Online and Offline Marketing: Two Halves of Whole
Small and medium-sized businesses exist today in an era where digital marketing is undoubtedly king, but those who can synthesize their digital marketing with traditional marketing are more likely to thrive. Going all-in on digital might seem appealing for the forward-thinking, technology-driven entrepreneur looking to slingshot their business into the highest reaches of their market. But evidence suggests that a more pragmatic and successful approach is to use traditional marketing channels in tandem with digital. Offline and online work better together.
From a practical perspective, integrating online and offline marketing also saves time when done smartly. A basic example of how this can be the case is the idea of recycling well-performing content from your social and search campaigns for use in direct mail and other printed campaigns. Use the vast numbers you can reach with digital campaigns to thoroughly test copy and imagery. Then translate the most successful content into traditional marketing campaigns. When done thoughtfully, integrating your digital and traditional marketing is like hitting two birds with one stone.
The Locals Are Online Too
For local or semi-local businesses, linking your traditional and digital marketing campaigns is a game-changer. It’s important not to fall into the trap of thinking that local marketing and regional marketing tactics fall into two entirely separate buckets. It’s easy to divide your marketing strategy into the digital/regional and traditional/local and keep those categories separate. But by doing so, you miss so many opportunities to increase brand awareness and be the one who converts that local business in a saturated market.
That’s because, more than ever, people seek a lot of information when deciding who to give their business. One recent report, called The ROBO Economy (Research Online Buy Offline), “showed that 82% of smartphone users consult their phones on purchases they are about to make in-store.”1 That’s a huge number, yet it shouldn’t be surprising to see. There’s no such thing as a hard line between the digital and real world anymore. People have integrated digital technology into the way they perceive and interact with the world at large. The more thoroughly local businesses understand this, the better they can use this fact to their advantage.
Now that we’ve set this idea up, let’s dig into some specific tactics and examples of how to tie your online and offline marketing together. Broadly speaking, we can divide this discussion into two segments: how offline and online marketing campaigns can lead prospects from one to the other and how they can produce valuable information for each other.
Encourage Movement From Online to Offline and Vise Versa
One of the easiest ways to start linking your online and offline marketing strategies is to facilitate movement between channels. No marketing touchpoint exists in a vacuum. Most of your customers likely had to be exposed to your company’s messaging multiple times before they became customers. With that in mind, encouraging prospects to move from one medium to another starts to make a lot of sense.
This highlights one of the principles behind what is commonly called “omnichannel marketing.” Not only should your marketing and advertising strategy include a full spectrum of mediums and channels, but you should also weave these channels together so that it forms one cohesive web.
What does this look like? It can be as simple as incentivizing movement from a digital ad to an in-person visit via a coupon. QR codes are a tried and true method of linking the traditional to the digital. Adding a call-to-action to your direct mail piece or flyer that asks the viewer to scan a QR code can be an effective way to encourage engagement.
Your company’s website is a natural place to start implementing cross-channel marketing. Include a call-to-action that encourages website visitors to call for a consultation or to set up a meeting. Make it as easy as possible for people to locate your office or nearest location. Promote in-person events on your website and social media. These examples are simple but once you’ve got the basics down you can start to get creative and really stand out from the competition.
Let Your Channels Learn From Each Other
Customer segmentation is an essential part of developing a comprehensive marketing strategy. It’s important to develop a thorough understanding of who your ideal customers are, what they care about, how they make decisions, and where their attention is. Many marketing experts recommend that businesses create audience profiles so that all marketing efforts can flow from a common frame of reference. Even more important than creating a profile of your target audience is being able to update and add to it as more information comes in.
Marketing is as much about the data that flows in as it is about the messages you put out. And this is a major strength of the integration of online and offline marketing. One of the most practical uses of cross-channel marketing is the ability to track your offline campaigns using a digital integration. Add a unique URL to your newspaper or magazine ad that leads to a landing page optimized to reflect the message of that ad. Use the landing page to track the success of the offline ad and gain insight into your prospects and how they respond to your ads.
Your offline presence can bolster your online efforts as well. For example, if your company attends trade shows, holds seminars, or runs any sort of in-person event, the content generated in the form of pictures, videos, and testimonials can be a goldmine for your future digital marketing campaigns.
Final Thoughts
For those who aren’t used to thinking about advertising in this way, concepts like omnichannel marketing can come across as overcomplicated or overwhelming at first. But ultimately the beauty in these concepts is that once they’ve been understood and implemented, they allow you to spend more time on the things you really care about, like providing excellent service and products for your customers.
Let your digital and traditional marketing efforts build off each other, inform each other, and guide quality prospects closer to your front door.
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