Digital marketing investments remained a top priority for marketing leaders in the last year and it has been on the rise even this year. However, combining digital marketing with offline marketing efforts takes the marketing game a notch higher to see great returns on investments.
When brands make a choice between online and offline marketing, they risk losing the benefits of the other marketing option.
The effectiveness of digital marketing is the reason why marketing leaders around the world plan to increase their investment in digital advertising. But it is the conjunction of the two marketing worlds that boost the sales.
Here are a few tips to help you sync your online and offline marketing efforts.
Cross-device marketing
An effective and powerful way to boost engagement is cross-device marketing. Your target audience can be watching television while using their mobile devices and computers at the same time. Interacting with such customers on all devices can boost conversions by 16% as found by a study from Google.
Gathering information of all the TV and internet providers in your target area strengthens your cross-device marketing strategy. You can choose the right medium to advertise to your target audience using this information and optimize your marketing strategy.
Event marketing
Encouraging the participation of people in events is a powerful way to boost engagement. Many local businesses, like pubs and bookstores, rely on boosting engagements with events. For a bookstore, sharing a quote from a book will not engage people with the physical business. Whereas having an author sign books purchased by people on the first day or having a live reading session at the store will attract people and boost engagement.
Yet, Facebook can be used to create a buzz about the event that will ensure maximum turnout.
Sharing QR codes
Linking online and offline marketing strategies using QR codes can result in effective and powerful branding. There are many ways in which QR codes are used by companies in marketing.
A U.K. ad agency had used QR codes for creating ads for Instagram and Angry Birds. These QR codes take the user directly to download the app.
Another such example is using QR codes to combine greeting cards with playlists. This combination of mixtape and QR codes was developed by the same ad agency. With a Spotify app on their phone, users can instantly start the playlist by just scanning the QR code.
A good way to use QR codes to link your online and offline marketing efforts is to share them on your site or Facebook page for promotion of a product. These QR codes will then be used by your customers to get discounts when they arrive at your physical business.
Social media polls
Online marketing has great advantages and access to real-time information and big data have proved its effectiveness. Having this access makes optimizing your campaigns easy. The best way to utilize this data, is, to incorporate it into your offline marketing strategies.
Market research should be at the core of every campaign. Develop a good understanding of your target audience and their interests. Conducting polls on social media is one of the best ways to do this. Knowing your customers will help you execute your offline strategies effectively.
A few tips to incorporate your online conversion data into offline strategies.
- Start with creating a Facebook campaign. Set an online conversion goal for this campaign. For example, encouraging audiences to subscribe to your newsletter.
- Analyze which of your marketing messages are converting well. Split testing landing pages, ads, demographics is a great way to do this. Split testing is a great way to optimize your campaign and the more you know about it, the better.
- When you have this data at your hand, you can use it to design effective print ads and select advertising mediums accordingly.
A problem with offline marketing is the limited data available. It leads to poor choices and marketers end up targeting the wrong demographic. It is essential to use data from online campaign to structure your offline strategy.
Custom URLs to track everything
Without the use of custom URLs, 50% of your marketing will not be tracked.
To track your offline marketing campaign, create custom websites or web pages, dedicated to the campaign. When people see your offline ads, they go to the custom URL for that page and that’s how you can track your offline campaigns.
For a split testing, try running different campaigns with different custom URLs.
Hashtags, started by Twitter, are now frequently used in digital conversations. Instagram, Facebook, and many other social platforms have adopted hashtags in their conversations. Brands and companies encourage the use of their hashtags to find who’s talking about their brand.
One way to integrate this concept offline is to use your hashtag on all your offline ads, like banners, flyers, wherever you mention your social media accounts.
Offering rewards is another way of encouraging people to adopt the hashtag. Starting a contest for best photos tagged on Instagram or Twitter can be one way to do this. Offering a reward encourages more users to use your hashtag.
Many popular brands use this method to get their target audiences view their site online. This is more common in the film industry when they’re promoting an upcoming blockbuster.
GoDaddy has been doing this for their Super Bowl commercials. They show you a short version on the television and ask you to visit their website to see the full or unrated version.
Create ads that reveal just what is needed to grab the audiences’ attention and ask them to visit your custom URL to know more about your brand or product.
Final Words:
Having a cohesive marketing strategy is what you should aim at, rather than having separate goals and plans for online and offline marketing campaigns. The motive is to create familiarity with your audience and gain trust and respect. At the end of the day, the conversions that you see are the people who know and trust your brand.
Though timing and medium are important aspects of a successful marketing campaign, a clear, consistent and targeted message gets your campaign to its goals.
