Offline And Online Marketing: Integration Is Key

There has been much debate on which is the more reliable method between online and offline marketing. Both sides do have their own merits, but if you allow yourself to build an opinion favoring one of the two, you'll be doing yourself a disservice as far as marketing goes. Instead of focusing on one of these two marketing methods, why not do both instead?

The truth of the matter is that it's impossible to reach a wide audience by relying on a single method. Some consumers do their transactions solely on the Internet. Some won't even consider touching the computer, much less go online.

So in order to achieve success in marketing, be it for a brick-and-mortar business or an online business, you'd be able to maximize all your business resources by doing both. For that matter, doing both is not enough; the perfect integration of these two marketing aspects should be administered to not only achieve business success, but also to go beyond your established expectations.

So how does one conjoin both online and offline marketing methods exactly? To help you out, here are some key points you need to be considered.

First Impressions Last
Advertising should always deliver a call to action. Meaning, it needs to have a message or a slogan that can elicit a response from the people who see the ads. Again, both online and offline ads should work together in a way that can funnel people's responses to a specific goal.

So how is this exactly done? To incite a call to action, contact information is required to be included in the ad. A url for the business site or the official Facebook page, a contact number, physical address of the store and such should be clearly stated in the ad. As such, the effectiveness of the ad will reflect on whether the action was taken.

The Content
Now what happens if the advertisements have elicited the positive response? What is the next step once the person visited your website after seeing your ad?

You need to make sure that the URL of the website that is visited has the textual and graphical information that reflects what was stated in the ad. A minimalist approach should be applied at this point since deluding the site visitor with too much information can cause a big fraction of the visitors to eventually leave the site. That's a lot of potential customers down the drain.

The further calls to action displayed in the website or the Facebook page should direct the visitors to more focused content. As the saying goes, "the Web is not a dumping ground," so make sure that the people who visit the site or the landing page are able to find what they seek, or at least the information telling them what to do next.

Create Multiple Ads
The most successful companies create multiple ads in a manner that makes use of online and offline tools. Of course, all ads should provide a call to action and guided by a targeted approach that will lead them to a specific destination.

Best of all, integrating both online and offline marketing won't burn a big hole in your wallet. Ad artwork, static HTML pages, graphical links, fliers, brochures, etc. are inexpensive. All it takes is dedication, a good business sense and through planning.