Internet Marketing Versus Face To Face Communications

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When you think about the job of internet marketing, your forced to come up with a few conclusions that show how different the task is than other traditional marketing ones. The primary thing you have to be struck by is that the internet is a bit antiseptic when it comes to human relations. Sure, your stats represent people, but it’s not like you’ll get to know too many of them. So you end up looking at every transaction as an overview.

Now a lot of companies have decided to transcend this limitation, and I think their attitude probably makes sense. It seems that internet marketing is often most effective when it’s part of a balanced attack that includes an offline presence. If you can actually talk to the prospects, even through a live chat system or other means, it might help to close sales. That said, one of the key advantages to the internet is that you can keep your costs low by not staffing your website 24 hours daily.

The tradeoff for online versus offline communications is the cost of staffing versus the level of communications. If your product is very expensive, you might want to pay the extra money to make sure a well-trained staffer is around to talk to the customer. But for lower-ticket items it’s almost pointless. You end up going after volume no matter what.

How do you handle your online prospects? Do you largely automate the task or is it all personal? How are the results?

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