The Advent of Online Marketing

It’s a question that every marketer out there is asking, is online marketing a better option than conventional offline marketing? I mean, the prospects reached, the focussed nature of promotion, the immediate response generation, all these are immediately obvious. The money saved rises as a factor in the longer run. Yet, is casting a vast net and hoping for a ‘surprise’ catch better than targeting a predictive segment and reaping a set number? The topic makes for a rich debate.

The conventional marketer is a tested creature- forever immersed in crunching numbers and strategizing newer ideas that will hopefully work. The market is gracious to the risk-takers and the trend makers and yet, brutally dismissive of people who embrace anything that is deemed too radical or extreme. The mediums of marketing are many- the mass media, the roadside hoardings, attractive ads, hand-outs and the human models.  These methods however are exhausted and immensely predictable…and a preferred choice amongst the full segment of the marketers’ fraternity. You may be selling Insurance or toilet paper, a conventional marketer will decide upon the above promotional options to make his voice heard. The problem is, a lot of people are speaking the same language, at the same pitch and the target audience seems used to these tactics. It’s as if the average buyer demands that his senses must also be invested alongside his money. Think about it, two commercials advertising the same product from two different brands- and you are more likely to choose the one that emotionally appealed to you. If you smiled, or cried, so much the better.

The online promotional tactic is more personal. The target is to reach a vast number of people, and selectively appeal to the responsive mass with a pinch of online marketing techniques. A resourceful marketer, over the course of an afternoon, can reach thousands of people situated all across the world and pitch his product via the magic of colourful emails or inquisitive banners and pop-ups. The online chat-rooms of the world are a marketer’s test lab; social media websites bring in the fresh kill and a steady stream of mass emails generate the necessary public opinion. Online promotion is all about finding your niche audience from amongst a thousand test subjects- quite similar to finding a needle in the haystack. However, the size of your target audience and the vast amount of information carried by your medium make this a very cost-effective option when compared to other conventional marketing tools. Also, since the concept of online advertising is a fairly new bird- more people are tolerant and receptive to it. A hoarding standing at a busy intersection calls out to nobody in particular and is likely to lose its novelty in a few days, the same hoarding when cut to size and shows up in your personal online space is assured of your undivided attention. Maybe it’s not love at first sight…but the process can be repeated many times until it draws the necessary response from you.

Maybe a skilled mixture of online and offline marketing is the answer. Online marketing allows a small enterprise to compete with its more illustrious competitors. A good example of this kind of success story is the humble home grown wines from Tuscany, Italy. In a land famous for its wines and even more for the powerful winery that have stood for generations- the smaller growers have managed to earn a share of the market thanks to the quality of their product and the word of it spread through the online space. This example is repeated the world over and shows the universality of online marketing- a B2B or B2C portal by which the last corners of the earth can be reached and a interested customer bought on board. With the advent of smartphones and the enhanced acceptability of the online way of life, maybe a day might soon come when online marketing, the peddling of products over the world wide web- from pens to penicillin- is just a way of life.