3 Tips for Integrating your Traditional with your Internet Advertising

As a business owner or marketer, you likely use some combination of "traditional" advertising like posters, fliers and print ads, and internet advertising like social media, email and search engine optimization. With the plethora of options now available to businesses of all sizes and budgets, it’s easy to lose sight of the most important part of marketing: a coherent and consistent core message. Here are 3 tips to ensure your traditional and internet advertising strategies are well-integrated.

1) Know Your Audience

Your target audience should be the same, regardless of what channel you use. Creating a "persona" of an ideal customer is a great way to find the exact demographics, interests and behaviors of that target audience. If all of your marketing efforts, from SEO to fliers, are geared toward that same audience, they will almost automatically become more integrated.

2) Cross-Pollinate

Of course, simply focusing on a single audience isn’t enough. Another way to ensure your traditional and internet advertising works well together is to cross-pollinate, incorporating elements from one area in another. That goes beyond simply printing your social media pages on a poster, although that’s a great start.

Using the same graphics, fonts, pictures and even phrases in both areas ensures that your audience gets the point easily instead of being confused. Promoting social media blasts on print and vice versa, such as a Facebook message asking your audience if they’ve checked out your latest print ad in the newspaper yet, are a great way of cross-pollinating your audience.

3) Continuous Evaluation

Of course, we could go on for hours about different ways to get your message across on the various traditional and digital channels. But not everything works for every audience or business – as a result, it’s always important to measure whether what you’re doing actually works. Consider using tracking URLs on both print and digital pieces to separate how many web visits and product buys came from one vs. the other.

As is the case in all of marketing, measurability is key in integrating your traditional and internet advertising. Adding cross-pollination and a single core audience ensures that your message comes across clearly, allowing you to gain many new customers. Contact us for more information!