Offline marketing—printed flyers, business cards and other media—are surplus to requirements in a world where everything is online. Thus, offline marketing is dead!
So why are big brands still investing in poster campaigns? Why do fashion brands still spending thousands of pounds placing adverts in magazines? Why are companies still allotting a slice of their marketing budget to offline marketing?
The answer is simple—offline marketing isn’t dead. It is still powerful and when used in the right way, will yield results. Better still, a business can have the best of both worlds, seamlessly blending their online and offline marketing to produce a powerful promotional combination.
Why are companies still investing in offline marketing?
There are many reasons why, but the reasons why businesses still invest in offline marketing is because it has value. But there are many misconceptions about offline marketing.
Here are four reasons why businesses haven’t fallen out of love with offline marketing.
1. There is ROI
Return on investment is important. Essentially, a business wants a marketing campaign to bring in more revenue than what they spent on it. This applies to both offline and online marketing.
There are some interesting statistics floating about. For example, direct mail has the third highest ROI at 27%, behind email at 122% and social media at 28% (Direct Marketing Association figures).
You may look at the vast difference in projected ROI and assume it means that third place is not good enough, but any marketing campaign that gives a high ROI is worth considering.
Any marketing tool, whether online or offline, will only yield results if they are well-researched and designed to reach the right customer target.
2. It can be used to reach everyone
There is an assumption that offline marketing is only really any good for reaching the older population—you know, the ones who aren’t on social media or online at all.
But are you sure about that?
The online world is a crowded, crazy place where users are bombarded with all kinds of material every time they hop online.Their email inboxes are clogged with marketing emails, all professing to bring the next big thing their way.
Sometimes, it is nice to disconnect, to leave the blue-light of the screen alone for a few hours. People of all ages are still reading print newspapers and magazines. They still take note of the mail that is pushed through the door and they do see the flyers in the local, free newspaper when it arrives.
In other words, offline marketing is not just for the ‘old’ but for everyone, of every age.
Photo by Campaign Creators on Unsplash
3. It can be tracked
ROI and understanding where your customers are coming from is important information; but you might think offline is tough to track.
However, it is amazing what a combination of offline and online can produce. For example, using printed coupons in a magazine or other publication for people to use in-store can have their own unique code, perfect for tracking which publications reached the most people.
Quite often, offline marketing is the anchor that produces the results.
4. Use offline and online marketing together
It was a long time coming but in recent years, it has become clear that using a blend of offline and online marketing tactics makes for a powerful promotional combination.
Offline can be the seed of thought that encourages potential customers to seek out more information online. It can also be the tool that drives people to purchase online but in person too.
We can complete our grocery shopping online and have it delivered, and never see the inside of the supermarket BUT brands are still printing coupons in leaflets, magazines and newspaper offering money off in-store.
And when you visit to get 50p off your favourite biscuit brand or buy your favourite coffee at half price, you probably make other purchases too.
And all of that happened offline.
—Nick Cooper