The Case for Offline Marketing in the Digital Era

As much as I'm a digital girl living in a digital world, the trends that have taken us from 2016 into the new year are actually  indicating that companies are pushing back against strictly digital campaigns. In fact, many brands, both big and small, and across a variety of different industries, are starting to shift their marketing strategies towards a mixture of both old school face-to-face, as well as online tactics, adopting the practices of yesteryear.

Mailbox vs. Inbox

As antiquated and antithetical as it might seem, both B2B and B2C brands are reverting to hard mailer campaigns in addition to their digital counterparts. With the overwhelming number of emails inundating inboxes daily, brands are finding that with the right calls to action, offers and impeccable branding, they can actually reach customers and break through the noise better with snail mail pieces.

Think about it. When was the last time you had 50, 100 or dare I suggest 200 pieces of mail in your actual mailbox?

Event Production

In 2016 and into 2017 you might have started to notice that brands are spending more money to get in front of their customers IRL (in real life). What's exciting about this from an agency perspective is that brands now understand that there is no reason for an event to just be a one-and-done.

This means companies are creating evergreen content and developing drip campaigns that also live digitally before, during and after an event. They're smarter about collecting relevant content on-site and using it across different platforms to maximize its value. Think Snapchat, FB Lives, on-camera interviews, branded giveaways...I can keep on going.

My team saw a great example of this with the brand Kimo Sabe Mezcal who recently sponsored the Goldman Sachs Small Business Program's closing party to mitigate their marketing costs and develop content that they were able to use across all social channels, as well as develop hero videos for the website. Smart marketing at its best.

This post was originally published for INC. Magazine, to see the remaining offline marketing suggestions and read the rest of the article here.

Stay tuned for more from Laurel through her Inc. column 'On Brand'.