How Offline & Online Marketing Can Work Together -- And Thrive [Infographic]

As an inbound marketing agency, we’ve heard it (and said it) 1000 times: Outbound marketing (meaning print ads, billboards, commercials, etc.) is ineffective.

It’s expensive, immeasurable, and it just doesn’t align with the way people shop and consume information today -- but on occasion, perhaps that’s all a bit harsh.

For many businesses and industries, traditional offline marketing methods are still extremely valuable.

Depending on your audience, perhaps a print ad in a local newspaper is more effective than waiting for a landing page to be crawled by search engines, or maybe a commercial reaches more people than a link on social media.

While inbound has its undeniable long-term and analytical benefits, every situation is different and there are instances where it just may have to step aside to make room for more traditional tactics.

For many brands, a happy marriage of the two approaches is even possible. 

Though it's difficult to picture how online and offline marketing can work hand-in-hand, it is more common and effective than you think.

One prominent example this year was this campaign by McDonald's featuring actress and writer, Mindy Kaling:

In the simple 30-second TV spot, Kaling speaks directly to viewers urging them to Google "that place where Coca-cola tastes so good," then literally waits for them to do so. 

There's absolutely no mention of the golden arches, but, if, like me, you grabbed your phone to follow the verbal call-to-action, you'll find that the search engine cleverly returned the resounding answer of McDonald's.

Stop me if I'm gushing, but I loved this idea! Recognizing the modern buyer behavior of watching TV with a device in hand, McDonald's cleverly brought the inbound and outbound worlds together and also drew traffic to their brand online. They created a curiosity gap by not revealing the answer to the query and even incentived the action of searching with a deal on a drink. 

It was simple, but very smart. I'm surprised more brands don't do the same!

In this infographic from ColourGraphics, however, you’ll learn how a few companies already are distributing their marketing budgets between offline and online tactics. It also dives into which deliver the highest return on investment and how you can use online marketing to foster offline conversations and growth.

Here are a few of its highlights:

• Marketers allocated the highest percentage of their digital marketing budget to digital advertising
• 28% of marketers reduced their traditional advertising budget to fund digital marketing activities
• Newspaper ad-spend dropped from 18.9% in 2012 to 15.8% in 2015
• 42% of marketers feel that analytics and working with metrics will become a core competency in the next 5 years
• Mobile alone will account for 505 of marketing budgets by 2019.
• 86% of high-performing companies use analytics to direct focus and impact.
• 48% of people who tweet about brands and companies claim an intention to buy
• 52% of marketers plan on increasing their investment in email marketing