How To Start Connecting Your Online And Offline Marketing For Strong Results

Small businesses are drawn irresistibly to digital marketing. For a start, it's a no to low cost platform at a time when funds are stretched. It also allows you to be highly targeted about audience segments you want to connect with and what messages you want to give them. It's highly measurable, so you can see just what your return on investment is. It's scalable, growing easily alongside your company. And it has the potential to connect your business with a vast global audience. 

So there are many compelling reasons to make digital platforms the cornerstone of your small business marketing strategy. 

But if you've never created a considered other forms of marketing, you're missing a trick. The best strategies are multi-channel, seamlessly blending online and offline activities to drive specific conversion goals. 

So if you want to integrate your online and offline marketing efforts to maximize your strategy, where do you begin? 

Include An Online Call To Action In Offline Collateral 

One of the keys to a blended marketing plan is understanding that each channel has it's unique benefits and leveraging those to best effect. So if you had the budget to do a television ad, you'd be best placed to use it as a high-level, awareness raising move. But you could combine it with a call to action that draws people into your website with a special offer. Your website should be full of great and relevant content that hooks people in, or perhaps articles that they want to share on their social media channels. It could also encourage visitors to sign up to an email newsletter for specific information on special offers. In this way, you create a series of actions that draw people deeper into your universe. Each step should aim to extract some kind of data that informs your next series of actions. That way, you build up a much richer view of how and why your audience is choosing to interact with you. 

Incentives - Giveaways And Time Limited Offers

Experts estimate that the average person sees 5,000 adverts a day. That's a huge figure, and it goes a long way to explaining why the conversion rates on some of your digital ads are so low. Studies have found that combining online and offline media leads to a drip-feed effect that makes people more likely to eventually click on your ads. Once you have their attention, what you need is something which makes them want to part with their data - this is the first step towards creating regular communication with them. A giveaway or special offer is a time-honoured technique that can make prospects take that step of handing over their details - which is vital to make sure your marketing is compliant with GDPR legislation. So work with your Facebook ads agency to embed a competition element across your social display ads, or include a special offer targeted at people who have visited your site more than once through re-targeting. 

There are lots more ways to connect the online and offline worlds, so build that thinking into your plans from the start for the best results.