Why is online marketing increasingly preferred over offline marketing?

You name an offline approach.. I do it, or have done it. The thing with offline, is yes there is testing involved ( well at least I test ) But time wise it is very quick.. Like post cards 3 different messages 100 each sent out.. blast 10,000 of the winner.

Online is a whole other thing... Testing the traffic, testing the bait message, testing the landing page, The optin or offer, the thank you, the this, the that, the other. An absolute time and resource sink.. the end result however.. worth every minute.

Think of it this way.. EDDM vs online.. its Shotgun vs Sniper 3% to 5% conversion vs 30%.

Or Signage be it Billboards or corflutes ( yard signs ) or store frontage... way shotgun or you can laser target. Basically branding vs again sniper accuracy.

And this is all within the box of single campaign vs single campaign.. what about more static online advertising? Being in the right place at the right time.. vs being there when the right time prompts an online search. A YouTube video being an example.

If we look at the basic 3 steps of marketing... Targeting, Qualifying, and then closing Online ( for the most part ) hands down beats offline efforts, in all 3 categories. Again the issue is the WORK needed to make Onlinie work as compared to offline

I really didn't answer this did I? Lets just throw some numbers around... 10,000 pieces of mail we will say is $1.00 each so $10K - I think we all know its less So on the other side of this we have 10,000 emails.

Cold for cold.. you would then have to buy a list of 10,000 local email address'. I can get a local list based by zip for about $.05 each or $500. Now to send them.. there is some other added expenses.. Proxies.. Server space etc etc.. lets just place the number at say $100. So now we are at $600.

Ok we send out 10K emails.. we know the open rate is going to suck. We know the click through rate is going to be even worse.. AND then the conversion rate is going to be piss poor. For giggles here lets say we actually convert .01% or 10 sales.

Those 10 sales have an acquisition cost of $60 each

So back to the direct mail... 10K post cards 3% conversion right? So that's 300 sales. That means our acquisition cost is roughly $34.

So give or take right off the bat.. acquisition cost alone is 100% higher with the email model. You start factoring in the cost to develop a lander and thank you and processing and this and that and the other.. the online model is per acquisition a F A R greater expense.

To really get to apples to apples we would need to bring the number of conversions to an equal number. So, in order to bring the online efforts up to the 300 sales bar.. we would have to repeat the process 30X. 30 x 600 = $18,000. Not so appealing at that point.

I would say that comparing Direct mail to email is far and away to the advantage of offline direct mail. But within the confines of a local market and you compare Direct mail vs say facebook advertising where your acquisition cost could easily be in the $5.00 or less range.

Its not always about how much you spend.. its about how much it costs to make the sale, and how many sales you can make.