Explore the major types of Marketing Strategies, i.e. Online and Offline Marketing, through this tutorial with examples:
Marketing is the first communication of an institution with customers. It aims to be creative, informative, continual, variety-bound, and result-oriented.
It’s a way to make an offering resonate with the needs of an end-user. Marketing is a continuous process and desired to make a product/service reach the end-user by leading a narrative into a decision, turning the decision into a unique union and promises to be stronger as time progresses.
In Marketing, the satisfaction of one can appeal to the expectation of another.
What You Will Learn:
Understanding Types Of Marketing
Nature of marketing can be defined as:
- A part of environmental
- Consumer-oriented
- Specialized business function
- A discipline
- A system
- Social function
- It starts and ends with customers
- Creates mutual relationships.
There are four functions of marketing namely, Research functions, Exchange functions, Physical Supply functions, and Facilitating functions.
Scope of Marketing: It is used in every sector to promote almost everything, like goods, services, experiences, events, persons, places, properties, organizations, information, and ideas.
Significance of Marketing:
Marketing is very significant to the organization as it helps in:
- Connecting consumers to the producer.
- Obtaining revenue by driving sales.
- Making various organizational decisions.
- Provides various employment opportunities, as it requires more manpower.
- Maintaining a standard of living for people by providing desired goods and services, etc.
Different Types Of Marketing
There are 2 types of marketing: Online Marketing and Offline Marketing.
Let us understand these two major types of marketing strategies below:
#1) Online Marketing
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Online marketing refers to the practices and strategies used to reach virtual customers through the Internet on various online channels.
The purpose of online marketing is to spread the word regarding a particular brand and campaign through various techniques like- emailing, posting, and contacting on social media, search engine optimization, brand marketing, influencer marketing, cause marketing, etc.
There are various types of online marketing. Some of them are as follows:
#1) Affiliate marketing: It is a type of marketing wherein the marketer promotes the products and services of the seller in return for a commission. Whenever a customer buys a product or every time he drives sales, the marketer gets a commission.
- Example: Etsy is a website that allows different sellers from worldwide to sell their products on its website where they charge some on every listing.
#2) Social media marketing: It is a type of online marketing that includes the promotion of products and services through social media platforms, mainly Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Linked In, Pinterest, and Snapchat. There are five steps in social media marketing, i.e., strategy, publishing, listening and engagement, analytics, and advertising.
- Example: Starbucks once used the Instagram platform for promotion by using the hashtag #whatsyourname. In this campaign, Instagram was used, which is a social media platform.
#3) Word of mouth marketing: It is the type of marketing where a person tells about a product or service to their family, friends, and other people about the experience he got from a particular product, service, or brand.
The brands intentionally created WOM as people mostly prefer to buy those products or services which are recommended by their relatives or friends. WOM marketing is created by providing exceptional customer services, promotions, campaigns and by providing specific information about the product to the customers.
- Example: Dropbox introduced a referral code. In this, whoever uses this app for the first time and the person who referred it to them will receive a 500 Mb storage fee of cost. It created massive traffic for the application. This is termed word of mouth as when someone refers to something to someone, it falls under WOM marketing.
#4) Content Marketing: It refers to that type of online marketing wherein the brands provide valuable and relevant content about their products and services to the desired audience. Any type of marketing includes content marketing as good, valuable, relevant and quality content is all the audience wants and it is provided in content marketing.
There are four steps in which a customer buys a particular product i.e. awareness of need, research, consider and buy. Content Marketing helps in the first two steps i.e., raising awareness of the need and providing relevant information about products and services for consideration.
- Example: Despite being a big name, Rolex uses the best image content to attract maximum audience towards its brand. It provides the best quality photography of their watches, which proves that the quality of their watches must be the best.
#5) Search engine optimization: It is the type of marketing that provides maximum organic traffic to your websites. It means more and more people visit your website in search of products and services you offer and that is at no cost.
It is possible by creating content that people search for the most. So that whenever they search for anything related to your product can be directed to your website.
SEO is done by using certain widely used keywords and phrases and updating one’s website to be on top rank. Businesses hire SEO experts to be on top of the ranking. The higher the SEO, the higher will be the organic traffic on a site, and hence higher would be the sale.
- Example: An American company called the American Egg Board (AEB) faced declined organic traffic. To cope with this, the company used SEO strategies to be on the top of the search results. In doing so, they used keyword strategy, organized the website content, and Google’s predictive searches to be on top ranking again.
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#6) Email Marketing: It is an online marketing strategy that enables you to send emails to prospects in bulk for any promotion, giving information, or for any campaign to the leads who subscribed to and gave permission for the messages and alerts.
There are two types of marketing emails: Promotional emails and Informational emails.
Promotional emails include offers, webinar invites, new product launches, etc. Informational emails include newsletters, announcements, etc. Email Marketing is necessary for conversations, brand awareness, lead nurturing, and retention. To start email marketing, we need two things i.e., email marketing software and an email list.
- Example: PayPal is a payment processing app that uses an email marketing strategy to connect with people. It collects the data of sender and receiver when you send or receive money, organizes the data, and starts maintaining relationships through emails.
#7) Influencer marketing: Under Influencer marketing, the companies collaborate with online influencers to promote their products or services. The audience follows these influencers and their recommendations. An influencer is someone other than a celebrity or can be a celebrity who is not that famous offline.
Influencer marketing is different from brand endorsing as later the businesses collaborate with celebrities, but in influencer marketing, they collaborate with online influencers who have a dedicated social following. Through this type of marketing, one can create brand awareness among the audience and hence can increase sales or revenues for the business.
- Example: Dunkin’ Donuts signed 8 influencers to spread the brand and offer for the national donuts day, i.e., a free donut with any beverage. One day before National Donut day, these influencers used various appealing content to convince their audience to follow and go for donuts the next day. This campaign gained 10 times more followers.
#7) Brand marketing: It refers to the marketing practices and strategies that help in creating your brand name and recognition and differentiate your product from others. The purpose of this type of marketing is to create brand awareness, loyalty, advocacy, equity, engagement, identity, and image.
For effective brand marketing, follow the steps, i.e., understanding your branding purpose, researching the target audience, defining and selling your story, knowing your competitors, and creating brand guidelines. Good brand marketing leads to more prospects. More prospects lead to more sales and more sales lead to success in the business.
- Example: McDonald’s is a well-known and easily recognizable food chain around the world. Its marketing strategy is consistent. It made their brand identity constant.
#8) Cause marketing: It refers to the marketing strategy wherein collaboration of NPO (Non-Profit Organization) and profit organization takes place for any charitable cause regarding society or the environment. In this, the profit organization helps the non-profit organization in raising funds for the specific cause along with promoting their products and services.
Some common causes are- donation with purchase, a donation with coupon redemption, buy one give one, request for consumer action, etc. The benefits of cause marketing include, that it helps the world, distinguishes you from competitors, adds purpose to your marketing and it requires little to no cost.
- Example: Starbucks once used the hashtag #whatsyourname to support an organization for the rights of transgender. This is considered cause marketing as Starbucks, with the collaboration of NPO (Mermaid) stood for the social cause and along with that promoted itself.
#2) Offline Marketing
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Offline marketing refers to the techniques and strategies to promote products and services through offline media channels like billboard ads, print ads, telemarketing, radio, pamphlets, etc. It is the traditional or old-school method of marketing.
The motive of this type of marketing is to reach the maximum number of audiences through advertisements on television or in newspapers to ultimately increase one’s sales.
This type of marketing is beneficial in many ways. It helps in getting faster feedback, easily establishing relationships or terms with customers, builds loyalty, increases authenticity value, more independence in approach, etc.
There are many disadvantages of using offline marketing. Like it is hard to track activities, it is an old-school approach; it is expensive to use this type of marketing, and integration with online marketing is difficult.
Examples of offline marketing are:
- Advertisements in newspapers and television.
- Big hoardings you see alongside the road while passing by the busy road are an example of offline marketing.
- Various updates you receive from any organization like HDFC in the form of a post is an examples of offline marketing through direct mail.
- All the phone calls we receive from organizations for the promotion of a product or informing us of the product are also an example of offline marketing through telemarketing.
There are various ways of offline marketing. Some of them are as follows:
- Billboard ads: Billboard ads or hoarding ads are a type of offline marketing that is placed alongside busy roads. They are large and contain ads with eye-catching graphics to attract the attention of people passing by the road and from distance. It helps in building brand awareness among people.
- Business cards: These are cards containing information about the business so the customer can contact them easily whenever they want. Business cards must be attractive and appealing by they looks like a bore, not-so-attractive cards may not get the attention of the people.
- Direct mail: It is that type of offline marketing wherein the company posts directly printed mails to the customers containing coupons, gifts, information regarding products, etc. It has a better response rate, has less competition comparatively, it creates memories for the customers, and it is a very creative form of marketing as well.
- Telemarketing: In this type of marketing, where a telephone is used for communicating with customers to sell or promote products and services by various types of businesses. It is a reliable and accountable form of marketing. There are various advantages of telemarketing. It creates satisfaction among customers as it includes human interaction and provides better customer services at a comparatively low cost. This is of two types- inbound telemarketing and outbound telemarketing. The difference between the two is the type of customer. In the former, new customers contact for information, and in latter, existing customers contact directly for any service.
- Print ads: In this type, physically printed media is used to communicate with customers to promote or sell products or services to them. This may include newspapers, magazines, direct mail, and brochures. It is a very effective form of marketing as it uniquely reaches people; it has high conversion rates; it builds trust and creates credibility and it provides strong demographic audience targeting.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Q #1) What are the two major types of marketing?
Answer: The two major types of marketing are:
- Online Marketing: It refers to the techniques and strategies to sell or promote products and services through the use of the Internet i.e., The World Wide Web (www). Some common online marketing techniques include- affiliate marketing, social media marketing, word of mouth marketing, content marketing, search engine optimization, email marketing, influencer marketing, and brand marketing.
- Offline Marketing: It refers to communication with customers or audiences through offline media channels to sell or promote one’s products and services. It includes billboard ads, business cards, direct mail, telemarketing, and print ads.
Q #2) What are the four C’s in marketing?
Answer: The four C’s in marketing are:
- Customer: It is an essential part of marketing as one can get benefits or revenue by satisfying customers only. So it is necessary to study the needs and wants of customers to get the benefits.
- Cost: It refers to all the expenses made to produce any product and service to deliver to the customers to satisfy their needs and wants. So the cost must be affordable for customers to afford it easily.
- Convenience: It means that the information, product, or services needed by the customers should be conveniently available to them so that they may not go to or be attracted to other products.
- Communications: It refers to the interaction of business with the customers. There must be an effective way of communication between the two to get the customers engaged and make them feel persuaded.
Q #3) What are the 5 marketing strategies?
Answer: The five marketing strategies are:
- Content Marketing: This includes strategies to create attractive content to attract the targeted audience to buy the maximum products and services offered.
- Email Marketing: It is the type of strategy to promote or sell products through Emails. Customers are reached via emails with their consent.
- Search Engine Optimisation: This is the marketing strategy to attract a maximum organic audience to the website by managing or updating commonly used keywords or phrases on the website.
- Social Media Marketing: It refers to marketing through various social media platforms, like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, etc. Here, people spend their time and pay attention to attractive and appealing ads.
- Brand Marketing: The marketing strategy to create a brand name and recognition is referred to as brand marketing.
Q #4) What is 7 P’s marketing mix?
Answer: The 7 P’s of the marketing mix are:
- Product: It is an essential thing in all the processes of marketing as the entire process revolves around the product. The customer wants quality products, and the business needs to sell them to the customers.
- Price: It is the value of the product offered to the customers. It must be affordable to the customers.
- Place: Place is where you need to sell the product or service to the customers. You need to find out the best market for your product, where your products or services are valued the most.
- Promotion: It refers to all the strategies and techniques to get your products into the knowledge of your customers and ultimately make them purchase them.
- Process: It is defined as the course of marketing from promotion to selling. It must be in a way to not harm the environment and sustainability.
- People: It refers to the customers or potential customers of your product or service. They must be treated very wisely, so they may refer your product to others.
- Physical evidence: This includes the physical presence of products that the customers see, hear, or smell. The product’s packaging and branding must be appealing attractive to fascinate more customers.
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Q #5) What is a marketing concept?
Answer: Marketing refers to all techniques and strategies to sell or promote products and services to customers through various online and offline channels. It includes advertising, selling, and delivering products to customers. It is the means to manage the customer relationship.
There are 7 P’s (Product, Price, Place, Promotion, Process, People, and Physical evidence) and 4 C’s (Customer, Cost, Convenience, and Communication) in marketing.
Conclusion
Through the research, we conclude that marketing plays a very essential role in promoting and selling products and services and maintaining relationships with customers. There are various types of marketing strategies that provide different ways to reach customers.
In an Affiliate marketing strategy, the marketer gets a commission or a part of the profit for driving sales. Products and services are promoted through various social media channels in Social Media marketing. People get to know the product through WOM marketing strategy, i.e., through people’s recommendations.
Customers are contacted through emails in Email Marketing, whereas appealing content can attract them on various sites as well through content marketing strategy. In Search Engine Optimisation, organic customers are directed toward the website by using keywords and phrases most used in the search.
Influencer promotes products in collaboration in Influencer marketing while in Brand marketing, people are contacted for brand awareness and brand recognition.
Offline marketing products and services are advertised or promoted through various offline channels like- newspapers, magazines, direct mail, telemarketing, business cards, billboard ads, etc.