Turn up Your Offline

Maximizing Offline Channels to Drive Search Success

Week before last, Didit VP Gerry Bavaro offered tips on how to pique people’s curiosity and direct it for more influential marketing. This week Robert Murray, President of the search marketing firm iProspect, picks up where Gerry left off and talks about the importance of off-line marketing to your search marketing efforts, and how to get the most out of your integrated campaigns.

Have you ever driven behind a truck whose rear door sported signage about a service that you needed? Or come across a sparsely written teaser ad about a product that intrigued you while flipping through the pages of a magazine? Or half-listened to a TV or radio ad about an upcoming local event that only grabbed your attention for a few brief seconds?

At some point during the last six months, chances are exposure to an offline ad has led you to go online and launch a search. That’s according to the findings of new research conducted by JupiterResearch and sponsored by my company, iProspect. 

The iProspect Offline Channel Influence on Search Behavior Study found that over the previous six months prior to June, 2006, 67 percent of Internet search users have been influenced to perform a search for a company, product, service, slogan or other related keywords as a result of exposure to some offline channel. The channels the study examined were television ads, radio ads, word-of-mouth, print ads, billboards/venue ads, and ads on trucks, taxis, buses and trains. Despite the obvious connection between offline advertising and search marketing effectiveness, many offline marketers don’t exactly make it easy for consumers to find them online. As a result, companies are leaving untold revenue on the table.

Trust Your Search Marketing Team—And Your Data
Your search marketing team often has the data and the ability to quickly test your advertising. This ability provides them with key insights into how consumers identify with your brand, messaging, and offers through keywords.

For example, imagine a marketer of gardening products contemplating a quarterly print or direct mail campaign. Search marketers could inform their offline counterparts what the most frequently searched for products are online each quarter, as well as the specific creative used in their paid search ads that generated the most clicks and the most conversions for each product. This information would not only help determine what products to promote via these other channels, but would also influence the words used to describe these products so they matched the language consumers associated with them most frequently.

Make it Easy to Find Your Brand
With that in mind, offline channels need to start making it easier for consumers to perform a search and find their brands in search results. This means working with search marketers to ensure that their websites are optimized around the terms that appear in their offline channels. It means including phrases like “Search ‘Mayfair Appliances’ on Yahoo!” or “find us on the Internet by searching ‘Boston Maid Services’.” In addition, offline marketers should start including the company URL just as frequently and prominently in their advertising as their 800 number or the physical address of the business.

Be Consistent with Look, Feel, Offers and Messaging
Offline channel marketers would be wise to take their cues from their search marketing team. For example, would it prove valuable to assess what keywords are driving the most traffic and conversions to the website? Are you bidding on your slogan or tagline?

This information can serve as a guide. Pick the most effective and already proven phrase that can be included in your offline advertising. This can help prospects to perform a search that can result in your website being returned prominently in the search results. If you’re not sure what the key phrase is, test.

Consistency of look and feel is also important. If a prospect reads your slogan or product name on the side of an orange and blue truck in bold black type, they should be greeted by a website that contains the same colors, and includes your slogan or product name in bold black type. This reassures them they have reached the right place.

It’s also critical that offers and messaging be consistent. For example, if your offline offer includes a free download or demo, or a 30 percent off discount, then make sure that searchers see this offer when they arrive on your website or landing page.

The language used in your advertising should be the same that prospects read when they get to the website. If you refer to something as a “service” offline, don’t call it a “product” or a “solution” on the website. If you call something “big-screen” online, don’t call it “wide-screen” offline, and so forth.

As the data from the study demonstrates, offline channels are definitely driving people to search, and ultimately, to purchase. Smart marketers will capitalize upon that trend and work to maximize the effectiveness of all of their channels to turn prospects into customers. The key to doing so is communication between offline and search marketers, making it easy for offline prospects to find your website via search engines, and having consistency in terms of look, feel and messaging.

—Robert Murray, President, iProspect