Offline Marketing Drives Online Results
The marketing bus has been a smooth ride up until 2008 when sudden detours changed its route. These detours caused the marketing bus to travel out past town, to a two-lane, rocky road. After traveling miles through endless farmland, it eventually made its way to a small country town with one intersection and one blinking red light. The driver found himself currently at a crossroads...the East/West road sign reads “Offline,” the North/South road sign reads “Online.” A brand new sign is secured on the right side of the road. The sign reads “Welcome to the Town of Integration! The
most cutting edge, equidistant town to everything! All roads lead to us! Coming soon!”Has your marketing bus traveled to the Town of Integration? If it hasn’t, you’d better get on board. Just like any business, the marketing business has had to go through some detours and bumpy roads to figure out the next wave in marketing. But, we’ve now arrived to a fantastic crossroads where both traditional marketing and online marketing has created a great support for each other and for your business.
What is Integrated Marketing?
Integrated marketing is a holistic marketing approach that crosses media channels and boundaries to promote buying and selling, as well as brand building, across two or more online and offline media channels. Integrated marketing can have many facets.
Online, it can include: organic search; paid search advertising (PPC); online display advertising; email marketing and social media marketing. Offline marketing is what we think of as traditional media: television; print advertising; direct mail; radio; billboard ads.The Interaction Between Online and Offline Media
Integrated search marketing uses the blended search formula to pull a campaign together. An integrated campaign utilizes online news releases, video, images, blog posts and products to promote a brand outside standard advertising means. Television campaigns can be tied to an online campaign and used to fuel targeted searches, while providing valuable feedback on the reach of the campaign.
Advantages of Integrating your online and offline marketing
In a Jupiter Research survey of 2,300 web users, 67% of the respondents said they had searched for the company name, product or service names, or advertising slogan that they saw in offline marketing or ads. Of those online searchers who responded to an offline marketing message, 39% eventually made a purchase.
Conversely, to use online marketing to promote your offline marketing, mention on your website a physical address and contact information. This makes it easy for people who first find you online to also find you offline. This has been shown to help your site in local search, boost your overall business credibility and improve conversion rates.
So, is your business visible, with a consistent message, both online and offline? Online search optimization and offline marketing and advertising are no longer two separate things that have no relationship to each other. The roads have intersected and your business needs to be there. Your customers have already bought prime real estate in the Town of Integration, so park your bus and stay for while.
