Online marketing, offline marketing: it's all the same these days

By Nur Bremmen: Staff reporter on 20 November, 2015

Remember when marketing executives had to convince their bosses to put time and resources into “that internet thing”? Well, bar a few stubborn hangers-on, it’s apparently safe to say those days are very firmly past.

According to Gartner’s 2015-2016 Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Spend Survey, 98% of marketing executives from large companies in North America and the UK agree that online and offline marketing are merging.

Respondents represent organisations with more than US$500 million in annual revenue across seven industries: financial services, high tech, manufacturing, consumer packaged goods (CPG), media, retail and transportation/hospitality. The survey took place between May and July 2015 and marks the fourth year that Gartner has surveyed marketers on spending priorities and marketing operations.

There is little doubt that digital marketing is now mainstream,” said Yvonne Genovese, group vice president at Gartner. “Marketers no longer make a clear distinction between offline and online marketing disciplines. As customers opt for digitally led experiences, digital marketing stops being a discrete discipline and instead becomes the context for all marketing. Digital marketing is now marketing in a digital world.”

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Ten per cent of marketers say they have moved beyond digital marketing techniques and are expanding marketing’s role to create new digitally led business models. The blurring of the physical and digital worlds represents opportunities for marketers to apply customer insights to create and test new digitally led experiences and business models. Digital commerce is surging, capturing 11% of the digital marketing budget (up from 8 per cent in 2014) as marketers become more accountable for driving results.

“The rise in digital commerce is an opportunity for marketers,” said Jake Sorofman, research vice president at Gartner. “There was a time when marketing and selling were two distinct disciplines. In many cases, digital merges these two into a single, continuous activity from initial awareness, through engagement, conversion, transaction and repeat purchase. Marketers can now tie spend to revenue. In fact, it’s becoming a mandate.”

Two main factors are driving marketers’ interest in digital commerce: the need to point to tangible results from marketing investments, and the recognition that companies need more than a commerce platform to sell. In the past, we’ve seen digital commerce operations wholly disconnected from the marketing engine. Today, we’re seeing integration between marketing and digital commerce as two parts of a single discipline, where marketers bring everything from content marketing and brand storytelling to advanced analytics and multichannel campaign management to optimise digital commerce across channels.

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B2C companies have long been considered more sophisticated in digital commerce, but we’re seeing growing appetite by B2B companies under pressure to reach customers directly with digital commerce initiatives. They are looking to engage customers directly to better understand their needs, preferences and behaviours.

As CMOs face the digital transition, the survey showed that overall marketing budgets are on the rise. This year, 61 per cent of respondents said that marketing spending will be, on average, 11 per cent of company revenue, up from 10 per cent of company revenue last year. That one percentage point change represents a sizable increase — 10 per cent, year over year — in marketing spend.

“Bigger budgets, however, come with sizable expectations,” said Mr Sorofman. “Marketing is expected to drive profitable growth through the acquisition, retention and expansion of the most valuable customer relationships. As customer buying journeys and customer expectations expand, so, too, does marketing’s scope of responsibility. As a result, the marketing remit now often includes driving broad-mandate customer experience, digital commerce and innovation initiatives.”

Nur is an enigma with a passion for creating words. He recently entered a love affair with technology and chorizo sausages. He travels a lot — you catch him, if you can, at a Silicon Cape event every now and again. More

Online marketing, offline marketing: it"s all the same these days

Facebook (FB) Updates App For Faster Reading, Offline Posting On Slow Connections

Facebook wants to move faster, at slower speeds. The social network is releasing several new features to allow the app to work more efficiently on smartphones in areas where connection speeds are slow or nonexistent.

The update, which launches Wednesday, is part of a wider push at Facebook to improve the user experience on the mobile app in bandwidth-constrained areas. These initiatives do not solely cater to users in the United States and Canada, who can face slow speeds when commuting underground or in congested football stadiums. They extend to Facebook’s largest-growing markets — India and Africa — where fast connections are often absent. 

The new bandwidth-saving elements include showing content that was previously downloaded but not viewed. Facebook has had a similar setting, but it did not reshuffle the posts, so users could be looking at the same content every time they open their phone in the subway. Now, anything already viewed does not appear at the top of the News Feed. Another update allows Facebook users to write comments and replies on posts without an internet connection. Prior to Wednesday, Facebook users could post and “like” while offline but could not comment.

Facebook has been investing deeply in the large, fast-growing markets in Asia and Africa. The American-led tech company, staffed with nearly 12,000 employees, has been building up offices in countries like Indonesia, India and Kenya, which are all considered emerging markets. In October, Facebook launched an initiative called “2G Tuesdays,” where all employees were encouraged to experience how the social network works within slower speeds.

“One particular focus for our team right now is emerging markets [in Asia and Africa]. People are very rapidly coming online. We need to make sure people in those markets can access Facebook in the same way,” said Chris Marra, a product manager at Facebook who focuses on emerging markets.

Online, On Mobile

Offline functionality has become central for web giants looking to expand in the developing world, as well as retain users who expect the app to work regardless of bandwidth. For instance, Google introduced more offline features to Google Maps in November so users can view and maps and directions without a mobile connection. In August, Snapchat added a “travel mode,” which lets users decide whether the app can pre-download content.

For the last two years, Facebook has been building more offline experiences. In 2013, Facebook added offline posting to the mobile app. In 2014, Facebook users could “like” posts without an Internet connection. Each of those updates let people open the app and take actions that will load after a connection is found.

Currently, if Facebook users open the app when they are without internet or on a slow connection, the Facebook News Feed will first show previously downloaded content the user did not see. Previously, the app did not take into account content that had already been viewed, whether the user hovered over the post, just scrolled past or interacted with it. Additionally, Facebook users can now not only post and “like” while offline but also comment and reply.

Marra and his team of engineers and researchers have been working on the update from Facebook’s India headquarters. Facebook has offices in Hyderabad, Mumbai and New Delhi. About 50 employees there work on the product and research new developments. Facebook has 437.1 million active users in the Asia-Pacific region and 181.4 million users in the Middle East and Africa. That includes only about 12.8 percent of the population in the Middle East and Africa and 10.9 percent of the Asia-Pacific region while nearly half of the United States population has signed on to Facebook.

“I think speed is the main thing that we’re trying to deliver here. That’s what we’ve heard from people as their top complaint,” said Marra. With Wednesday’s update, Facebook “can get you from the homescreen of your phone to fresh stories” no matter what the quality of connection may be.

Beyond showing the most relevant content, some smartphone users, especially those in emerging markets, are concerned about data prices. A 500MB data plan in India costs about 17 hours of minimum wage work in the country, according to a report from Jana, a company that offers phone data through mobile rewards and provides global research insights.

Back at headquarters in Menlo Park, California, Facebook has also prioritized building the service with connectivity in mind. One example is the launch of “2G Tuesdays” that lets any employee set his or her internet connection as slower. Marra’s team led a “2G Bug Bash” in the India office earlier this week, where about 20 employees worked to identify and fix app errors.

New Connections

An emphasis on speed and connectivity has spread across several departments of Facebook. Last month, Facebook extended Instant Articles to publishers in India and is reportedly building a team in Asia, though Marra says his team does not work on that feature. Facebook says that the Instant Articles feature, launched in May, allows content to load up to 10 times faster. 

“We don’t see too many differences in terms of how people are using Facebook. Facebook is a product that lets you communicate with your friends and your family. We’re trying to make the product more reliable,” Marra said.

Yet, aside from connecting with friends on social media, current and potential Facebook users in India actively shop online, especially with mobile devices. Facebook has been betting on that habit in the U.S. market, as it has released a shopping tab on the mobile app and partnered with a few U.S. retailers for e-commerce options. 

Facebook has added a “Shopping” tab to the mobile app. Photo: Facebook

Carolyn Everson, Facebook’s revenue chief, described e-commerce in India as having “skipped 10 to 15 years” compared to the Western world, having leapfrogged computer-based commerce entirely.

Everson and Facebook’s marketing and advertising teams have also been investing in Asia, specifically in India and many countries in Africa. Facebook recently released a new ad product called “Slideshow” where advertisers can build three to seven photos into a looping ad and have referred to it as a “lightweight video product.”

“We take care that [an ad] renders beautifully no matter what device you’re on,” said Nikila Srinivasan, a product manager for emerging markets.

Facebook (FB) Updates App For Faster Reading, Offline Posting On Slow Connections

How to Complement Your Online Marketing with Offline Marketing

A strong marketing strategy consists of different tactics with the purpose of reaching out to as many of your target audience as possible.

That means coming up with a plan that marries your online and offline marketing tactics.

Both may seem to be exclusive from each other due to the nature of their business. However, there is a way for offline marketing to help benefit your online marketing campaigns.

Brand your print materials

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Find events and conferences that you can attend and where you can set up your booth.

Prepare and observe the best practices of developing your business cards, brochures, flyers, and even branded water bottles that you can give away during the event.

Include the URL of your website or your social media, depending on your goal. For this particular example, we can try increasing the number of visitors to a landing page specifically made for this event.

Create page using a landing page editor like Unbounce and Instapage so you can build the page using both tool’s drag and drop feature in a matter of minutes.

You may be wondering, how can you qualify the number of visitors coming from the event to the landing page?

You can do this by building your URLs using a tool like Google URL builder. Identify the name of the source, medium, and your campaign name.

Once people visit the link to the clicked campaign, the visit will be recorded on your Google Analytics. Go to Acquisition > All Traffic > Source/Medium and check out the campaign name that you entered in the URL builder.

You will notice, however, that the built URL will be long, making it impossible to print the URL on your print materials. You can solve this problem by using a URL shortener like Bit.ly. This will reduce the number of characters from your URL and will make it easier for you to type it out.

Also, you can customize shortened URLs using Bit.ly to create memorable and branded URLs.

Track and measure the performance of your event marketing over time and see how many people have dropped by your landing page using the shortened URL. From here, you can determine whether your campaign was a resounding success or not.

To create a more measurable campaign, you can set a goal on Google Analytics, especially if you landing page encourages visitors to purchase your products or subscribe to your mailing lists.

Use QR codes

QR codes may have been cheeky marketing trends. However, if used correctly, you can drive lots of people to your landing pages or websites.

The key is to place your QR codes in ingenious ways to not disrupt the experience for users. Many times have marketers used these codes in wrong places like billboards and other places.

Looking at the best examples in this post at KISSmetrics, we can extract the best practices of using QR codes to three points.

• Be creative – Use the QR code as part of the overall design of your print material, not just sitting at the bottom of the page


• Defamiliarize the boring – Create ways to refresh your approach to presenting content to your audience using QR codes. For example, you can create a QR code that redirects scanners to an exclusive content. This will give them the incentive to scan those codes.


• Integrate tactic in your storytelling – Make QR codes an instrumental part of your content strategy that relies on providing your audience with rich and compelling stories. Let your audience follow through with your stories by letting them access it through scanning QR codes. This creates a serial type of content that keeps them expecting and anticipating for more.

Conduct open house seminars or workshop

Promote the event using Facebook Groups or Meetup. You may need to include a reservation fee to cover the costs of preparing for the event.

Once in the seminar, visitors need to sign up using their email addresses. You can then enter the emails in your mailing list to bring them down your sales funnel.

Of course, you need to deliver with your seminars as well. While the event is a good way to attract leads, it will be more effective that you can pull off the seminar without a hitch. This will be crucial if you want to convert attendees into clients and not just gather their emails.

Keep the tone light and heavy on the content for the benefit of the visitors. Not to mention, offer free food to reward attendees.

Last note: treat the seminar as a networking event not just for you, but also for the attendees. Encourage attendees to connect with each others and form businesses relationship with each others. Treat the seminar as a platform for like-minded individuals to meet and mingle.

Final words

The tips mentioned above are just some ideas that can help bolster your online marketing through offline means. By integrating your campaigns into your offline marketing, you can make a more personal impact on your audience. This way, you can increase the chances of converting them into clients and subscribers.

How to Complement Your Online Marketing with Offline Marketing

Internet Marketing: Integrating Online and Offline Strategies

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Internet Marketing: Integrating Online and Offline Strategies