If you’re in a position where you can’t decide whether online or offline creative work is right for your brand, then we hear you. It’s a tricky decision to have to make with more and more now shifting exclusively to online and shunning traditional forms of marketing, advertising and other creative work for good.
But is that a big mistake? It certainly can be…
There are pros and cons to both online and offline creative work these days, and ultimately what you’re looking for is ad creatives that drive action, no matter what method you are using. For online, that’s a lot more direct, with clicks, purchases and impressions all gatherable as a direct result of your efforts. Whereas offline creatives can be a little more difficult to track the impact of. However, it could still be a method for you, which is why we’re running down the pros and cons of each…
Online Creative
Online creative is the go-to way for brands to try and attract the attention of the end user these days and comes in all shapes and sizes from email marketing to online adverts and creatives that look to immerse the user within the product or service. But why, what are the positives and negatives?
The Pros of Online Creative Projects
Ultimately, there are tons of pros to using online creative as a tool and businesses can make some real gains from it. Among the main pros, include:
Convenience
Online creative work is much more accessible to various types of business and doesn’t discount anyone from doing it. As long as you have an internet connection and a website or page to direct people to, you can market your business online through creative ads and projects.
Targeting
Through social media promotion especially, brands can be incredibly targeting in who they wish to push their creative content onto, whether it be an advert, blog post or any other form of content. You can promote your brand relatively cheaply and to an active audience through the likes of Facebook, which has proven hugely fruitful for many small brands in particular.
Measurable
As we’ve already alluded to, marketing your business online is more measurable than any other form. You can see real-time results and a whole heap of data including impressions, follows, likes, conversions, click through rates, bounce rates and more to not only see how your brand is performing but make quick amends to your creative strategy too.
The Cons of Online Creative Projects
Of course, there are downsides too. And online creatives can put a number of businesses off, mainly due to:
Requiring Expertise
While anyone can set up a website and a social media account, it requires real expertise to perfect an online creative strategy and the production of the work. Creative agencies such as yellowHEAD have really honed their output down the years to ensure maximum ROI, which you simply wouldn’t get if you were going it alone.
Heavy Competition
Almost every business is trying to push their products and services online, which is why you need expertise to find that gap in the market and be creative enough to stand out from the crowd. Competition is incredibly tough and it takes a great product or service, as well as being marketed in the right way through advertising and creative direction, to get ahead of the competition.
Trust
Even today there’s still a scepticism with some online businesses and any brand that is new to the market and not necessarily recognisable will have to build trust. This can take time, so patience and the right strategy is a must. Creative work that helps build trust is always a good place to start, offering up authoritative information and expertise while still being immersive and attention grabbing.
Offline Creatives
Offline creative is something that everyone is used to seeing and interacting with, but many don’t believe in the effect it really does have, and is proven to have.
The Pros of Offline Creative Projects
There are many reasons why brands have marketed and advertised their business through offline creatives for generations and to this day it still is as impactful, with a number of pros for taking this route.
Leaves A Long-Lasting Impression
According to a number of statistics, potential customers are much more likely to remember traditional creative campaigns compared to online, while adverts in magazines or business cards being handed to you are more likely to be viewed multiple times without being a distracting and annoying pop-up.
They’re less likely to be ignored and are unavoidable without being intrusive, which is still going a long way despite the online world we live in.
More Trustworthy
While you can generate real trust through your online creative work, it isn’t as instant as offline creatives. Businesses that use high-quality traditional techniques and strategies instantly look more credible to readers. This is largely down to the considered craft and expertise that has gone into it, while online media is often overlooked as bitesize, digestible and fast-food like. Even though it requires just as much hard work, dedication and strategising.
Offline Targeting
For those with businesses whose audience is of an older generation in particular, the pros of offline creatives and advertising are still huge simply because many of those people aren’t online. Offline creative strategies will help you target these people.
The Cons of Offline Creative
There are a number of cons too, which is why many businesses have begun to stick exclusively to online creative campaigning and advertising. That’s mainly down to offline’s limitations…
Limited Reach
The number of people whose eyes will be on your brand is much more limited and less targeted (in some cases) in comparison to online creative campaigns. If your budget is slim, especially, you’re only going to reach a certain number of people. For example, with billboard creatives it’s only the people who drive past, or in a magazine it’s simply those that subscribe.
Measuring Success
While you will be able to track success to a degree, the amount of data that you can take from offline creatives is far less significant than online. You might be able to see a rise in sales based upon an advert you’ve placed or following activity, but that’s all you’ll really know.
Costly
There are offline techniques that can be utilised for relatively cheap. An advert in a local newspaper won’t set you back much, but that again feeds into limited reach as well as being much less creative than other campaigns. TV ads, magazine features and billboards are expensive and if you get the targeting wrong, costly on a number of levels.