How to Unite Offline and Online Marketing Channels for Integrated Customer Journey

Marketing and sales go hand-in-hand. The better marketing strategies a company adopts, the more are their chances of conversions. However, it is vital to select the right marketing channel and reach out to the target audience. Some companies that have been using offline marketing channels such as print media, television advertising, and direct mail have now stepped into the digital marketing world and started using online marketing channels.

Although some companies have completely switched from offline to online marketing, there is no reason why they can’t use both. After all, direct mail’s response rates are way higher than online marketing forms such as email and paid search. 52% of marketers combine and use about 3 to 4 marketing channels simultaneously. It is known that 95% of marketers understand the importance of multichannel marketing, but only 73% of them have proper multichannel marketing plans in place.

Companies need to be a part of both online and offline customer journeys. The primary focus should be on contacting them through all possible touchpoints and smoothening their experience with your brand. Find the various ways below to use online and offline distribution channels together.

1. Explore Every Channel

Before spending heavily on just one marketing channel, it is advisable to explore and navigate through various different channels and record their pros and cons. Every channel works differently for every company and industry. Hence, you need to know which channels work the best for your brand so that you can select the right combination of channels accordingly.

2. Conduct Market Research

Know your audience and follow all the latest market trends. Businesses should know what their customers want and offer solutions as per their needs. You must keep up with your competitors’ marketing strategies, customers’ preferences, buying habits, life stages, and more.

3. Keep Your Audience Engaged

Omnichannel marketing is conducted to reach customers through various channels simultaneously, hence improving brand recall rates and increasing popularity. There are many ways to keep your audience engaged – conduct a giveaway, an online quiz competition, or send them a survey form. Make sure that they remember you and are repeatedly engaging with your brand.

4. Utilize User-Generated Content

Coming to marketing content, marketers can design and use the same artwork consistently on all their marketing channels. Nowadays, designers are combining their artworks with user-generated content to make their marketing campaigns perform in a better way. User-generated content is the content that your customers contributed themselves, to which other customers and prospects can relate to. It includes customer testimonials in the form of text, audio, images, and videos. Reposting these things on your social media handles or printing and mailing out postcards with customers’ photos on them can drive engagements.

5. Promote Online Businesses Offline

Online eCommerce stores, delivery-only restaurants, online seminar hosting companies, and web service providers are examples of online businesses. Though they are already promoting their business online through their websites and even social media handles, it is good to connect with their customers personally sometimes and increase outreach among prospects that aren’t active online. Sending personalised letters to an online audience is a good start.

6. Drive Online Traffic for Your Offline Brands

Gyms, supermarkets, restaurants, and dental clinics are offline businesses and can be ignored easily if not advertised properly. There are such businesses seen everywhere across the country. Hence, it is important to stand out and make an image for yourself. Such businesses can opt for a combined marketing strategy to increase online and offline visibility simultaneously. A food truck posting about its whereabouts online is an excellent example of how an offline company can drive conversions through online marketing. Combining online and offline advertising channels can increase sales for such businesses considerably.

7. Automate Marketing

By automating your marketing activities, you can conduct omnichannel marketing efficiently, correctly, and effortlessly. Marketers don’t have to spend hefty amounts of money or weeks of their time planning a single campaign. Marketing automation can help combine offline and online marketing channels and conduct several different marketing campaigns altogether.

There are many examples of omnichannel marketing campaigns. Some of them are listed below:

• Combination of email and direct mail marketing: Sending direct mailers to a targeted mailing list. After the intended recipients receive your mailpiece, you can send out follow-up emails.
• Combination of newspaper advertisements and social media marketing: Conduct Facebook or Instagram marketing the same day when your company advertisement is printed in the newspaper.

These things allow your customers to be convinced that you are a well-known and reputed brand. Repeatedly running ads through online and offline marketing channels can help you get leads either from one source or another. This way, you don’t miss out on any customers or opportunities.

Finance, insurance, healthcare, eCommerce, retail, and many other industries can benefit from omnichannel and multichannel marketing. For instance, banks provide exceptional offline services through their physical branches spread across every city in Australia. They can simply hand out handout postcards as part of their advertising strategy. Later, they can conduct video marketing campaigns for their customers, emphasizing the same plans written on the postcard. This way, banks can unite two or more marketing channels to offer an integrated customer journey to their customers.

PostGrid’s direct mail API enables businesses to conduct their offline advertising and communication activities conveniently and productively.