Do you still believe in offline advertising?

As we turn to the age of technology and discover so many strategies to promote our businesses online, do you think offline advertising still works?
Do you still believe in the power of radio advertising? is traditional advertising still alive?

Think radio features (interviews) backed up by copy of same information and web links on radio web site may help a bit. Not sure. I did a short local radio interview some time back and there was no obvious commercial benefit ...

If you're advertising, then clearly you need lots of repeat advertising to the same audience - that strikes me as being a very expensive option.

I think people now want instant responses to their queries and the ability to buy / follow up equally painlessly. As my market is regional (from Manchester down to Kent), I think SEO, PR (national when possible, with my website link always appearing in the article) and lots of networking suit my business best. What geographical area does your market cover and how are you reaching it, plse?

Best wishes

Linda

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...like a lot of other mediums, it depends on your product and target audience.

There are a lot of radion listerners. Especially people at work or in cars.

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We tried a radio campaign a few years ago, as part of our disjointed "no idea what we were doing" marketing approach.

Apart from a great buzz hearing your advert on the radio, it was quickly apparent there is no easy way of tracking performance, and from customer feedback, it only ever led to one direct sale that we are aware of

We've done liveried Taxi advertising, newspapers, magazines, but none of this has been a patch on good old PPC.

Personally, if we go the radio/cab/expensive advert in the future, it will be for brand building. For a cost effective marketing campaign where you can monitor results, stick with PPC.

Anything else, unless your particular product or service specifically sells offline, then be prepared for deep pockets and a high burn rate.

But offline can work, a great example that does seem to work is flyers. I have a local gardener/branch cutter etc that shoves a flyer through from time to time. I asked if he considered online marketing and looked at me if I was from mars.

Gets all his trade from flyers and word of mouth. But I think this is the exception these days.

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Steve

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I am really trying to decide what to do with mine,, as a new company you need to get out there, I am spending £400 a month to be on the radio every second day 6 times a day. I’m not sure if I need to run the campaign a little longer or just stop it now, I was in the paper too every week. We defiantly sold a few gift lessons but not enough to cover the advertising costs. Difficult decisions.

I suppose its a case of baselining your current marketing. If you can track any approximate conversions form the radio, do you have the option to pause the radio campaign, then allocate that £400 to an online PPC campaign for 30/60/90 days, and compare results?

I went in originally with all marketing guns blazing, with no clear defined goals or objectives other than "generate revenue". In hindsight I should have either brought in some marketing consultancy and admitted my own knowledge gaps, or taken things a lot slower and more controlled.

Now older and wiser, but happy to pass on 20/20 hindsight

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Steve

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I think offline advertising in print or leaflet insertions in magazines still has it's place and it works well in conjunction with online media. Print is still a great media for getting to the masses but a proportion of the cost needs to be allocated to brand marketing when mass marketing.
As for radio?!? Never used it personally or for a client. It's not easy to measure the success rate. It could have it's uses if you have a large marketing budget and looking for branding opportunities. I don't think it is viable for smaller businesses however.

My advice to you as a marketer is to stop this form of marketing as you are mass marketing to a niche group of people who would purchase your services. Your £400 would be better spent on online marketing methods like PPC campaigns as Steve also suggested. This way you can target your marketing more direct and avoid wasting marketing spend.

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How about linking up with some more of the flying groups (eg the microlighters, gliding clubs, balloonists, etc)? You probably wouldn't sell a lot of helicopter training programmes but I think you'd pick up a lot of gift lessons.

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sorry to reply to this thread being a month old, it took my fancy feel the need to put my input in (for what ever its worth)
I think it also depends on your particular trade and if you are only supplying to say a 50mile radius, being in the constrution industry and trades alike is very limiting, mainly relying on local publications and word of mouth.
I decided to build a website myself and just recently updated it with a lot of helpful information/photos, I have spent on advetising with the likes of yell, qype and PPC's, many hours putting myself in numerous listings and SEO, done well enough to be somewhere on googles 1st page searching "plasterer or builder Isle of Wight" my experience this past 9 months has been advertisers trying to scam money from me and not one customer from the web, my vans have been sign written for years and I've never had a call from them either but its what helps you appear more proffesional, so I feel my web presence is only as a CV for customers from newspaper, mags, leaflet, advertisments to realise a little more about my company and an expensive one at that... My opinion only, I'm in the wrong trade

Interesting feedback, so although making to onto Page 1 of Big G, you've never seen a return from your online marketing? Is that the same for your site and organic results, or do you mean only from paid online advertising?

I can't answer for Yell and Qype , but we have tradespeople with no website who list with us and get enquires, so that surprises me, unless being on the IOW the potential target audience is too small?

A good quality well run PPC campaign should have given you solid enquires, I say enquires as obviously conversion to customer is down to you. It seems you're bucking the trend, or being unfortunate with suppliers?

Always like a challenge, so if you fancy a wager, let me know. I'll give you an advert for 6 months for free, if you don't get any enquires, you can keep it, and post here and tell the world how bad we are, but if you do get some, then you have to pay for it, and post here and say how great we are...

If you're up for it, drop me a PM

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Steve

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