

I really do believe that driving relevancy is something online channels such as email marketing can do to increasingly high levels of innovation and sophistication.  For a number of our clients we’re sending email messages based on how customers have interacted with previous email messages.  For example, if a customer hasn’t opened an email message for a particular length of time then they will receive a different message to a customer who has opened their previous emails.

We’ve also seen some fantastic results with our retail clients when we’ve sent email messages to customers based on how they’ve interacted with the certain elements of their transactional websites.  For example, we’ve sent messages to customers who have abandoned their shopping baskets in an attempt to reactivate that purchase.

Over the course of this year we’ve also experimented with sending emails based on product categories they’ve recently visited.  So for example, when working with an electrical retailer I noticed that a high volume of customers were visiting the washing machine category but not converting. Thanks to the web analysis tools available, we were able to capture the details of who had visited that category but not purchased.   The very next day we then used that data to send those customers an automated email focusing their attention on a new washing machine offer!  A relevant message, at a relevant time to a relevant person – marketing doesn’t get more targeted than that!

However, it’s not just email marketing that has been raising the targeting stakes over recent years. Many, many retailers are now experimenting with re-marketing, which really is as relevant as it gets.  If you don’t know, re-marketing is when you tag pages of your website that correspond to certain categories you want to promote.  For example, you could add a “TV” tag on all of the pages where you sell televisions. You can then create an AdWords campaign to show highly relevant messages (such as ads displaying a special offer on TVs) to people who’ve visited these pages as they browse sites across the Google Display Network.

The post fight analysis

However, I think it’s analysis that delivers the knockout blow and proves once and for all why online marketing reigns supreme.  The level of detail you can obtain from online marketing channels is what I truly love about online marketing.

Let’s take the following example. I have a direct mail pack and I have an email that I’m reporting on to my superiors.  With my email campaign I’m able to report on exactly how many customers received my message.  Can you do that to the same level of accuracy with direct mail, I don’t think so!  I can report as to how many customers opened my email message, who they are and when exactly they opened the message.  Do I know how many people opened my direct mail outer?  No!  With my email I even know exactly what creative element generated the response/click through.  Am I able to inform my peers which creative element from my direct mail generated the biggest response?  Absolutely not!

The sheer volume of information you can pull from your online campaigns is amazing and really allows you to get under the skin how well your marketing activity is performing. With such in-depth data available, you can constantly refine and redevelop your campaigns, so you’re not just doing “ok” you are in fact optimising your campaign results.

As far as I’m concerned online marketing is the heavyweight champion of the world, but do you agree?  Do you in fact, view online as being a passing fad?  Do you think nothing beats the tangibility of direct mail?

Come on, what do you think?  What’s your view?

Come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough!

Tags: Advertising Agency, Digital Agency, Digital Marketing, Direct Marketing Agency, Email Marketing Agency, Interactive Agency, Offline Marketing, Online Agency, Online Marketing, PPC Agency, Search Engine Marketing Agency, SEO Agency

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 2nd, 2010 at 12:19 pm and is filed under Advertising, Blog, Influences, Marketing, Offline Marketing, Online Marketing, PPC Advertising, Social Marketing, Web 2.0, World of Web. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.