Your Digital Brand Should Match Your Offline Marketing

Technology is quickly evolving everywhere, so it’s not going anywhere anytime soon—making your business’s website more important than ever. However, if your online brand doesn’t match your offline marketing, you could drive customers away instead of gaining them. 

Below, we’ll cover online and offline marketing, the pros and cons of each type, and why your offline ad campaigns need to match your online brand to help you build a successful business.

What is Online and Offline Marketing?

Before jumping into why your online and offline marketing should match, it’s essential to define what online and offline marketing are. Online marketing is every advertising campaign or effort that focuses on the internet. 

For example, email campaigns, SEO optimization, and social media advertisements are all forms of online marketing. Offline marketing refers to any advertisements that aren’t online, such as TV commercials, billboards, or newspaper ads. Each type has its benefits and drawbacks, and which type you focus on will depend on the services you provide and your target demographic.

Which is Best?

Both online and offline marketing have their strengths and weaknesses, and some products or services will succeed more in advertising in one space over the other. Figuring out which type to focus on can be tricky but highly beneficial.

Online Marketing Pros and Cons

Online marketing is more likely to reach younger people. It provides many options as to how to attract their attention. For example, you could run social media for your brand and post fun, engaging posts. For example, a cozy store could provide relaxation tips or polls about its customers’ favorite candle scents. Plus, your ads can be placed in various locations, from at the top of Google search results to banner ads on other storefronts and sites.

The analytics from online marketing are a massive benefit. The stats can tell you how successful an ad campaign was overall, where the most clicks came from, the age range and gender of those who clicked through, and so much more. You can then take these solid numbers, figure out what worked and what didn’t, and launch a new, more successful campaign.

Online marketing can be challenging to get your ads noticed. Social media users may scroll past your ads without a second thought; ads run on video-sharing sites such as YouTube may be skipped. Many companies use these ads, so getting yours to stand out can be tricky. However, if you can get people’s attention, you’ll receive many new, younger customers.

Offline Marketing Pros and Cons

The most significant benefit of offline marketing is that you’re more likely to catch someone when they’re paying attention. You can’t scroll past a TV commercial, and since the person was already watching a show, they may also watch your commercial. At the very least, they’ll recognize your brand name or product when they see it and may be compelled to purchase it for that reason.

Another benefit of offline marketing is that your ads are physically in someone’s hands a lot of the time. Flyers, business cards, and newspaper ads aren’t on a screen and may stand out simply for that. Seeing something cool online is one thing, but being able to hold a free sample of that product is entirely different, more compelling, and more personal.

There are drawbacks, however. Some offline marketing tools, such as billboards, can be expensive for a potentially smaller return. On top of that, it can be more challenging to tell whether or not an offline ad campaign was successful since you can’t get specific analytics from them. You may, however, attract many people to your business through these campaigns.

Why Not Both?

If you’re unsure about which type of marketing to focus on or would like the best of both worlds, why not market both online and offline? For example, you could shorten a TV commercial for a Youtube ad, turn a banner ad into a billboard, and much more. By utilizing both online and offline marketing, you’d ensure that people recognize your brand whether they read the morning newspaper or scroll social media.

The cheaper online marketing would offset the higher cost of offline marketing. Running this hybrid campaign would attract more customers from all fronts, making it worth every penny. However, ensure that these campaigns represent the experience your customers can expect from your store. For instance, a bombastic ad for a cozy store wouldn’t allow customers to set the correct expectation of the store and may leave a customer with an incorrect impression of what you provide.

By running similar ads online and offline, you can apply the analytics gathered by your online strategies to your offline ones. While you still will know how many sales were inspired by the offline campaign specifically, you will be able to tell how impactful it was for specific genders and ages based on the success of the online version. 

You can then use this information to better target those demographics. You could even take this information and create an ad more suited for other age groups or genders.

Matching Tones

While online and offline marketing refers to advertisements, your brand is what you offer and where you offer it. Your online brand is your website, and your offline brand is your physical store. While these two can’t be identical, they can have the same feel and tone. 

For example, suppose your store provides a cozy atmosphere to customers. In that case, your website needs to utilize its images, colors, and messaging to deliver the same atmosphere. You also need to ensure the products you offer in your physical store are available for purchase on your website or are at least able to be viewed there. 

Imagine that the cozy store from the previous example stocks its shelves with soothing soaking salts, scented candles, and fluffy blankets. Then, offering these items on the online store will not only assist in creating the desired tone for the website but will also ensure your products are sold to more customers, boosting your sales.

Matching Marketing

Matching your website to your physical store provides more than just more customers; it also makes setting up advertising campaigns much more straightforward. Ultimately, it won’t matter where your TV and radio commercials, newspaper ads, email campaigns, or social media advertisements lead. Customers will receive the same atmosphere and experience whether they buy online or visit the physical store. It will also make your business more memorable. 

You will assure customers that they can buy your products and services from the comfort of their couch or out on an errand. They will receive the same experience no matter which they choose. Consistent marketing may even cause some to specifically seek out your storefronts when they need one of your specialty products.

Improving Your Bottom Line

Matching your website to your offline marketing will give customers the correct impression of what you provide, attract many new people to buy your products, and make your store more memorable overall. 

Combining online and offline marketing campaigns can drive up sales for both offline and online locations while keeping costs low, and being able to apply some of the online statistics to offline campaigns is a massive boon. 

Of course, where and how you run your ad campaigns is ultimately up to you, but keeping all of this in mind or implementing some of the suggested strategies can help make your next one even more successful.