Seamless Branding: Making Your Online and Offline Communications Work Together
17 Jul 2014
Growing a brand is never easy, but once you understand how to merge online and offline marketing techniques you should find that building engagement and talking to a wide range of current and prospective customers becomes a little more practical. These simple tips will help you to ensure that your online and offline communication techniques are working together for maximum benefit.
Consistency Across Different Forms of Media
For your marketing attempts to succeed, it is essential that your branding is consistent across both online and offline communications. Your online marketing is always visible, can be archived and can be shared by anyone with an internet connection. Therefore it’s vital that you think carefully about everything you share online and make sure that it is accurate, fits your brand and is in line with the image that you want to project. Use the same logo, slogans and colour schemes in your online and offline communications so that there is no confusion as to whether something is coming from your brand or not.
Be Vocal and Accessible
If you have a promotion, make sure that you tell the world about it. Make it easy for people to find your website and your social media accounts, and make it clear that all of the accounts are active and maintained. When you get traditional promotional materials printed, add a reference to your website on them. Make a point of checking your social media profiles on a regular basis and responding to questions, comments and complaints promptly so that people feel that you are accessible as a brand. If you sell products online, make sure that people can buy them easily – the easier the user’s journey, the more likely they are to complete it and to come back to make more purchases in the future.
Encourage Sharing and Engagement
Simply linking to your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other handles is not necessarily enough to ensure that people engage with those accounts. Include a call to action, even if it is simply “Like us on Facebook” added to your posters, or a link on your blog that shares posts to Twitter, complete with a reference to your Twitter handle.
Post polls, run competitions that encourage people to retweet your content, and remind users that you have customer service staff paying attention to your Facebook and Twitter pages and that they are welcome to offer feedback via that route, as well as via traditional means.
You cannot control individual’s responses, but you can guide the content that is out there and encourage people to have the conversations that you want them to have. Over time, you will learn what customers want from you and build a successful online and offline image for your company.