Member Article

How offline and online marketing can work together…

Or maybe the headline should read, how offline and online marketing MUST work together. According to the latest figures, only doing one or the other in terms of marketing means you could be missing as a large portion of your target audience or consumer.

It would seem that the days are numbered for seeing offline and online marketing as separate entities; the time has come for businesses across the UK to understand that dovetailing their online and offline marketing is no longer a hit-and-miss luxury, but a necessity. Now is the time to look at how effective offline marketing techniques and tools are in creating online sales; from banner printing, to postcards, posters and flyers, offline marketing is worth its weight in gold.

Fashionable, traditional and on-trend

[Text Box: Crowded it may be, but spot the two major, global brands… Canon & Pepsi - good enough for them, why not your company?] [Signs] Not three words that you would associate with offline marketing activities in today’s technological age BUT, statistics shows that 40% of people who buy online did so after reading or seeing some kind of offline marketing media – who would have thought that poster opposite the bus stop could reap such rewards?

Dovetailing – the new buzzword

Offline and online marketing tools are now linking and working together in ways that, until recently, you would have thought impossible.

Taking its cue from the Far East and the busy streets of major cities in China, London Tube travellers with their Oyster Cards may soon find that the adverts they see on the escalators are uncannily tuned in to their every thought, like and want.

With their prior permission, their Oyster Cards gathers data and statistics of where they have been – not only monitoring the use of certain tube stations on certain lines, but also the times and days that you use, says more than you think about what a person could be doing, where they are going etc. For example, regular use of their Oyster Card in and around Theatre Land would suggest a love of creative performance and the adverts that they see will be linked to their likes… modern digital billboards that move and change on a frequent basis.

The Internet – the ‘new’ online medium

Television advertising and radio adverts were great ‘online’ marketing mediums. With TV, golden adverts could yield a return of investment that was unparalleled by any other online medium; for every £1 of your marketing budget you invested in an advert, you received in return 4 times this amount.

Spending on TV adverts had dropped slightly but with more and more channels, all tailored for certain audiences, it is no surprise that companies are spending around 20% of their marketing budget on advertisements.

The Internet, as THE online marketing medium, has overtaken this TV spend, currently standing at around 23%. For those looking to gain local consumers, radio still holds a lot of marketing power.

Offline marketing – the printed word and graphic

But, before you turn away, thinking that the printed media is far too traditional and staid for your on-trend, modern day business, think again. Don’t forget the statistic that points to 40% of online sales coming from offline sources – the printed word and graphic has NOT had its day. It is growing stronger and it’ll be around for a long time yet…

From roller banners to magazines, newspapers and posters, the printed word or graphic in the right place has infinite power to attract. In the UK, there are an estimated 5,000 business publication, with around two thirds of these aimed at people as consumers. Imagine the power of an advert in the right magazine, with the right readership with your website bamboozled across it… enquiries and sales could be rolling in so fast, you wondered why you had not dovetailed your offline and online marketing activities before.

(*Can you see the pattern? Research where your customers are ‘at’. If you sell to young, upcoming city talent, they are unlikely to be sat in a bus stop in the deepest of rural locations, far from the maddening crowd…)

The great outdoors!

But there is a ‘forgotten’ offline medium that marketing experts say that businesses of all sizes need to wake up to. Maybe it doesn’t quite hold the same satisfaction or sway that other marketing ploys have but the great outdoors, experts say, is being neglected.

Larger digital companies have realised this some time ago – hence the changing billboards that link to Oyster Cards on the underground BUT, before you think that this is of no use outside the capital, think again.

Regardless of where people work and live, they all travel on a daily basis; shopping, work, the school run, to the gym, football… in this mix and heave of people going about their daily routines and business are YOUR customers.

Show them you are there. Show them that, in the quieter moments of their day, they can log on and, if they remember this really simple code (10OFF), then can get 10% off their purchase. And so on… the sky or your imagination is the limit!

Big spending on outdoor ‘offline’ marketing is on the increase; larger firms are now collective spending around £1billion per year of superb and amazing outdoor campaigns.

Not convinced?

You need to be. You have to be.

By not creating a coherent, dovetailed offline and online marketing strategy you could be missing half of your consumers. Each of these mediums inform each other and with many online social media platforms looking to incorporate e-commerce in to their platforms in 2015, by not taking part you could be missing the marketing boat.

For maximum return, use both offline and online marketing together in unity.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by James Trotter .