The advent of the digital age has brought huge change in the ways companies can get their message to its customers!
Do you use pull or push marketing, inbound or outbound marketing, interruption or permission based marketing marketing? If you’re not sure, don’t worry they are just different names for the same thing and these concepts have been around for centuries!
The world population’s adoption of the internet has grown fast in recent times with greater use of search engines, a more informed, discerning and social media savvy public have impacted on how companies engage with their audiences.
But the worldwide web is not a promotional panacea! Lots of people are still informed by advertising and rely on being interrupted by advertising!
Worldwide offline advertising spending will total $496.9 billion in 2011, up from $475.7 in 2010. This traditional advertising spend encompasses a range of advertising mediums, including directory listings, online ads, magazine ads, newspaper ads, outdoor poster ads and billboards, radio ads and TV commercials. Decision makers still read magazines, watch TV and listen to the radio as well!
It’s really important to understand your customers and how they like to receive information. Then determine the most appropriate mix of traditional offline or digital online media that should be used to reach them. Shrewd marketing folk realise that labels like offline or online media, new or old media are irrelevant because – it’s all just media!
For every digital technique, there’s a traditional communications alternative. Take networking for instance. You can do real people to people networking or use social networks on the internet like Linked In. You can have offline and online versions of the same sales promotion and you can mix online banner advertising with offline magazine advertising to get todifferent audiences depending on their media habits.
That said, the web is now the heart of all communications for all types of businesses. It is important to regard marketing media in the round, with the worldwide web and your website as an interactive hub linking offline and online communications with search engine optimisation, content marketing etc used optimise levels of the most appropriate traffic.
So, make your brochures available in pdf format to download from your website, use e mail to drive traffic to your website and get customers to learn more about your offers, embed videos, add “share buttons” from social media sites and drive traffic to your website via Google plus, Twitter and Facebook. You can also attach your blog and QR code to your website too.
Just remember that you need to strike an appropriate balance between online marketing and offline marketing techniques depending on the kind of customer you are marketing to.
Mike Cowburn runs a “streetwise” marketing agency and business development consultancy that helps companies maximise their revenue and profits growth by crafting compelling value propositions and savvy marketing action plans.
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