How to Manage Online Marketing & Offline Advertising

In many cases, online and offline marketing are two sides of the same coin. When targeting growth in sales numbers or conversions, it’s best to have a balanced approach that encompasses both the online and offline spheres of marketing. In this article, we’re going to take a look at how to manage online marketing and offline advertising.

1. SEO and Yellow Pages

The traditional way of getting information about your business out there is through the Yellow Pages. While a Yellow Pages ad can still get you a decent amount of customers, SEO and search advertising are far more efficient. In a study from Search Engine Land, it was found that around 85% of consumers have found a local business through the internet. And, while optimizing your website for search engine rankings, you can have an even greater impact through paid search engine advertising, which further boosts site visits. By finding the right mix between offline and online listings, you can gain a high number of potential customers for a relatively low price.

2. Online Ads and Billboards/Offline Ads

While offline advertising, through billboards or radio/TV spots, can grant you access to a very large audience, it is not as focused as online marketing. There is also a big gap in pricing as well. With online display ads, you can target specific groups of consumers based on a wide variety of criteria, ranging from the general such as age, gender, and browsing preference, all the way down to laser-focused specifics, such as where they are in your sales funnel. Offline advertising is good if you are targeting a less tech savvy audience, and are looking to bring many people into your conversion funnel, while online advertising is great for highly specific targeting messages, and closing the deal.

3. Online Reviews and Comment Cards

Many businesses use comment cards as a way to receive feedback from their customers, and to build a repertoire of testimonials. In the online world, you have reviews, which can serve the same purpose. Online reviews can come in faster, and much more often than comment cards, and they are great for building a positive online presence.

4. Email and Direct Mail

Direct mail is a well-known and widely used form of offline advertising, whether it is done through circulars, flyers, coupon ads, or others. Chances are that you’ve used direct mail, especially if your business caters to consumers. When you translate direct mail into the online world, you have email marketing, which functions on almost the same principles. Email marketing is also faster and easier to track performance on, which leads to refinement and better ROI. Using both direct mail and email marketing in conjunction can provide you with a significant boost in sales and lead generation, especially if you test through email and apply the lessons across the board.

5. Online Offers and Offline Coupons

If you have regular special offers and discounts, it’s best to promote offline and online at the same time. Once again, online promotion is faster and easier to measure. There is also a synergistic benefit to promoting your offers on social media because it helps to build brand awareness and loyalty, while boosting your engagement rates. Furthermore, you can use sites that were built specifically for this type of promotion, sites like Facebook Offers, AmazonLocal, Google Offers, Groupon and LivingSocial. Users also love to receive special offers on their mobile devices, so if you have a proprietary app or a customer’s mobile phone number, there is an opportunity for synergy here as well.

6. Email Subscriptions and Analog Guestbooks

By having sign-in sheets or guestbooks, which you use to collect customers’ information offline in order to send them advertising, you can use that information for online purposes as well, and vice versa. If you ask for an email address, a phone number and a home address, you can then send customers the most effective advertising across a spectrum of mediums. Sometimes a special offer would be better suited as a text message, while a free brochure might work best through direct mail. Just make sure to let your users opt-out of receiving advertising if they sign-up online.

Conclusion

By combining offline advertising with online marketing, you can get a lot more ROI out of your marketing budget. The two mediums can be used to complement each other, ensuring that you have a wide array of the most effective marketing techniques at your disposal.