Online content marketing has pretty much dominated for the past few years. But like computer-generated special effects in movies, having it alone is no guarantee to success. These days, more people are starting to really understand that offline marketing is still a strong cornerstone in marketing as a whole. Despite how much technology advances, nothing can ever replace the power of traditional marketing in the real world.
Combining online and offline marketing can be a powerful move that you can gain a lot from, as long as you’re able to implement the right strategies and methods to this holistic approach. The importance of offline marketing can never be understated, which is why they must be discussed, as well as the various ways you can combine online and offline marketing together.
Here’s a list of traditional offline marketing methods that still work:-
Print Advertising
The death of print has been greatly exaggerated. If it’s really dead, then we wouldn’t have any paper around at all. But there’s nothing that can totally kill how we like things that are depicted on a physical medium. Print advertising is certainly not dead, but it has moved on to a place that it shares with online marketing.
The best thing to go about this these days is to not think of print and online as separate, but both being able to work in harmony. In the end, if they can have people looking, then they’ve done their job.
Direct Mail Marketing
If you’re a local business that wants to get the attention of potential customers in wherever you are, then good old-fashioned direct mail marketing can still work. There was a time when a mailing list was worth its weight in gold and that as long as you’re able to put the effort, you can send postcards and stuff to those addresses and expect to convert.
But then again, you may actually have a better time now since there isn’t as much “junk mail” trying to compete for attention as most of those people have moved on to online marketing. You can still put in your flyers and brochures through mailboxes and expect to have some of them actually give you their time of day.
Catalogue Marketing
It seems like a thing of the past when you could browse through catalogues, thinking of what products you would like to buy and those you could only dream of getting. However, catalogues are still pretty much alive today, although the majority of them have moved on to the Internet.
But the fascination for looking at a catalogue has never disappeared, and you can have people looking at them like how mice take to cheese as long as you have quality products that people would actually want to buy and the right business concept set in motion. Good customer service can help as well, just in case people actually call the number on the catalogues (if you ever happen to put it on them).
Branding
Even in this digital age, the power of the brand has never diminished. In fact, it may have gained even more power since the reach of a good brand these days can be quite far reaching, potentially spreading throughout the whole world if you’re willing to go that far and have the persistence to go at it. But even at a local level, as long as you have a good looking logo and a catchy name for your business, you can attract a good number of people just by that.
A good brand makes you recognizable, and even online businesses need branding too to expect any sort of success. It’s all about being able to take that brand and put it on everything you say and do. Consistent pushing of the brand over a long period of time can pay dividends with customers coming from all directions. Of course, that is if you actually market it in all directions to begin with.
Here are some examples of combining online and offline marketing:-
Call-to-Action
You get this phrase a lot these days, but it’s not just some trend, but a core marketing principle. Once you’ve given the people more than enough reason to trust your word, then put down the call-to-action and have them do something for you like visiting a website, liking a social media page, or so on with the promise that they’ll get something they want out of it. Have it on your print advertisements and everything else consistently to get best results.
While you may have to keep putting them on there every single time, it’s to make sure that you get people who heed that call-to-action over time. If you’re able to find a way to put calls-to-action on pretty much everything without making it too tiring, then that’s pretty much what you have to stick with. Try out different things if you want, as long as you home in on what really works for you.
QR Codes
It’s the new barcode that contain information that smartphones can decipher through a QR code scanner app that they can download for free. Perhaps it does take a bit of effort for people to take their smartphones out to scan the QR code, do remember that they would pretty much pull their smartphones out at any chance they get, so no worries on that front.
Whatever that QR code does, whether it’s taking people to a website or online marketplace, or perhaps a good bit of text, you can put them all in a QR code and perhaps get some people to take a look at it. You can also have instructions, promo or coupon codes, or so on in the QR codes, making it a versatile tool that can help you with your marketing.
Special Tracking URLs
Being able to track your marketing campaign’s performance is a great way to understand what you must do to become more effective with your marketing campaign. Linked to analytics and other metrics, you can have special tracking URLs that are short and easy to remember used as calls-to-action.
You can then gauge just how many of the people have actually seen your ads and get convinced enough to do that call-to-action. If you’re getting good numbers, then that means it’s working; if not, then either double your efforts or move on to something else.
Give Something in Exchange
It does seem rather demanding to beg for strangers to do things like entering URLs and scanning QR codes as they do take some effort that most people wouldn’t budge for anyway. The way to convince them to do it is to give something they might like first, and then give some more before you ever ask to get something in return.
Whether you make your ads more entertaining, provide free samples and coupons, put up contests and giveaways, or so on, do remember that you can never get something for nothing.
As you should be able to see now, offline marketing can be made to work in this digital age. It’s just a matter of updating old rules with some new amendments and taking advantage of its strengths to make it cross well with online marketing. As far as holistic strategies go, this shouldn’t be too hard in the long run; it’s all about understanding how each one works and what things can make them blend together seamlessly and achieve the same results.
Images “ Offline Online word on notepad / Shutterstock.com“
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