Ways to Combine Online and Offline Marketing
For their business to succeed, an entrepreneur needs to consider many aspects, from having a quality product/service to maintaining the cash flow of the company. However, building a customer base is what actually keeps the business running and in order to do that, one must come up with an effective marketing strategy. Practice has shown that combining online and offline promotional methods has the biggest impact, so listed below are some suggestions for you to consider if you are crafting your strategy right now.
Rely on online analysis to design your offline approach
Seeing as how online advertising is much easier to track, you should use these results to learn more about your target audience and adjust your offline approach accordingly. Analytics can give you a lot of information relevant to users and help you create the perfect campaign that is surely going to attract people to your business. What is more, you can later even analyze how many visitors your website actually had thanks to the customized URLs you put on your printed materials.
Make your online info visible in your offline marketing and vice versa
In order to be able to analyze the impact of your offline marketing techniques, you need to point your audience to your online presence. While handing out flyers on the street can be a bit hit-and-miss, direct mail is still a great way to reach potential users as 92% of it gets opened. However, to make the most of old-school marketing and get those conversions, you need to interest your audience in looking you up online. That is why your printed promotional materials must include your website address, your email and your social media handles, in addition to having an eye-catching design. On the other hand, this approach goes both ways – you also need to provide offline info during your online marketing efforts. If you have a brick-and-mortar store, specify your address and phone number. If you’re organizing local events, promote them on your social media profiles.
Utilize QR codes to take your audience online
Certain marketing approaches are shrouded in mystery and rely on intriguing the audience in order to make a conversion. If you’ve opted for this method and don’t want to give too much away, instead of specifying your name and URL, you can add QR codes to your printed materials. This is an easy way to take your potential customers online and interest them enough to ensure conversion. Furthermore, you don’t even need the element of mystery – sometimes, people just find this much easier than typing in a web address.
Encourage user-generated content
Besides QR codes, encouraging user-generated content is a great way to implement calls to action into your offline marketing campaign. For instance, you can ask your audience to take selfies with a certain theme or goal, use a specific hashtag and get a chance to win a prize. By using a dedicated hashtag, you will be able to track your results and in case it starts trending, the word will spread about your business. Additionally, you can ask for their opinions and comments by directing them to your social media profiles and suggesting that they use a relevant hashtag.
Ask your online followers for their opinion
Finally, you should also ask your online followers for their opinions when it comes to your campaign and then use those to further improve. Seeing as how it is super easy to create a poll on Twitter or Instagram, you can let your audience decide which promotional poster is best. You can then use that design in your offline efforts. Of course, you can also organize a contest and encourage your followers to create some content for you – there are surely some talented individuals who can come up with a stunning design you can implement in your strategy. Decide in what way you will reward the winner of the challenge; it can be simply bringing more attention to their talent, giving them a discount or offering your product/services for free.
While these five are in no way the only approaches you have, they are a great starting point to get you where you need to go. With just a little bit of creativity, you will have no problem reaching and engaging your audience.
