A study carried out by Smart Insights in 2017 reveals that only 6% of companies believe that their online and offline strategies are effectively combined.
Huge opportunities are therefore being left aside, in a world where 75% of people say they use the internet primarily to find information about goods and services. In addition, 64% of customers say that having seen a video on social media influenced their purchasing decision.
The problem is that most communications professionals view their online and offline strategies as two separate strategies. But they are not!
Facebook and Instagram are two different platforms, but they are considered to work and influence in a complementary way. In the same way, offline communication is simply another platform for sending a message, generating leads, nurturing them, and converting prospects into customers. This includes offline sales efforts. How do you rethink your online and offline strategies so that they work together?
Start with your buying journey:
Take a look at every entry point through which your prospect could initiate contact with your brand, both online and offline. Map this journey into two categories:
First, the overall journey:
- What is the ideal path to lead your prospect to a purchase decision?
- What are their first touchpoints and where does that lead them?
- How are they influenced by online and offline touchpoints?
- Through what type of media?
- If you have an offline store, what type(s) of media primarily influenced them to come to you (or come back for their final purchase decision)?
Then, your current journeys:
Identify areas for improvement in your buying journey:
- Are the communications they receive fragmented?
- Are they being pushed to buy too quickly (the funnel method) ?
- Or, on the contrary, are they receiving too much generic content and not enough personalized content?
- Does the content they receive help them identify their needs?
- When the time comes to make a decision, have they been offered an online and offline experience that performs well enough?
- If you have an offline storefront and sell online, do you have an effective way to help your prospect make the transition?
- If they take the opposite path, find one of your products online, but you sell offline, have you thought about the levers to put in place to motivate them?
Examine the key moments in the decision-making process.
After looking at both your ideal and current buying journey, you need to carefully examine the milestones in the decision-making process.
Let’s imagine that you sell chopsticks, but chopsticks that help people eat without being afraid of hurting themselves. Is it desirable for your customer to come into your store without having heard about your product? Or would you prefer them to arrive after:
- Having seen a testimonial from someone who hurt themselves with traditional chopsticks and talks about their fear;
- Having downloaded a tutorial explaining how to use chopsticks correctly (for example through a Facebook ad targeting people who have viewed a sushi restaurant page at least twice over the past 6 months);
- Having seen one of the food bloggers they follow talk about the product on their blog.
Once the prospect arrives at your store, your salesperson will only have to close the sale (perhaps you can add a special discount coupon to that), rather than having to explain everything from the beginning and face product identification and understanding issues.
What makes them decide to buy?
Conversely, let’s imagine that your prospect comes into your store by chance, and that their curiosity was the trigger as they were passing by: What happens when they leave? Do they leave “only” with general information?
Or do they:
- Research online to look at testimonials and nice tutorials on your blog or on social media;
- Check the hashtag #safechopsticks to discover food bloggers and maybe even see that some people they know have taken selfies with their own chopsticks;
- Receive an email with discount coupons for all the Japanese restaurants within a 3 km radius around them, along with some content to nurture them, for example “use your chopsticks like a pro”.
Here is an example showing how online and offline strategies can be combined to serve the same objective: making it easier for your prospect to make a decision in their buying journey.
Observe the transition points:
Very often, the missing piece in this marketing strategy integrating online and offline is offering your community opportunities and motivations that will allow you to reach them while visitors are behind their computer.
To do this, you must first think about the “why.” Why would a person who has come into contact with your brand or your product once want to do so again through another channel?
What do you offer online that you cannot offer offline?
- Better customer service?
- Faster response time?
- More engaging and educational content about how to use your product?
What do you offer offline that you cannot offer online?
- Direct contact with the brand?
- More personalized demonstrations?
- Better analysis of user needs?
Once you have developed your points of differentiation, start placing a few strategic “calls-to-action” (action buttons) on online content that helps your community understand the benefit of following you. This can be done through very simple actions; the goal is to create value.
Combined marketing strategies (online and offline) that work:
You take part in many trade shows, and this is one of your main sources for acquiring new prospects, as well as a place where you can come into direct contact with many potential buyers. The issue is that you have difficulty getting these people to sign up for your email contact list.
What motivation can you provide these offline prospects so that they join your online community? And therefore enable you to provide them with quality content that will engage them in your sales cycle?
Here are a few ideas to help you solve this problem:
- A Facebook contest, using hashtags, and other ideas to encourage your prospects to leave you their information by themselves;
- Announce specific emails throughout the trade show that will bring added value to the prospect: specific promotions, news, etc.;
- Offer a space for expression: give visitors the opportunity to leave their questions along with their email address, questions that you will answer during or after the trade show by writing to them;
- Promote your high-quality content, such as a white paper, at your booth and place a “call-to-action” on your website.
Even if you have a strong online community and a well-maintained blog, it may still be unaware of your offline activities. The opportunity to be part of this “real-life” experience, work with the sales team, and see the product in action… these are all initiatives that the online community may want to follow (and needs in order to be converted into customers).
You can, for example, post specific articles when you participate in trade shows: round tables where you speak, workshops that you offer… and provide specific tips and advice.
This will give your community information and ways to come meet you in person.
Online and offline marketing strategies work together:
“Integrate or die,” that could be the motto for your team! Across all your media, channels, levels, and every layer of your business.
This may mean changing the way you think about all your customer engagement strategies.
