Can offline marketing continue to ignore online marketing??

January 19th, 2007

There has been a lot written in the press recently about the increase in online sales over the Christmas period, most notably on the Trevor McDonald programme on ITV1. With over 10% of all christmas sales done over the Internet, the online sector is booming, but there is still an alarming number of Internet Retailers not aware of the fact that there is much that can be done online in order to increase their revenues.

I was reading Heather Hopkins blog (from Hitwise UK), highlighting a number of interesting trends

• December 2006 saw search engines account for 36% of upstream visits (those into a site (Retail only)), representing a 20% increase yer on year, which can be primarily attributed to Google and Yahoo UK (which combined contributed to 28% of the traffic alone)
• High Street retailers saw some of the biggest gains and continued to make gains against the purely online retailers. In particular HMV (58% increase on previous year), Waitrose (107%), John Lewis (23%) and Marks and Spencers (25%) saw significant increases in traffic volumes over this period.
• Marks and Spencers in particular saw a 70% increase in online trading (article here), however John Lewis (60%), Majestic (30%) and Threshers all saw significant increases.

With such significant figures having just been released, the effects of a successful online marketing campaign are obvious. Successful websites don’t just happen (well the majority of the time), they take a lot of planning in terms of pricing, positioning and brand awareness, not forgetting whilst keeping this all within defined KPI’s.

Online Marketing is evolving at considerable speed, and there are an increasing number of channels available to companies to advertise their products and services; Blogging, Online PR, Social Media, Mobile Search … the list goes on. However I have still found a reluctance not just from a client perspective, but also from some traditional advertising agencies to embrace online and how it can compliment and enhance an offline campaign, instead choosing to go with the tried and tested. Those companies that embrace emerging technologies IMO are the ones that in the long term are going to see the bigger returns.

For companies looking at embracing the web, shouldnt now be the time you look at the Internet as an effective marketing channel?

Entry Filed under: SEO Industry, Search Engines, News and Views