Why Offline Marketing is not Dead
Marketing a product or business in today’s emerging market can be challenging when faced with such a large selection of suitable platforms. With the obsessive popularity of the Internet, it can be easy to overlook some of the time-honoured traditional marketing strategies, in favour of more technical options, but could businesses be missing a trick by doing so?
Online marketing is a very popular industry at present and it is likely to remain so indefinitely, whilst traditional methods of marketing still have relevance in today’s market, but they are not paying off in the same way that they used to do. Merchandising, promotions, direct mail and television adverts are proving not nearly as affective as they were ten years ago, and more businesses are now focussing on inbound and online marketing. But, with this in mind should businesses abandon their offline marketing strategies altogether? The simple answer is no.
Creating an offline marketing plan can still be of high importance as long as you change its purpose. This means that your marketing strategy should focus on helping to promote your business’ online visibility and presence.
Television has become a less effective medium for selling products, whilst at the same time online advertisements are still developing their profitability. The solution therefore is to use television adverts to draw people to your website. For example, at the end of the TV commercial, post a Twitter #hashtag so that people can talk about the advert online, and create a Facebook page dedicated to the ad and your company.
Prioritise a link to your website on the TV advertisement whilst making sure that your audience has a suitable landing page in conjunction with the campaign. One way of doing this is to create a blog relating to the content that you’re using and keep it regularly updated with key content.
Offline marketing will only provide people with a short snippet of whatever you are selling them, but once you get people online, you then have the resources available to help promote and talk about your product in as much detail as you want to. People will hopefully check out the information then use it to make a final purchasing decision. Sponsorship of a major event is a great example of offline marketing that will never go away – always remember this marketing method as reason why ‘digital’ and ‘offline’ are gradually blending into one.
Make sure that all of your offline marketing strategies include a clear call-to-action. This means you should outline clearly exactly how a buyer can go about obtaining a specific product from you and where they can obtain it from. Make sure that your offline advertisement entices your audience and leaves them wanting more; you can then use online marketing to allow people to complete the task and fulfil your call to action.
Focus on using your online marketing to promote offline events. For example, if you are attending a trade show, use online material such as your blog or social media sites to promote it. Whilst offline methods such as pamphlets and newspaper ads are still a good idea, you must make sure you lead people back to your website, blog post or social media site for further information.
Online and offline marketing have their own strengths when it comes to promoting a business. The key is to build up the value of your online content, then use offline methods to draw people’s attention to your online marketing campaign. Offline marketing still contains a lot of value but the key is to recognise where that value lies and then run with it.