As companies seek better ways to utilize the Internet to improve business performance, some are struggling to unify online and offline marketing efforts. In creating a cohesive marketing strategy, companies need to find ways to unify their marketing campaigns in order to make them most effective. Read on for some tips on joining your online and offline efforts.
1. Target Keywords for Offline Campaigns
Even as businesses continue to learn ways to apply principles of offline marketing to their online marketing campaigns, you can actually use some principles from the latter to instruct the former.
Choosing the right keywords is a big part of an effective online marketing campaign. Including strong keywords is a great way to increase the likelihood that people will actually view your company’s content. In helping your online and offline campaigns work together, you can utilize those same keywords in your offline marketing materials. That will help you develop a cohesive marketing strategy, and it will also attract people’s attention to your offline marketing materials.
2. Target the Same Set of Customers
In developing your marketing strategy, you should have identified a certain set of individuals who you view as the target audience of the marketing campaign. These groups are sometimes divided by age, gender, geographic location, and other descriptive classifications, but whatever they are, it is important that you keep these in mind to some extent when developing a marketing strategy so that you can tailor your materials to the right people.
In working on marketing online and offline, that target audience should not change. You may find areas in which you can reach sub-categories of your target audience, such as a younger crowd using certain social media sites, but if you want your online and offline efforts to work cohesively, you will need a single target audience for your campaign.
3. Always Include Web Address
In your offline marketing materials, you should include references to material available online.
This is important for a lot of reasons. First, the whole goal of online marketing should be to increase customer engagement. But the only way you can do that with your current customers is by connecting them with your online materials.
In addition, your offline marketing material may be somewhat limited in how it reaches your potential customers. For example, a newspaper ad is good for increasing your company’s visibility, but it may leave potential customers wanting more. If you include the appropriate web addresses (and social media information), you can direct those people to the places where they can find out more about your company. Using the right website information in your offline material is key for uniting those efforts with your online marketing campaign.
4. Be Consistent with Your Marketing Messages
Just because online and offline marketing involve different techniques doesn’t mean they should involve different messages. When you are working on your marketing either online or offline, you should always use consistent messaging to reach your customers.
Building your brand is all about consistency, and that is the goal of marketing, whether online or offline. That means that you should always be communicating consistent messages to customers on the Internet or with other forms of marketing. In order to do this, you need to make sure that your marketing teams for online and offline are on the same page regarding your company’s advertising direction. Of course, small businesses don’t need to worry about this so much, but it is still important not to modify online content too much just to fit the environment. Always stay true to your brand, in both online and offline marketing campaigns.
