Reel in customers with online and offline marketing techniques!

Every company has to fish for customers. Before you bait the hook, you need to understand the kind of fish you’re trying to catch: their behaviour and movements, the places they frequent. You need the right technique to land your fish - trout fishing is different to tuna fishing!

Targeting your customers

Creating a customer persona is a great exercise to get you thinking about what type of people you’re trying to target - and how you can attract them. Imagine your ideal customer and build up a profile by analysing their personality and lifestyle. If they’re customers already, why have they chosen your product? If they aren’t customers, what can you do to reel them in? This is an excellent starting point to focus on your marketing campaign and although the targeting may be precise, your customer profile will help you learn how to cast your net wider as you go along.

For a successful fishing trip, you have to analyse your current marketing strategy and get your gear together, so that when you start to reel in your prospects, everything you need for conversion is to hand.

Online and offline marketing

Premium content marketing is the bait, and your objective is to cast your content into the hands of your ideal customer. One way to consider marketing is to split it into online and offline. Online marketing, aka digital marketing, consists of branding, social media, content marketing, email marketing, video production, search engine optimisation, and web design. However, Diageo’s CEO, Ivan Menezes, is right in saying: “It’s not about doing ‘digital marketing’, it’s about marketing effectively in a digital world.” In most cases, online and offline marketing work best in tandem.

The advantage of online marketing is that you can target a specific demographic and geographic audience. Online marketing is also trackable, making the return on investment (ROI) easier to measure, with the bonus that you don’t have to sit and look at an ineffective advert all month - you can change it to yield better results, just as a fly fisherman can ring the changes by swapping a Black Pennell for a Claret Bumble. Currently, the top three digital marketing activities are corporate websites, digital advertising and social marketing.

Offline or traditional marketing includes press releases, newspaper adverts, direct mail, brochures, TV/radio, transportation advertising, billboards and sponsorship. Networking can also play a part – participating in trade shows and handing out eye-catching business cards. Many people trust in their local news and advertising publications and feel confident in contacting a business which is listed within.

Before you cast your first line, make sure you have a high quality rod – or a great website in marketing terms – and a quality line - or sales pitch - with no kinks in it; both will improve your strike rate. It’s important to plan this process, work as a team, use the right platforms, and know your customers’ behaviour.

The Dynam team has a lot of experience in designing and building corporate websites, setting up and monitoring monthly digital advertising campaigns through Google search and display, and working between multiple social media platforms. Alongside online campaigns, Dynam’s in-house team regularly create print adverts, brochures, outdoor adverts and many more!

Be consistent!

As with any marketing, consistency is key. Without a unified brand and that crucial visual impact, results are going to be poor. Remember that whenever you use a number of platforms, both online and offline, they must work and look great together. Ensure people know they are from the same company!

Distributing content is great - as long as there is solid direction behind it rather than aimless scattering. The goal is to convert your audience into customers, or at least add them as contacts in your database. To convert the target audience, use a call to action. This is a phrase or a button which encourages the potential customers to click, phone, email, visit the store or purchase now.

What now?

You don’t have to do everything at once, and you certainly don’t have to spend a fortune. As a rough estimate, companies spend an average of around 10% of their annual revenue on overall marketing activities.

Here are some things to think about:

  • Do you know your customers and target market?
  • Are you focusing on either online or offline? Have you thought about maximising your reach using a mixture of both?
  • Are you in control of your marketing budget? Is what you are currently spending on marketing paying off?
  • Have you got a marketing strategy in place to cover the next 6 months or year?

Fishing often involves waiting for that one bite, and patience is the key. But when it’s time to reel in potential customers and convert leads to sales, many companies lose their focus and try to reach everyone in the surrounding area, forgetting all about quality. Once you’ve hooked your quality lead through asking, listening and helping, it’s time to bring them to the net and scoop up your catch!

Developing a marketing strategy can be a challenge for any size of business. Whether you need a strategy built from scratch or an assessment of your previous strategy, Dynam delivers clear thinking workshops to take you through the steps of how to fish successfully for customers. Good hunting - and tight lines!