Free Pay Per Click Advertising and Online Marketing Advice

Offline Ads can help your Pay Per Click Ads

November 1st, 2007 Posted in PPC Basics

It’s been a fairly hot topic over the past year, especially at the various host cities along the Search Engine Strategies tour.  It goes by many terms: integrated marketing, holistic marketing, cross-marketing, etc.  The idea is, your prospective customer base is likely to buy, register, or contact you if they see advertising that catches their attention across multiple media sources.  Marketers know this for a fact from experience, but it’s harder to influence SMB’s with smaller budgets that starting off small might not be the best approach.

In keeping with the context of this blog, I’m going to refine the topic a bit and talk about how offline ads - such as newspaper, direct mail, radio, and television - can assist online conversion.   Let’s think of the problem in this case, that is the conversion rate of your pay per click campaigns or online marketing in general.  It might not necessarily be problematic in the sense that you’re losing money, but from my own experience, there is always room for improvement.

You may have noticed that online advertising is a competitive space, and regardless of size, your company has to compete.  Established companies typically see higher levels of competition on core keywords and general markets, but smaller companies have the advantage when it comes to tactical speed and competing in niche markets.  Size doesn’t dictate success, as Rose Sylvia at ppcThink points out upping the daily budget can open the floodgates to poor quality traffic.

So what are the advantages of offline ads, and how can they supplement your PPC campaigns?  Offline ads can help companies increase conversion because traditional marketing:

  • Reintroduces your company to those that may have strayed, or forgotten your value proposition
  • Offers you another chance at a first impression with new prospects unaware of your products or services
  • Allows you to apply concepts gleaned from successful online campaigns, thus creating consistent messaging and brand recognition
  • Spurs interest in promotions and offers that might not have been possible with search engine marketing alone
  • Lends greater credibility to your company thanks to the real and tangible nature of offline advertising vehicles
  • May give you a competitive advantage over competitors that may not be able to enter your offline space due to regulatory restrictions or local bylaws
  • Gives your advertising piece a greater shelf life (more on this tomorrow)
  • Can target captive audiences that can’t just click back to a search engine
  • Introduce a brand name or trademarked term that users search for, which can cost much less than general terms your competition is bidding on (remember to request and obtain exclusivity on your trademarks!)

Now that you have some sense of how offline ads can assist your online search marketing campaigns, stay tuned for tomorrow’s post on shelf life, and the average decision-making speed for online and offline campaigns.

Post a Comment