How do you combine online and offline media to bring success?

In my previous blog, we discussed the benefits to both online and offline marketing methods. In this blog, we will discuss using both offline and online strategies that will help bring your company success. Sounds impossible, but it’s not.

Potential clients will always look you up online after meeting you via meetings, networking events, direct mail, etc. For starters, it helps them to legitimize your business. They might see your TV ad and it will prompt them to check you out online to see what you are really about.

A few facts to ponder:

• Marketers reported an average improvement of close to 50% for personalized multichannel campaigns over traditional campaigns. – InfoTrends (2007)
• 62% of online campaigns are seeing an increase in return on investment when combined with offline marketing such as direct mail. – Omnicon Media Group (2009)

When combining the two strategies, it’s proven that you will generate more leads and have a higher and faster response rate.

One successful strategy is to use offline media to direct customers to responding online. Customers love the look and feel of a nice direct mail piece, but they want a quick and easy way to respond. This is where online marketing comes into play. Use the direct mail (offline) marketing piece to direct customers online, to your company’s website, Facebook page or a special landing page. According to PODI.org (2006 data), 42% of direct mail recipients prefer to respond online and 25% of direct mail recipients will only respond online.

Some would argue, well, if they are looking for us online, then we should only be online. While I understand the thought process behind this, there are always two sides to an argument. I would agree that yes, it makes sense to be online if they are looking for you online, but how will they know to look for you if they haven’t heard of you before? And how will they hear about you if you are only online? People still watch TV, people still read the newspaper and magazines to some degree, and people still read snail mail.

As you can see, people are using both online and offline medias to get their information, and the best thing for your business to do is to hit both offline and online strategies as I’ve mentioned above. By using offline media to direct customers to online media you are making the best out of both worlds.