You’ve got a nifty new Website with plenty of content that’s optimized for organic search, you’ve started utilizing pay-per-click advertising and you always run great offline marketing campaigns. So, you should be all set to do business in today’s world, right?
Well, not necessarily—not if your search and offline efforts work against each other instead of together toward a common goal. To reap the most reward from your search and offline marketing efforts, you need to coordinate the two and ensure that they work in tandem to capitalize on what each does best and multiply what either can do alone.
The good news? iProspect reports that just 1 of every 2 companies (55%) that use search-marketing tactics coordinates or integrates its search marketing with offline channels—and that spells opportunity and competitive advantage for your company. Take a few simple steps to ensure that your search and offline marketing teams work together for your customers—and your business.
What Search Marketing Brings to the Table
The search-marketing side of your business has a lot to offer to your offline marketing team. In particular, keyword research and the ability to quickly and easily track and test messaging, offers, calls to action and conversion funnels are the two most valuable contributions your search-marketing team can make to your online/offline integration efforts.
Use keyword research to benefit your offline campaigns. At the heart of search marketing—whether you’re optimizing content for organic search or conducting pay-per-click advertising campaigns—are relevant keywords, that is, the words and phrases that your customers and prospects enter into the search engines to find your business or the types of solutions you offer. Because searchers often use very different terms than what you or others in your business or the industry in general might use to describe what you do, conducting keyword research to discover the most effective language is essential to rank well within the search listings and drive traffic to your site.
Your search-marketing team knows precisely the language that resonates with your audience and is most profitable in driving traffic to your company site. Sharing that keyword knowledge with your offline marketing team and ensuring that the language they use in offline campaigns is consistent with online campaigns is a very effective way to concentrate your efforts across all channels on messaging that works. Your customers win because the language they see offline is familiar with what they see online and reinforces what they naturally search on. Your business wins because you can focus your offline campaigns on what’s already proved to work online, rather than spending money on campaigns that might not attract purchasers because the language isn’t quite right.
Use Web analytics and testing to guide offline campaigns. Today’s Web analytics applications (e.g., Google Analytics) let you determine how visitors come to your Web site, what they do while they’re there and the paths they follow that lead to some type of action—a call, a download, a registration, a purchase. Not only can you see which search terms they use most often to navigate to your site, but you can also determine the effectiveness of a specific message, offer, call-to-action or conversion process. And, you can readily get this information much more quickly and cost-effectively than you might through offline methods.
So, offline marketers can benefit from search marketing’s capability to easily track and test. Have a new offline campaign you’d like to run? Check it out online first, where you have the capability to quickly establish a baseline, fine-tune the wording, test and repeat until you find the best combination of message, offer and call to action. Then use the improved version in your offline campaign.
What Offline Channels Bring to the Table
The offline marketing side of your business likewise has much to offer your search-marketing team. The variety of offline channels and their established appeal to customers cannot be underrated. Your offline team holds the diverse, specialized knowledge to get the most out of those channels to benefit your business, regardless of how your customers choose to complete their purchase. How your customers react to and use the information you provide through TV, direct mail, newspapers, magazines, event displays and outdoor signage influences their decision to work with your company—online or offline.
Use the unique features of offline media to reach your customers in all the ways they expect and prefer to interact with you. Your offline team knows the types of initiatives they need to run in different channels to be most effective with your customers. By interacting with the search team early on in the development process, specific strategies, messaging and timing can be worked out so that the online team can provide the most relevant search-marketing campaigns to support your offline initiatives—and ultimately convert prospects to customers.
Use the added opportunity of offline channels to provide options for customers. People like options for making purchases. Some like to interact face-to-face with a salesperson; others want more distance and order via phone; still others opt for the anonymity that online transactions offer. Your offline channels provide numerous opportunities to inform and reinforce all the ways customers can interact with you to do business—including going online. Today’s customers move back and forth between online and offline channels and expect seamless transitions and support wherever they might be. Communicating consistent options across all channels builds trust and means customers always can select what works best for them wherever and however they engage with your company.
How You Capitalize from an Integrated Approach
The bottom line? Both the search-marketing and offline sides of your business have much to offer each other when they work in tandem to integrate marketing across all channels for your company. By promoting collaboration and the sharing of knowledge and strengths that each brings to the table, rather than letting each work in isolation (which in effect means they’re competing with each other for your customers), your company stands to gain the most against your competition.
Take advantage of the unique appeal that each marketing channel brings to your customers and ensure that the campaigns you run send a consistent and proven message across those channels. The reassurance that customers gain from seeing familiar and consistent messages about your company as they move from channel to channel goes a long way toward influencing their purchasing behavior.
Well, not necessarily—not if your search and offline efforts work against each other instead of together toward a common goal. To reap the most reward from your search and offline marketing efforts, you need to coordinate the two and ensure that they work in tandem to capitalize on what each does best and multiply what either can do alone.
The good news? iProspect reports that just 1 of every 2 companies (55%) that use search-marketing tactics coordinates or integrates its search marketing with offline channels—and that spells opportunity and competitive advantage for your company. Take a few simple steps to ensure that your search and offline marketing teams work together for your customers—and your business.
What Search Marketing Brings to the Table
The search-marketing side of your business has a lot to offer to your offline marketing team. In particular, keyword research and the ability to quickly and easily track and test messaging, offers, calls to action and conversion funnels are the two most valuable contributions your search-marketing team can make to your online/offline integration efforts.
Use keyword research to benefit your offline campaigns. At the heart of search marketing—whether you’re optimizing content for organic search or conducting pay-per-click advertising campaigns—are relevant keywords, that is, the words and phrases that your customers and prospects enter into the search engines to find your business or the types of solutions you offer. Because searchers often use very different terms than what you or others in your business or the industry in general might use to describe what you do, conducting keyword research to discover the most effective language is essential to rank well within the search listings and drive traffic to your site.
Your search-marketing team knows precisely the language that resonates with your audience and is most profitable in driving traffic to your company site. Sharing that keyword knowledge with your offline marketing team and ensuring that the language they use in offline campaigns is consistent with online campaigns is a very effective way to concentrate your efforts across all channels on messaging that works. Your customers win because the language they see offline is familiar with what they see online and reinforces what they naturally search on. Your business wins because you can focus your offline campaigns on what’s already proved to work online, rather than spending money on campaigns that might not attract purchasers because the language isn’t quite right.
Use Web analytics and testing to guide offline campaigns. Today’s Web analytics applications (e.g., Google Analytics) let you determine how visitors come to your Web site, what they do while they’re there and the paths they follow that lead to some type of action—a call, a download, a registration, a purchase. Not only can you see which search terms they use most often to navigate to your site, but you can also determine the effectiveness of a specific message, offer, call-to-action or conversion process. And, you can readily get this information much more quickly and cost-effectively than you might through offline methods.
So, offline marketers can benefit from search marketing’s capability to easily track and test. Have a new offline campaign you’d like to run? Check it out online first, where you have the capability to quickly establish a baseline, fine-tune the wording, test and repeat until you find the best combination of message, offer and call to action. Then use the improved version in your offline campaign.
What Offline Channels Bring to the Table
The offline marketing side of your business likewise has much to offer your search-marketing team. The variety of offline channels and their established appeal to customers cannot be underrated. Your offline team holds the diverse, specialized knowledge to get the most out of those channels to benefit your business, regardless of how your customers choose to complete their purchase. How your customers react to and use the information you provide through TV, direct mail, newspapers, magazines, event displays and outdoor signage influences their decision to work with your company—online or offline.
Use the unique features of offline media to reach your customers in all the ways they expect and prefer to interact with you. Your offline team knows the types of initiatives they need to run in different channels to be most effective with your customers. By interacting with the search team early on in the development process, specific strategies, messaging and timing can be worked out so that the online team can provide the most relevant search-marketing campaigns to support your offline initiatives—and ultimately convert prospects to customers.
Use the added opportunity of offline channels to provide options for customers. People like options for making purchases. Some like to interact face-to-face with a salesperson; others want more distance and order via phone; still others opt for the anonymity that online transactions offer. Your offline channels provide numerous opportunities to inform and reinforce all the ways customers can interact with you to do business—including going online. Today’s customers move back and forth between online and offline channels and expect seamless transitions and support wherever they might be. Communicating consistent options across all channels builds trust and means customers always can select what works best for them wherever and however they engage with your company.
How You Capitalize from an Integrated Approach
The bottom line? Both the search-marketing and offline sides of your business have much to offer each other when they work in tandem to integrate marketing across all channels for your company. By promoting collaboration and the sharing of knowledge and strengths that each brings to the table, rather than letting each work in isolation (which in effect means they’re competing with each other for your customers), your company stands to gain the most against your competition.
Take advantage of the unique appeal that each marketing channel brings to your customers and ensure that the campaigns you run send a consistent and proven message across those channels. The reassurance that customers gain from seeing familiar and consistent messages about your company as they move from channel to channel goes a long way toward influencing their purchasing behavior.
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