Create an Online Presence for your Offline Advertising Efforts

Taylor Wilson - November 30, 2010

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.