How To Best Combine Digital And Traditional Marketing Methods
Today, more than ever, customers research services or products online before making a purchase. Even in brick-and-mortar stores, 82 percent of smartphone users search for reviews and information about a product they wish to buy. Online marketing messages are needed to reach those consumers who actively seek information in digital spaces. However, digital marketing isn’t a be-all and end-all of advertising.
Just like digital marketing is a part of the buyer’s journey, so is traditional marketing. This outbound marketing can be used for both the awareness and decision phase of the customer’s journey. Digital and traditional marketing need to fight together – no against one another. For a consumer to find you, you need to mix both.
The right mix of both, placed in the right media and targeting the right people, can make a world of difference in the way customers find and interact with your brand.
Leveraging publicity
Publicity is all about increasing awareness of your brand, events, products, etc. Although, in order to make the best out of it, you will have to leverage both offline and online marketing. In most cases, it would be enough to simply educate the audience about what you’re trying to promote, or this example, publicize by sponsoring an event, arranging a speech or a debate, or even conducting a survey.
There are various ways to receive publicity and one of the best methods is to write content. Content works well for both mediums, as it has some valuable information, detailed explanations or inspiring stories. The only difference is that it is optimized differently for digital marketing, like blog posts, and traditional advertising, such as magazine articles.
Advertising in both
The key goal of advertising is to promote a brand to the target audience, as well as to promote its products, features or services. However, the ultimate purpose of marketing is to attract and then convert as many people as possible. With this in mind, concentrating only on digital or traditional advertising will not get you the best results. Rather, it will only cover a portion of both the offline and online audience.
An example of bad practice is Pepsi – who lost a lot of money since they decided to completely switch from traditional TV advertisement to social media. Unless you implement a good practice of combining both, you will never experience the benefits they give and may end up like Pepsi. If you still have trouble following, you can always hire experts that specialize in both, like this digital agency in Sydney for professional marketing services.
In fact, both digital and traditional ads share the same process of attracting different consumers, but completely neglecting one for the sake of the other is bad for business. Online ads deliver targeted messages quickly and efficiently, while offline ads are able to deliver them to an offline audience.
Geotargeting and billboards
Billboards are an excellent way to advertise in particular markets and take 7% of an average brand’s budget, with tech companies spending three or four times more on them, on average. Four of the ten biggest billboard spenders are tech businesses like Google, Apple, Netflix, and Amazon.
For decades, billboards had an enormous price tag, which prohibited small businesses from using them. However, the new digital styles of billboards offer much lower rates (as little as a third of the cost) for exactly the same exposure. For increasing their benefits, you can pair billboards with geotargeted ads to hit the driver’s smartphones with a banner ad after they pass for an extra-powerful marketing message.
Television and video
While it is true that many young consumers aren’t using television, advertisers don’t have to make the choice between streaming and cable, particularly since TV ads have become much cheaper. Lots of consumers still watch the news, for instance. Find something that your audience likes and run a commercial that tells your story. Whatever video content you create for TV, you can reuse it later for digital channels.
If cable TV doesn’t suit you or is too expensive, remember that most cable stations have video channels, apps or even YouTube channel in which you can purchase ads, usually for a lower price.
It’s important to understand that digital and traditional marketing aren’t two swordsmen fighting on the opposite sides, but two swords that are to be used together by a professional marketer. Completing this part will let you utilize the strength of both. That way, you will be able to maximize your marketing efforts and get the best results from your campaigns.