When I first got online after doing marketing videos for several years, I realized some similar traits and I also realized some major differences.
The one major difference I noticed is that online, the end user has complete control what they want to watch, listen to, experience and how they receive their information.
This allows them to completely dismiss traditional brand advertising if they want to.
With brand advertising offline, companies and ad agencies get together to form campaigns where you, as a consumer will see or hear about it so much, that it will stick in your head and eventually you will end up using that product or service.
This way of advertising can also be vague because of how hard it can be to track results offline.
Unless there is a tracking system with different contact or website information from each channel of advertising, many companies are unsure of what forms of advertising are working.
With marketing and advertising online, any smart online entrepreneur will test and track their results.
With all the free tools that are out there, most entrepreneurs are even able to test brand advertising concepts online.
Going back to the points above about the end user having complete control, companies are seeing how important direct response marketing is more than ever.
In a matter of seconds, consumers can click on a Google ad and if they don't like what they see or can't find it right away, they're off the website and I don't blame them.
One of the points of direct response marketing or direct response video marketing online is to inform consumers about exactly what they want to hear and then show them how to get what they want in a very efficient sales funnel with the least amount of hoops to jump through as possible.
The more hoops, the less likely you are to get the sale.
Why? One reason I have seen firsthand is because offline, consumers are use to jumping through so many hoops they accept it.
Online, consumers know that if they are jumping through hoops that are shortening their attention span even more, they can just go back to Google and search again or click the back button and see what else the search results offered.
Offline, if a consumer is at a store and someone in a long checkout line tells them that they can get the same product, cheaper and perhaps without waiting in line, but the store is thirty minutes away, what do you think that person is going to do? The convenience of waiting a few more minutes to be out of the line may outweigh the hassle of driving thirty minutes away.
Online, there is no thirty minute drive, just the convenience of clicking on another site that will give the user the same product with less hoops to jump through and that will walk the consumer through the sales process, step-by-step, efficient and clutter-free.
In order to have consumers follow the sales process, use the power of direct response marketing or direct response video that will tell the consumer how to get to the other side of the sales process rather than having them guess where to go and how to get there.
Avoid the typical "Welcome To My Website" introductions and instead tell the consumers what they want to hear, show them how to get there and do it without all the loopholes and confusion that your competitors and ninety percent of websites do so well.