Online vs. On-site Promotions

There is no question that on-line marketing continues to grow in importance to marketers. . In 2009, Forrester Research estimated $25.9 billion was allocated to on-line marketing in the U.S. And this is expected to increase to $60 billion or 21% of total marketing budgets by 2014!  Of this, approximately $1.9 billion was spent on interactive games and sweepstakes. This segment of on-line marketing is expected to continue to increase as well.

Does this suggest that your promotional strategy needs to be solely focused on reaching clients through the web?

Not really as even with the growth of online marketing, almost 80% of budgets are expected to be spent off-line.

On-site promotional activity can still play a major role in your promotional strategy. For unlike the on-line world, there is less direct competition for your promotion in your retail store, special event or trade show.

For the week of March 20 to the 26th, 1326 NEW on-line sweepstakes games were listed on Online-Sweepstakes.com.  I suspect this is only a fraction of all the new on-line contests, sweespstakes, instant win games, or discount promotions that were launched during the same time period.

A well executed on-site promotion has immediacy, doesn't require any special technology and can generate real excitement that non-winners can participate in.  And it offers the opportunity to encourage repeat visits by employees.

But it doesn't mean chosing one promotional format for all programs.  We know on-line promotions also offer some great advantages. Distribution can occur anytime and be supported by participants to virally increase reach.  With the use of video and graphics, contests and games can become highly interactive.  There are some truly awesome games that generate high participation rates.

So what to do?

It really goes back to the basics - who is the target for the promotion, what are the best channels to reach them, and how can you make the promotion sticky?

We see that there are tremendous opportunities for both on-site and on-line promotions. And increasingly there is the opportunity to utilize both in the goal of improving the stickiness of your promotions.