It is truly overwhelming how marketing strategies have evolved with the availability of internet on your recent smartphone. Businesses have now started targeting consumers on what they are doing at the moment by using several modern marketing techniques. For example, by advertising on social platforms, developing an app for your brand and sending push notifications about every little information, all these have completely changed the meaning of reaching customers.
But along with all this sophistication and ease, it should not at all be forgotten that even offline marketing plays a significant role in business success. The offline marketing is not completely dead, rather, the time is very crucial, where businesses must bridge the gap between the online and offline marketing tools to have a better business journey.
The first step here is to list all the online and offline marketing channels. Now, identify the complementary channels through which you can have better and more effective communication with buyers. For example,
Offer coupons to customers which can be downloaded online and demand them to visit the store in order to encash the coupon.
Through mobile devices, you can reach buyers wherever they are. Ask them to leave their numbers when they visit the store and send them an SMS for giving any important information.
Include social handles to attract people to your store.
So, whatever combination you choose, just remember that a seamless customer buying experience should be the sole target of your business.
After deciding on the combination of channels, you should start working on their metrics so that the performance can be measured. Agreed, the offline and online metrics may differ but since the end goal is the same, there won’t be much difficulty in tracking and tapping the success. Examples of metrics are-
Email: conversions, click-through-rate, unsubscribes, etc.
Digital: advertising: engagement rate, conversions, clicks, reach, etc.
Mobile: Users, time in-app, actions, retention, etc.
Offline: Store visits, phone inquiries, stop purchases, trade show booth visits, etc.
After this combination of channels and setting of goals, you should also take into account which channel has more influence on your customers. This will help to get the right results in the end.
It is important that the same tone, voice and message should be used across all the online and offline channels. Remember designing inconsistent brand messages will only leave the consumers confused. Your campaign should be simple and clear in order to deliver a nice experience to customers whenever they visit your store or website. So, start evaluating all your online and offline channels and also explore the new smart upcoming channels.
Concluding, many big businesses have understood the importance of it and recognise the impact of it on bottom lines. They say by integrating the two you will be able to tap the best of both worlds. You will be able to create consistent exposure to your brand. Cater to a wide spectrum of customers. Deliver a complete customer experience and have a lot of loyal customers in the end.
