What About Offline Advertising and Online Advertising? It’s about the Blend.
What About Offline Advertising and it’s application to website promotion and marketing strategies? Do bricks and mortar separate the offline and online communities, or does Internet connectivity penetrate the bricks and build a bridge between the offline and online communities? It appears that Internet connectivity has been and still is penetrating the bricks and mortar. The bricks have found advantages to Internet advertising, and now the Internet business community is finding advantages to Offline Advertising in bricks and mortar style.
One of the finest most recent examples of successful marrying of Online and Offline Advertising, is Webkindz (www.webkindz.com), who successfully paired a plush doll with an interactive website and now has over a million visitors and a hefty worth estimated at $100 million. Consumers buy the plush doll, the doll has an internet code, and that code is the key to taking care of the virtual Webkindz pet online. The child can now enjoy the plush by touching, and interacting in the video format that is pervasive in today’s world. This was a genius step forward that derived from and blended strategies from cabbage patch dolls, puppy adoption papers and neopets. Moving up to teenagers, Pew Research (www.pewinternet.org), reports that 85% of teenage girls and 81% of teenage boys go online to look up information about their favorite movie star, television show, music group or sports stars. The new generation expects integration between online and offline worlds. If you are present in the media form that the teenagers are connecting with in their offline movie, television and sports stars, then your connection can meld the offline and online presence.
Pew Research reported in 2000 that 73% of adults go online to research products, and only 52% buy them online. Can you be the offline presence that informs adults that you are the place to go to do your research? Use Offline Advertising promotion to promote your online presence as a destination site for product and service reviews.
Need more evidence of online and offline worlds penetrating each other? Take a look at web-based Billboards. Out of the 450,000 billboards in the U.S., approximately 600 to 700 are web-based, according to outdoor advertising company Watchfire, as reported by Internet Retailer (www.internetretailer.com). The trend is on the upswing, and although consumers are often numb to television and newspaper advertising, they continue to drive the freeways to work, passing billboards on the way. Web-based billboards have an IP site and the content can be changed frequently. Could one of these billboards advertise your site?
Offline Advertising opportunities are everywhere, from inside the store to on the freeway. The Internet has integrated our household communication, our businesses, our schools and our shopping experiences. The Internet has penetrated the bricks and mortar and the bricks and mortar have penetrated the Internet. Don’t ignore the opportunities that lay ahead in the offline world as the two become one, or you will suffer from a one-sided relationship, and lose the sales from the other.
What about Offline Advertising? Online advertisers better get Advertising Offline and connect themselves to both worlds, or consumers will connect with their competitors. Start thinking outside the web, and have your Offline Advertising program get the offline world to connect to you.
