A Dated Introduction to Online Marketing*

*Note: This is the original version of a whitepaper that was authored in 2001 by iCondotta's founder and principal consultant, Stephan Aarstol. It's a useful primer, but dated - pre-Wikipedia (2001), pre-Google AdWords PPC (2002), way pre-YouTube (2005), you get the picture...

Online Versus Offline Advertising Budget

This really is the question of the day. What percentage of the marketing budget should be spent in online marketing channels? Obviously, it depends! It depends on what you sell, and whom you are trying to sell it to.

To make a sound decision, you first need to get the best answers you can find to these seven questions:

1) What percentage of your target audience is online?

2) Do your customers look online when making a decision to buy the types of products or services that you sell? Do you expect this to change in the near future?

3) What percentage of your sales is currently generated online?

4) How effective are the offline marketing channels available to your company at reaching the bulk of your target audience?

5) How effective are the online marketing channels available to your company at reaching the bulk of your target audience?

6) Which marketing channels, offline or online, have proven to be most cost effective in the past? (If you don’t have a good answer to this question or to question #5 above, you’re not entirely alone. Nonetheless, you’re still making important decisions based on partial information. It’s probably worth it to do a little test, measure, and refine exercise.)

7) Where are your competitors spending their advertising budgets? Does this present any strategic opportunities?

Once you’ve got your best answers to these seven questions on the table, then you are prepared to make the best decision you can. Before making this decision, you may want to heed two more suggestions:

1. DON’T use your historical offline/online allocation as a starting point to determine what an appropriate future allocation should be, unless you can think of a good reason as to why it should have any bearing. Media channels have changed, as have the way in which people access information.
2. DON’T let an arbitrary budgeting cycle paralyze your company’s ability to act appropriately.

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Authored in 2001 by Stephan Aarstol
while Director of Business Development
at AuntMinnie.com