Combining Your Offline & Online Marketing Efforts [Presentation]

Last Week I was invited to present "Combining Your Offline & Online Marketing Efforts" to The St. Louis Entrepreneurs Meetup Group by organizer Lori Bowers. It was a great group of people with a few familiar faces and many new ones.

Below is the presentation (via SlideShare), but due to the fact that I make my presentations graphics heavy with only a little bit of text, I am going to recap some of the key concepts I discussed below the embedded presentation. Enjoy!

Combining Your Online & Offline Marketing Efforts

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The Traditional vs. Digital "Divide"

Since the internet was young, many digital marketers have argued that offline marketing has become obsolete (even calling it dead) and that digital marketing trumps it's more traditional predecessor. My message is simple... you don't have to choose one or the other. USE BOTH!

Offline and online marketing can work hand in hand. When integrated properly, the combination will ALWAYS yield better results than one or the other on it's own.

Besides my own experience (several integrated direct mail campaigns that have seen 6% to 9% response rates, versus the industry standard 0.5% to 1.5% response), here are a few statistics that support this...

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)

Bottom line... marketing campaigns that combine 2 or more channels will generate more leads, see higher response rates, faster response times and larger order sizes than those that don't.

Enter "Integrated Marketing"

I define Integrated Marketing as using BOTH online & offline marketing to deliver a consistent message across multiple channels. There are other definitions, but as far as I'm concerned, this is the simplest way to explain it.

A Few Key Concepts

Since the marketing savvy of the attendees ranged from seasoned marketer to marketing novice, I decided to go over a few concepts to make sure everyone was on the same page.

For our purposes, I defined a marketing "channel" as any tool that you would use to perform a marketing campaign. It could be anything from a door hanger to a website banner ad.

I also wanted to be clear that the type of Integrated Marketing we were talking about is DIRECT. What I mean by that is...

• We are building a campaign with a SPECIFIC objective such as generating leads, promoting an event, launching a product, etc.
• We have a targeted audience that we are trying to get our message in front of.
• We need to prompt our audience to take action by offering them something valuable and relevant.

Consumers PREFER to Respond Online

One of the primary goals of an Integrated Campaign, is to use offline marketing to drive potential customers ONLINE to learn more and respond.

A few years ago, PODI.org reported that 42% of direct mail recipients PREFER to respond online. Furthermore, 25% of direct mail recipients WILL ONLY respond online. Those statistics have likely increased significantly since they were reported in 2006.

Bottom line... if you don't give your offline marketing a quick and easy way for people to respond online, you are cutting off a huge portion of your potential responses right out of the gate. So how do we go about driving them online?

Use Landing Pages to Capture Responses From Your Offline Marketing

Landing pages are the hub of an Integrated Marketing Campaign (see Slide 10 of the presentation). A landing page is a website created specifically for capturing responses from various marketing channels (both offline and online). For you traditionalists, it's like an online Business Reply Card.

Landing pages make it easy for your audience to respond. Why not just direct people to your website? Check out my article called Why Your Website is NOT a Landing Page for Your Offline Marketing for a few good reasons.

There are a bunch of landing page examples in the presentation (Slides 14-19). As you can see, it's critical that your graphics and message is consistent between the offline channels and the landing pages to let people know they are in the right place.

Here are a few of my favorite tools for Landing Page creation and tracking...

http://www.genius.com/

http://www.hubspot.com/

http://unbounce.com/

Getting Started with Integrated Marketing in 6 Steps

1. Determine your objective - What are you trying to accomplish? Generating leads, promoting an event, launching a new product/service, driving retail activity (in-store or online), etc.

2. Give them an offer they can't refuse - Who is your audience? What is important to them? Put yourself in their shoes and choose an offer that is both valuable and relevant.

3. Choose a primary channel - Where will you spend the bulk of your budget? Mail? Email? TV? Use past marketing experience to pick a channel you are already familiar with and start there.

4. Duplicate your message - What other channels will you be using? Create a landing page with the same graphics and message as your primary channel. Do the same for other channels and related landing pages.

5. Launch your campaign - What do you need to do to launch? Make sure all your landing pages are ready to capture leads. Don't forget to give other options for responding such as phone numbers, email address and even reply mail.

6. Monitor and measure - How is it going? Keep an eye on your campaign the first few days. If it is not performing up to your expectations, look for ways to adjust your landing pages to give the campaign a boost.

QR Codes: Integrating Offline with Mobile

I love QR Codes! I won't go into too much detail since I talk about them quite a bit, but Slide 27 offers a few examples. Check out my QR Codes Category for more on these nifty little mobile friendly barcodes.

You can use MarketPath's QR Code Generator to make your own codes.

Here are a few good QR Code Scanners you can install on your Smartphone.

Integrating Offline with Social Media

You can also look for creative ways to combine your offline marketing with Social Media. Here are a few suggestions:

• Make sure you highlight your social profiles on all of your offline marketing channels. Some people will be more inclined to check out your Facebook page than visit a landing page.
• Include Social Media links on your Landing Pages created for your offline marketing channels.
• Create customized landing pages for promoting your campaign on Social Media websites. That way, you can track any responses you get from those channels.
• Give people incentives to share (ie. 'Like' your Facebook page or 'Tweet' your promotion). If you mention in your offline marketing that anyone who Likes or Tweets your promotion will be entered into a drawing, you can add a viral element to your offline campaigns.

Any other good tips for using Social Media in your offline advertising? Please comment below.

Wrapping It Up

The gap between Online and Offline marketing is being bridged by creative marketers and their results are better for it in nearly every case. Technology today has allowed even small business to integrate their marketing in ways that used to only be accessible to big brands.

Businesses that realize that it's important to try and reach their potential customers both online and offline, will have a big advantage over their competition. By using the strategies outlined above, you too can bridge the offline/online marketing divide. Go get 'em!

If you have any questions or other ideas/thoughts about Integrated Marketing, please leave a comment below.