Embracing offline copywriting may seem a little counter-intuitive in these days of online copywriting and digital marketing. And yet: there really is no substitute for ‘getting up close and personal’ if you want to maximise returns on your investment.
Increasing numbers of people are realising that we neglect offline marketing at our peril. Since Google started playing God with SEO last year, we should all bear in mind that when we’re reduced to relying on Google’s rules, we’re throwing away our marketing independence.
By having another string to your bow – i.e. offline marketing – your business will never be over-reliant on Google’s whims. ‘Offline’ never really went away, of course. Major money is still spent on things like events and exhibitions, seminars and conferences, press and broadcast advertising, media relations, brochures, posters… the list is long.
There’s a danger that the online digital world can blind us to the possibilities of the more ‘traditional’ marketing techniques. It’s true that ‘online’ is now a well-established part of the marketing mix that’s impossible to ignore.
To many people, online marketing has quasi-magical properties in its geographical reach, quick turnaround and cost-effectiveness. The drawbacks of course are that clients tend to pigeon-hole suppliers or agencies, putting them in the boxes from whence they came – and leaving them there (on the assumption that they can’t do other things).
The contrast with the offline world couldn’t be more stark. In general, clients tend to allocate more time to ‘offline’ and discussing the bigger picture. Almost inevitably, the discussion will come round to the possibility of introducing complementary online techniques.
These will occupy both sides of the online divide: paid-for SEM such as Pay-Per-Click and online advertising; and ‘organic’ stuff including SEO, social media and content marketing – to name just a few.
So new and so powerful do these online techniques seem, it’s not surprising we’re all a little mesmerised by it all. It’s worth considering too that combining and integrating online and offline can create potential synergies that also come with a back-stop guarantee in the shape of an inviolable offline component.
In addition to combining the best of the online and offline worlds in your overall marketing strategy, there’s another priceless dividend that comes with embracing offline techniques – and that derives directly from the increased personal contact that surrounds the more traditional approaches to marketing!
Increased personal interaction between client and agency (or supplier) leads to a greater understanding of what a client wants on the one hand; and, on the other, a client is more likely to appreciate the wider capabilities of his agency or supplier. Providing the personal chemistry works well, this will help create a longer lasting and mutually profitable professional relationship.
To find out more about Mike Beeson’s approach to both offline and online copywriting, be sure to visit Buzzwords’ website.
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