There’s this notion that some people have about marketing. Specifically, online marketing. Many online marketers are searching for the next killer online marketing strategy, only they seem to forget that the majority of their target market lives in the offline world. In other words, they completely ignore offline marketing or do it very sparingly.
Of course, the same can be said for some brick-and-mortar businesses in the offline world, especially smaller, more established and conservative businesses. Or they don’t have the budget, they reason, to market online. But they don’t have the technical skills, they imagine. Or they are downright Luddites by nature about changes in technology.
These people seem to forget that it shouldn’t be about them or their marketing preferences. They need to go to where their market is, and if they can’t get there on their own, well, that’s when they need help. After all, the Internet, content-rich as it is, is still just another type of marketing medium.
My Yanik Silver is a perfect example of how to do what it takes to get online and start selling. Although Yanik sells online to a variety of niche markets, he still doesn’t know how to create his own website. But Yanik isn’t just limited to online marketing either.
And that’s what this article is about. For one, you have die-hard offline marketers, who refuse to dive into the online world. And at the other end of the spectrum are the strictly online marketers, who refuse (or don’t know any better) to invest time or capital in any advertising medium other than the Internet. After all, “email is free!”
And then you have what I call “fuzzy marketing,” which is really just another term for clever marketing. Here you have those people and companies that understand the benefits of offline and online marketing. For them, there is no such thing as “offline marketing” or “online marketing.” There is only marketing.
Dan Kennedy talks about the message to the market match. In addition, he identifies the three components that make up marketing:
1) The message
2) The market
3) The means
So when we talk about offline vs. online marketing, we’re really only talking about a difference in #3, the media. And the only valid reason for a salesperson to prefer one medium over another can be summed up in one word: results.
Let’s say that for every dollar I spend advertising in People magazine for a particular product, I get $10 back. And let’s also say that for every dollar I spend on online advertising, I earn $4.
Where do you think I’m going to want to focus spending my ad budget?
Of course, that’s a pretty simplistic example, because there are plenty of places to advertise online as well, so perhaps a comparison would be comparing online advertising in the Wall Street Journal, for example, to People magazine. Or online versus offline advertising in general. But I think you get the point I’m trying to make, which is this: go where you can get your highest return on investment (ROI).
So we tried. And adjust. And try some more. We’re always trying to outdo our control, the ad that’s giving us our biggest ROI so far. And when we finally get past it, our ROI increases even more. In this way, we are slowly getting closer to the most efficient message possible for market matching. And sometimes it takes a long time to get there, if at all.
For example, the famous Wall Street Journal ad about two men was its best-selling item for decades. It was only recently that the “two man” control was finally defeated.
And for certain marketing campaigns, the blur is even more apparent. For example, Subway Sandwiches recently ran a scratch-off contest that revealed a code, and you had to go online and enter the code to find out if you won. Would you call that offline marketing? Or online marketing?
But how about this? David Garfinkel and Michel Fortin recently launched their Breakthrough Copywriting package. They did joint ventures online and offline, but they mainly sold online. But then they ran these teleseminars where they delivered some great content and really innovative writing techniques. And then they mentioned their course at the end of the call. In fact, I made one of those calls with them. When you add the teleseminar and other offline activity, they are certainly using blurry marketing.
Now, I know that there are some people who market strictly online. Terry Dean and Jonathan Mizel come to mind. But they know that if they did marketing offline, they would make even more money. They just choose to stay online just because it’s simpler for them. It is a lifestyle choice that you have chosen to make. They don’t want to have to deal with employees or offline postage, printing, labor, and other expenses. So clearly there are always exceptions. But it must be a personal choice, and not one made out of ignorance.
So “fuzzy marketing,” as I call it, is not a new concept. It amazes me that some companies don’t even test. Either they blindly run their own ads, hoping for a home run, or they trust a big ad agency.
If that sounds like you, isn’t it time to start figuring out where the real money is?