Marketing Offline and Online – Examining this relationship
February 22nd, 2008
Are your online and offline strategies headed for divorce? How to save the marketing marriage
The Indigio sponsored Wednesday event at the Brown Palace was a huge success. The event was arranged to discuss the Marketing 101 mantra that a consistent brand and message is key to any campaigns’ success. The mantra is true, but that goal can be difficult to obtain. The panelists of local area marketing experts examined the relationship between online and offline marketing strategies, by analyzing their own success in creating a united marketing effort.
Despite busy schedules in the middle of the week, attendees got up early to enjoy breakfast and stayed to the very end engrossed by the subject and providing a number questions to the speakers Jon Nordmark with eBags, Inc, Angie Magatagan with R.H. Donnelley, and Kae Penner with McClain Finlon. I had never experienced an event with as many follow up questions as occurred in the hour that followed the three panelists presentations only highlighting the importance of the online and offline marketing subject.
Two items that I came away with from this event between the presentation topic and the questions that followed:
How should online and offline marketing be addressed? The effort to provide consistency to a campaign was described as bringing the biggest success. Kae Penner’s presentation pointed out accurately that “Consistent doesn’t mean the same”, it is important that the media for the ad is taken into consideration. The example she provided was creating an interactive flash demo to place online rather than providing online access to a brochure developed for offline marketing. I’ve seen a number of sites that have not taken the extra steps to put this into practice.
Angie Magatagan provided wonderful statistics and research to support the idea that the customer often has access to several different types of media at the same time: TV, magazines, internet, phone, etc. As a result it is important that the message and focus of the campaign in each of the different areas remains the same. Indigio’s own Tim Higgins reminded the audience, and I think that it is important to re-emphasize, to the customer the campaign is about buying a product regardless of where the marketing occurs. Jon Nordmark provided his companies experience of the success including an offline catalog to their marketing efforts as well as the disastrous results of removing that offline channel thus providing tangible proof that online and offline marketing directly influence each other.
Should there be separate offline and online marketing groups? The panel agreed that Kae Penner’s statement that it is the business processes set up for the marketing group(s) that is important and not necessarily the structure. You can have a very successful marketing campaign with separate departments for online and offline as long as the business process are in place and the vision is shared between the groups. In a separate or united marketing department it is, however, important to have specialists in each area. As a supporter of simplified and consistent business processes this was great to hear.
I hope everyone who attended this event enjoyed it as much as I did.
Photos of this event can be found in our flickr feed or click here.
Click here for an additional article on this event ColoradoBiz Magazine.
3 Responses to “Marketing Offline and Online – Examining this relationship”
By Tom Whittaker on Feb 22, 2008 | Reply
It was a great event and Tim Higgins did an excellent job as moderater, bringing humor and wisdom throughout the event. My favorite quote from Tim was “The consumer doesn’t think about online/offline. They think about wanting to buy a product. This is something everyone should remember.
By Sara Pacheco on Feb 22, 2008 | Reply
Kae Penner rocked it hard core. I loved her presentation.