Sync Between Online and Offline Campaigns

Today everyone understands that gap between online and offline business has narrowed down. People also understand the important of absolute sync between online and offline marketing, however not many knows how to harness it to make the best use these mediums together. Many of the companies as so influenced by online, that they shift their focus and strategy heads from offline to online marketing.

I agree that online marketing has really revolutionised the way consumers interacts with Brand through online, however if we don’t consider importance of offline marketing, then there is no doubt that online marketing campaigns will run in isolation from their offline counterparts. There is very less possibility that only online driven campaigns that are run in isolation will succeed. The fact is the campaigns are never successful is there is no synchronization in offline and online campaigns.

If you look closely, today our customers no longer sees any different in their offline and online lives, hence they cannot be content with the product/campaign which exists solely on online or offline.

Now question is… how to sync these two?

Here’s the way out… here are few things that marketers needs to consider while planning their online and offline campaigns.

Prepare internal customers for external customers – A great media mix, amazing creative team, a good project leader are definitely key components of successful Marketing Team, however none of them can work in isolation. Most of the companies have offline and online marketing team as 2 different teams. However companies need to ensure that before any campaign is strategized or executed there in internal meeting done with all the employees from Offline and Online Marketing to discuss what message they want to convey to the end user. Once the decisions are made the first thing you need to pen down are Marketing Guidelines, rules, themes and so on… You can use different channels and modes to convey your message, however you need to ensure that the concept and message that is reaching to the customer is same as you trying to convey through other mediums.

Go Digital before offline because, Your customers are best Marketing resource - Ensure that your online marketing campaigns are UP AND RUNNING much before your offline campaigns are started, because to set up your offline marketing campaigns you need to prepare much in advance, which is not the case in online marketing. Offline marketing is build around events, where as online marketing can create buzz and interest for your brand’s launch or offline marketing campaign. Use Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn as the most trusted sources to create buzz and interest related to you upcoming events, giving them power and quickest way to reach you, which is not possible with offline marketing campaign.

After Implementation: It’s obvious that the targeted offline audience will use some mode online to start a conversation around the offline campaigns that they have seen. Hence your job is to identify which channel your offline customers are using to build the conversation online. This will help you to implement your marketing methods to become part of their conversation.

Hand-in-Hand – Companies can use their offline marketing campaigns to promote their online presence, like they can influence the users to visit their fan page, website, and so on. When a bigger campaign runs digitally, offline marketing methods can be adapted to influence the audiences to engage in Digital Presence.

I would really appreciate if you give your inputs to on this topic.

Love you all

Mohit Laamba