Integrating Offline and Online Marketing

These days, we are all thinking about how to make our marketing budgets work harder.

What is the first step? Measurement, of course! Using a free analytics program, like Google Analytics, can give you all the data you need for absolutely no cost! Once you know what is working and what isn't working, it is easy to direct the marketing budget in the right direction. 

Next, ensure your offline and online marketng tactics are integrated. Here are some easy, yet impactful, tips:

Here are some easy tips for integration:

• Consistent look and feel 
  Your website and online marketing needs to look similar to your offline branding. If your emails don’t look the same as your brochures or you use a different logo on your website to the one you use in your newspaper ads, people won’t recognize your brand and you will lose customers. So make sure your corporate colors and your logo are consistent throughout all your marketing. 
• Use the same slogans and messages 
  Any catch phrases or messages that you include in one of your marketing activities should be carried over into all of them. The main slogan should appear on every piece of marketing material that you create, and messages from particular offline campaigns should appear on your website. The best way to get people to remember you brand and become your customers is consistency, so make sure you use the same messages in all your marketing. 
• Put your website address on everything 
  This is by far the easiest way to integrate your online and offline marketing, and it is usually the most overlooked. Your website address needs to appear on absolutely everything – there is no point having one if you aren’t telling people about it. Put it on your business cards, letterheads, invoices, brochures, uniforms, outdoor and car signage and in every single advertisement you create. This will increase your website traffic and your sales leads. 
• Use the keywords that appear in your offline ads 
  Everyone in business is talking about keywords, because they have become one of the most important factors in marketing campaigns. To get your online and offline activities working together, you need to use the keywords from your offline ads in your website or bid for them on search engines. This will ensure that people who see your ad and then search for something they read in it will be directed to your site. 
• Link landing pages to your ads 
  For your advertising campaigns to be successful, they must have landing pages on your website. To fully integrate your offline and online marketing, any campaigns that you run must be linked to a landing page. So if a prospect sees your newspaper ad with a particular offer, they can type in the URL in the ad and be taken to a page that is all about the offer they saw in the ad. Your offer will generate far more leads and sales if it links to an effective landing page. 

Visit us at www.alightinteractive.com for expert advice on analytics and measurement. 

PPC or SEO? You need both!

A common question we receive is whether Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising is better or more effective than doing Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for my site. Well, have you heard the story of the tortoise and the hare?

You see, in order to truly maximize your search engine presence, you need to start with an effective SEO program. Search Engine Optimization, while slow and steady like the tortoise, is foundationally critical to your success online. A few keys reasons for SEO:

#1 - 8 out of 10 users are more likely to click on your natural or organic listing versuse a PPC ad or sponsored listing.

#2 - Unlike PPC ads, your website is the hub to your online presence. It must be visible to all potential prospects and customers everywhere they are searching.

#3 - Generally speaking, a website that is following a consistent SEO program will drive more traffic and users will generally have a better experience.

So what about PPC advertising? Like the hare, PPC ads are the quick-hitting events that can quickly drive targeted traffic to your website. A few key reasons for PPC advertising:

#1 - PPC advertising is the most cost-effective form of advertising today.

#2 - Unlike SEO that takes time to build your ranking, PPC ads can immediately vault you to the first page of the serach results.

#3 - PPC ads can be very targeted to a specific area/region, easily tested, and measured for effectivenss.

We all know who wins the race between the tortoise and the hare. In the long-run, an effective SEO program will drive more visits to your website more cost-effictively. However, the hare sure created a lot of excitement along the way! So get in the race and use these two strategies the right way to maximize your online presence.

Sound simple? It really is. In order to succeed however, you must begin to change your mindset and view of the web to make it a reality. Visit us at http://www.alightinteractive.com/ to see how we can help you leverage the web as a sales and marketing asset.

Using Web Analytics to Drive Web Strategy

Two of the most common questions we receive from customers and prospects go something like this:

"My website had 10,000 visitors last month - is that good?"

or

"My online media or ppc campaign had 25,000 impressions - is that good?"

My answer is always the same - "I don't know, you tell me!" They always look at me like I have horns...after all, we specialize in web strategy and ROI and I should have these answers!

What I then share with them is that they are asking the wrong question. You see the question is not whether or not your website or your ad was seen by the right number of people. Brand building aside, the real question is whether or not they took an action that resulted in a "conversion event."

So what is a conversion event? Well, a conversion event is an intentional strategy that is determined before you launch your campaign. It defines the goal of the campaign and the corresponding action the user should take. Goals can be information requests, newsletter signups, referrals, pdf downloads and, of course, purchases.

After defining this conversion event, you are then able to leverage web analytics to drive web strategy by measuring how well your users are "converting." Based on these results, you move from guessing about your results to having real data which allows you change and evolve your marketing campaign to consistently improve results, target budget and direct your efforts.

Sound simple? It really is. In order to succeed however, you must begin to change your mindset and view of the web to make it a reality. Visit us at http://www.alightinteractive.com/ to see how we can help you leverage the web as a sales and marketing asset.