Embrace multi-channel marketing for effective promotional campaigns

Companies that want to reach out to customers and raise awareness of their products and services may often find themselves specializing in certain types of strategies. For instance, an organization that has limited resources at its disposal might find it necessary to hire a full time social media director to improve its success among Facebook or Twitter users. However, committing personnel and money to a single platform can often be a grave mistake.

According to a study by GI Insight, almost half of all customers maintained that they were directed to company URLs by an offline source. In fact, among consumers ages 18 to 24 years old, 53 percent were first introduced to company websites through some kind of message that wasn’t delivered over the internet. This indicates that though many people (particularly young ones) use the internet a great deal, they are still introduced to company websites through alternate means.

Consequently, it’s important for organizations that maintain strong web presences and operate web store fronts to consistently pursue other avenues of brand awareness and customer outreach. Failing to do so will eliminate huge swaths of potential customers who might otherwise be brought into contact with a business. Here are some ways to connect with people using direct mail marketing, printed materials and other offline tools.

To social media
It’s important to not be vague when communicating with past customers and future clients with printed marketing items. Directions need to be clear in terms of what a company wants a consumer to do. As a result, be sure to carefully choose a destination for clients. Social media is a good one, especially among young people, because they’re likely to be on Facebook or other services anyway. From there, it’s a simple matter of just typing in a company’s name as it’s printed on direct mail cards.

To websites
Organizations can direct the recipients of direct mail marketing materials to their websites, but it is a good idea to customize a particular page on a website for this purpose. Directing people to a general web store front may be confusing, and won’t seem like much of a reward for having followed the directions given on direct mail materials. Be sure to consciously thank visitors to these pages for following the instructions they were given.