| Introduction
In the Psychographics lesson, you designed a street billboard.
This is a form of offline marketing. Offline marketing is any form
of advertising that you do away from the Internet.
Examples of Offline Marketing
| "If
you're immersed in the Internet, you may have forgotten that most people
still get the majority of their marketing messages through traditional
channels."
--
Ralph Wilson of Wilson Web
|
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Business Cards
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Newspapers
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Radio
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School newspapers (University and High Schools)
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Newsletters of Companies other than your own (some companies sell space
and others will allow requested ads)
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School yearbooks (support your local high schools and colleges, and consequently
support your own company)
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Company stationery
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Shopping bags
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Product Packaging
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Receipts
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Company brochures
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Yellow Pages
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Local fund raising campaigns
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Magazines
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Street billboards
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Mail flyers (regular snail mail)
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Television - with
some considerations
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Anything that walks out your company door with your company name on it
Offline Marketing Strategy
You should seek to promote your online marketing endeavors away from
the Internet. Reasons:
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Brand recognition
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Increase awareness of companies, products, and services
Offline promotion is essential for obtaining a competitive advantage over
so many other companies trying to tap into the same audiences. The
Internet allows consumers to purchase from a broader range of companies,
and often times, offline promotion is the key element that sets one company
ahead of another.
Marketers should also remember: off-line advertising and promotional
campaigns of online goods and services are generally given more response
by current Internet users than by current non-Internet users. This
is good to know when designing a marketing activity for a product or service.
Who will go to the Internet site will likely be a narrowed group within
the larger target audience.
Example of interactive offline marketing: Have you eaten a candy
bar and then gone to the web site to enter the code inside of the wrapper
to see if you are a winner? In the Spring and Summer of 2003, Nestle
ran an interactive campaign to draw consumers to their web sites. Other
companies have done the same in the past, such as Mars Inc. with Snickers.
Here are a few product images that have participated in an interactive
offline marketing activity:
Summary
To be competitive and to raise brand awareness, companies need to concentrate
equally on offline and online marketing strategies. The next lesson
introduces you to online marketing strategies.
Anything that leaves a business should have a marketing message on it
and should include a web site address.
Assignment
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Select a product
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Come up with an interactive marketing activity for that product - an offline
marketing strategy that would draw consumers to the web site.
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Remember in order to go the web site, consumers need a reason.
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State the reason consumers would have for going to the web site.
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Describe the target audience of this particular product.
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Describe an individual within the target audience who would be most likely
to go to the web site.
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State how this marketing activity would positively influence the target
audience. In other words, what would make this marketing activity
effective? -- Why would it work?
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