Before the web was created companies utilized the power of traditional marketing to spread the word about their products and services. Today it is important for many companies to stay true to these roots yet wed them with more modern communication channels such as online marketing.
As marketers, we know that the attention span of most adults equals that of a 140 character Twitter feed. This means our messages can’t be lengthy or as robust as we make like. However, connecting traditional and online media allows companies to place more content across various channels to target the consumers who are most likely to make a purchase. Below are some ways to bring traditional and online marketing together to capture, engage, convert and measure as many leads as possible.
Create a Custom URL/Landing Page
A great foundation for the traditional/online wedding is to develop a custom URL that is displayed on your traditional media ad. This URL should be easy to remember and correspond directly to what the advertisement was on the traditional channel. This can be a place where you provide consumers more information or lead them to the sale. It is also a way to determine how effective your marketing campaign is as the traffic to that page can easily be monitored via programs like Google Analytics.
Create or Use a Hasthtag
A newer and often underutilized method to fuse traditional and online marketing is through a hashtag. This social media tool can be something that you create just for your advertisement or you can use other popular hashtags for your product if you feel they are relevant to your offerings. Like custom URLs, hashtags are also measurable and are an effective way for companies to determine who their biggest social influencers are.
Unique Tracking Number
Unique phone tracking numbers are a good way to track online marketing campaigns through more traditional means. By purchasing a unique phone number for a particular online marketing or advertising campaign you will be able to determine how successful your promotion is with data from the phone calls. Comparing this data to the amount of traffic you received to that landing page will give you an accurate assessment of how well your campaign converts web visitors to phone callers.
Promote on Your Homepage
Sometimes companies will create a custom URL for a product or service and display this on their traditional advertisements. However, some consumers will just visit the homepage of the website rather than the actual URL (ex. examplesite.com vs. examplesite.com/offer) that was created to convert the leads. To draw these types of consumer back to the target page, prominently display an image and call-to-action on the homepage of the website to the appropriate landing page to guide them to the preferred destination.
Blog About It
Last but not least, a promoted blog post can be an additional resource channel for your traditional marketing campaign. If you think about the other channels – landing pages, social media, phone numbers, homepage graphics – these are generally very short winded advertisements. A blog can be a place where more detailed information is provided and can really serve to capture those consumers who are more research intensive and require more details before making a purchasing decision.
Learn more about creating successful blog posts
Bring it all Together
Marketing is not what it once was but it can be argued that there is no longer traditional marketing and online marketing but just ‘marketing.’ To capture and engage the largest audience companies find themselves leveraging multiple channels to capture consumers in all the places they hang out. Furthermore, many of these channels also provide the opportunity for companies to test and measure their campaigns so they can improve their conversion rates and the efforts they spend on generating sales.
