The key to successfully bridging the gap between online and offline marketing is assuring that your traditional offline marketing efforts are online friendly and easily accessible. You have to strategically create a web presence for your offline advertising materials and make sure that both initiatives compliment one another.

There are multitudes of innovative ways to get your online initiatives accessible in your offline marketing materials. When launching new promotions, offers or services, you should always generate a strategy to create offline efforts that support your online strategy. The goal is to have all of your marketing materials support one another and work together to promote your business. Offering coupons in your offline marketing that presents special “online only” deals is a great way to gain more online visitors. Online businesses can benefit from traditional “offline” marketing, just as a brick and mortar can greatly benefit from online marketing.

QR Codes are one of many ways to effectively merge your online and offline marketing initiatives. A QR Code is a two-dimensional code, which is legible by QR scanners, smart phones and other mobiles devices with an advanced camera function. QR Codes provide immediate access to online resources and information by allowing you to scan a code that is strategically placed in your offline marketing materials. QR codes are simply “offline” links that lead to “online” content. QR codes appeal to customer’s urge to have immediate satisfaction for what they are looking for with ease.  QR codes allow for a direct path to the message and information that you want to provide your customers. A successful QR Code campaign will lead your visitors directly to a well organized, informative mobile site that provides the exact information that they were seeking out.

Another essential part to successfully bridging the gap between online and offline is making sure both efforts compliment one another and don’t cause confusion for your customers. Make sure that your online advertising has a mobile friendly version that renders well across all major mobile phone devices. According to Morgan Stanley Research, sales of smart phones will exceed those of PCs in 2012, so marketing to and capitalizing on the ever growing mobile market should be the corner stone of your marketing budget and strategy.

Despite the impressive growth and success of mobile device advertising, there still remain marketers who have yet to recognize the increasing importance of reaching consumers when they’re on the go. It wasn’t until the recent back to school season that retailers started to more heavily pursue customers through the device on which they spend the majority of their time.

Retailers such as Target, Kmart, JCPenny, Kohl’s, Best Buy and Sears rolled out mobile marketing initiatives in time to reach their customer prior to the busy back to school shopping season. These retailers are just a handful of those who have begun to offer mobile coupons, send text promotion alerts and promote their mobile sites all in an effort to gain more visibility and revenue.

Mobile coupons can help to increase the frequency of current customers using your product or service.  In order for customers to receive current coupons, they must first voluntarily opt-in to receiving promotions. Mobile coupons will allow you to get loyal customers to purchase from you more frequently. Rewarding current customers for their faithfulness by sending special mobile promotions gives them more of a reason to maintain a relationship with you and keep you at the forefront for future purchases. 

According to Borrell Associates, the 2010 U.S. Local Mobile Advertising & Promotions Forecast estimates that mobile coupon spending will grow from $90 million in 2009 to $6.52 billion in the next four years. It is expected that customers will buy $2.1 billion worth of goods and services using their mobile phones this year, which is a huge jump from $400 million in sales via mobile phone in 2008. Now more then ever is the time to tap into the ever emerging mobile promotion world.

There is no doubt that mobile phones, particularly smartphones, are becoming more popular. According to IDC, sales of smartphones grew 56.7 percent in the first quarter of this year, far exceeding the growth of the overall mobile market, which grew by 21.7 percent.

As the mobile market continues to grow, marketers are presented with greater opportunities to reach customers.  When considering mobile marketing opportunities for your business, there are few things to take into consideration.

First, think about what the goals of your mobile marketing initiatives will be.  Will someone using a mobile device be interested in what you have to offer, and more importantly, will they be able to complete the desired action?  For instance, if you are a locksmith or are selling ring tones, there could certainly be opportunities for you to have a mobile presence.  However, if you offer something that has an in depth conversion process, such as a form with multiple steps, mobile may be a bit more difficult to justify.

If you have decided that a mobile strategy is appropriate for your business, be sure to set your mobile campaigns separately from your other campaigns. This way you can have targeting flexibility and can tailor the message, and possibly the landing page, specifically to mobile users.   You can even select which types of mobile carriers and/or devices where you want your ads to appear.  For instance, a marketer selling only iPhone accessories my not wish to have their ads appear on Blackberry devices.  Keep in mind that the iPad, while not a phone, can be targeted separately as a mobile device.

You will also want to think about how users will find your ads.  Long tail queries are not as common on mobile devices.  A mobile user is less likely to type out a long search term on their mobile device as they would on a desktop or laptop. Many of us who are smartphone owners know how typing on a tiny or virtual keyboard is still difficult.

Where will you drive traffic to?  Will it be to your website?  How does your website look on a mobile device?  If you plan on driving mobile traffic to your website, it is highly recommended to have a mobile version.  While smartphones can render full websites (with the exception of flash-based sites), mobile websites are much easier to navigate. Check out our website, www.morevisibility.com, from an iPhone or Blackberry and you will see an example of how much simpler it is to get around.

Lastly, bid aggressively to make sure that your visibility is prominent on mobile devices. There is limited space so you will want to beat the competition to get those valuable spots.  This can lead to more visibility for branding purposes and more clicks to lead to conversions.