Insta Success:
Offline and online marketing; what’s the difference? Offline marketing includes mass media, newspapers/magazines, billboards, business cards- anything that exists physically. Online marketing focuses on the digital side: web content, email, and social media marketing. These two categories shouldn’t sit in separate campaigns and instead, should work together on your customer’s journey, complementing each other in order to drive customers to your product or services.
Why digital?- the benefits of online marketing
Bringing your marketing online not only means you can quickly change and adapt your marketing to changing consumer environments, but they also supercharge your ads’ ability to gain traction. Going digital gives you instant and verified access to your demographics. You can see who is viewing your content, where they are, and what they’re interested in. This gives you an incredible understanding of your market and provides incredible insights when creating further marketing content.
Calls to action are a key part of your ad strategy both off and online. When online you can track clicks of this CTA whether it is ‘shop now’, ‘learn more, or ‘book now’. Offer discounts and sales to help make a potential customer decide to interact with your site and products.
Support your offline marketing with digital methods such as social media. Your channels allow you to build a brand voice and a sense of connection with your customers on your own terms. Friendly, informative, and funny are all angles you can take when deciding what to post. Taking social media seriously is a priority for any business with 78% of people saying they are more likely to buy from a company that they’ve had a positive experience with on social media- the stakes are high. You can also interact with other brands and form partnerships that help get eyes on your content whilst aligning your brand with values that resonate with your customers and prove that you’re credible.
Combining your offline and online marketing
How do we make our categories work together to get you the best results? Clearly, understanding your goals comes first. Then understand how your chosen channel will help you achieve your aim. Create a funnel to focus on your audience and their customer journey, then adapt your strategy to reach your customer to provide them value during their purchasing journey. The top of the funnel focuses on reaching a large number of potential customers, the numbers decrease further down the funnel which correlates to being engaged and more likely to purchase. Social media, at the top of the funnel, is a great way to reach a new audience (55% of customers discover a new brand via social media). A newsletter, further down the funnel, can be a useful way of talking to previous customers to keep them aware of new products and encourage return business.
Online newsletters are a useful, and cost-effective way to keep your customers in the loop of new products or services you may offer and create an opportunity for you to showcase your company’s tone of voice and make that connection with your loyal customers. A/B testing and tweaking your email content and copy is a great way to get to know your audience which will be useful across all areas of your campaign.
Don’t be afraid to experiment with your digital marketing. With so many tools available it is easy to feel over-faced but break it down, matching your strategy and goal to your digital options only focusing on the areas you see helping to reach your aim.
The beauty of digital is its adaptability and your ability to test and change your strategy with speed and agility to keep up with your market. Many tools provide detailed and instant metrics on your efforts which makes it easy to understand the strategy’s effect and it’s in your hands to see this an create marketing content that gets traction. With so many resources to guide you’ll be getting the most out of being online in no time.