Offline Events and Online Tracking

Offline events bring people together to learn more about or to support your business. They can be anything from large trade shows to local concerts or races that raise funds. Even small workshops with limited seats qualify. Businesses can host, sponsor or even simply attend offline events such as these to gain traction.

Businesses savvy in digital marketing often overlook offline events. But at Pintler Group we celebrate the good news that offline and online efforts don’t have to live in separate bubbles. In this article, we look at how digital efforts can take your offline events to the next level. 

 

Offline Event: Board Meeting

 

Offline Fundraising Event

Many restaurants offer sponsorship opportunities to local clubs and non-profits. Typically, the restaurant will offer to donate a certain percentage of sales on a specific day to the organization, but the kicker is that many times, the orders only count towards this percentage if the customer mentions the fundraiser or hands over some sort of flyer or coupon to indicate their involvement. Recently, Montana Council BSA hosted an event like this at all Buffalo Wild Wings locations around the state of Montana. Customers presented a flyer to have the funds donated.

To effectively track, the flyer lived on a specific landing page that email and ad campaigns lead to. The page’s analytics can provide insight into attendance and campaign effectiveness.

While the method of creating a specified landing page for a ticket, flyer or coupon that corresponds with an offline event isn’t foolproof, it can give businesses a better idea of who is attending the fundraising event. This information helps you know which events are the most popular. Additionally, it identifies the most powerful targets.

 

Offline Event: Concert

 

Facebook Offline Events

We’ve all been “suggested” an event near us on Facebook. The feature is one that is proving to be quite powerful in the digital marketing space. Facebook Events are great for both large and small scale events and allow for tons of interaction from potential customers or participants.  When a company creates a Facebook Event they are able to select the time and location, connect it to their business page, keep their followers updated on event information, promote the event and, most importantly for this article, they are able to encourage and track RSVPs to the event.

When someone indicates they are “interested” in or “attending” an event, Facebook shares that information with a person’s friends. Facebook will then remind all who indicated they were “interested” or “going” that the event is coming up. People that attend can also let their friends know when it starts. Not only do Facebook Events allow you to track RSVPs, but they also act as a great tool to promote your event by allowing participants to share with their friends in multiple ways. 

 

Offline Event: Fundraiser

 

Sourcing Online Details at Offline Events

Once the offline event begins, there are still ways you can leverage online, digital marketing efforts. One specifically powerful digital way to use offline events is to collect information such as email addresses during the ticketing process or even at the event itself. Event participants are opting in to experience your event. Collecting their email addresses can help you track the number of participants who attended the offline event, but also allow you to continue to target them with future digital campaigns. And highly specialized audiences are more likely than not to be qualified leads.

 

Want to learn more about using offline events as a traction channel? Watch this video.

 

Learn more about the 19 traction channels and other digital marketing topic by listening to our podcast, Cutting Through The Noise, which can be found on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and anywhere else you listen to podcasts.

Eye-Catching Offline Marketing Campaigns

Coach brand billboard on street corner.

In the noisy world of digital marketing, innovative strategies and ideas are mainly focused on, well, digital mediums. And yet, the presence of offline mediums including billboards continue to exist all around us.

While not as easy to track as online mediums, offline campaigns are still making quite an impact on marketing. In fact, outdoor advertising remains successful even in 2019. While some means of traditional marketing appears to be declining in growth, billboard advertising continues to report growth in revenue year over year. And the industry is predicted to grow to a $33 billion industry by 2021. 

Its impact extends to the digital space as well. Specifically, its been linked to positively affect an online presence simply by leaving an impression on those who view the boards. The messaging is aimed at encouraging people to seek more information online. According to a 2017 Nielsen study billboards can lead up to a 54% increase in search traffic. Not to mention increases of 38% in Facebook engagement and 47% in sales interaction.

Offline Marketing Can Go Viral Too

Like digital campaigns, offline campaigns need to be carefully planned, developed and executed to get the most return. When you take the time to combine strategy with engaging content big things can happen. While the term “viral” tends to be mostly associated with digital, don’t write off offline campaigns. Analyze the information you learn about your audience from digital and translate that into an offline campaign. Take a more realistic approach and run a campaign humanizing your brand. The following case studies from 2018 are prime examples of creative offline campaigns that generated quite a buzz for both existing and potential users.

Kendrick Lamar Billboard

Spotify “Wrapped” Campaign

Many companies have been in the media spotlight lately regarding their use of user data – Facebook, anyone? While the handling of data ethically is a legitimate concern, Spotify found a way to capitalize on data in a harmless fun manner. 

Every December, Spotify rolls out its end of year “Wrapped” campaign. It’s a nicely presented and wrapped up summary of each user’s listening habits of the past year. In 2018, Spotify cleverly built off its annual campaign by pairing it with a billboard campaign. And it caught the eyes of everyone, even those not using its services. Spotify crunched the numbers to discover fun trends listening behavior and conveyed the info in a fun way.

Offline Advertising: Ed Sheeran Billboard

This campaign turned anonymous listener data into a talking point. Subscribers and non-subscribers alike could enjoy and relate to the quirky insights plucked from the massive pool of 2018 listening data. When the campaign concluded, Spotify surpassed 100 million premium subscribers.  Additionally, it grew Monthly Active Users (MAU) from 207 million in Q4 of 2018 to 217 million by the end of the first quarter of 2019.

Offline Advertising: Kendrick Lamar Billboard

Nebraska “Honestly It’s Not For Everyone” Campaign

Imagine you are planning your next vacation. What destinations come to mind? Someplace warm near the ocean? Maybe a cabin tucked away in the woods near towering mountains? Regardless, chances are pretty low that the state of Nebraska exists on this mental list of vacation spots. The Nebraska Tourism Commission tackled this problem in a creative way.

Billboard in Nebraska

 

Enter the “Honestly It’s Not For Everyone” campaign. They took a raw, bold stance to promote the state. Specifically, went with a self-deprecating type of humor with the offline campaign instead of the “Nebraska Nice” messaging. The “Honestly It’s Not For Everyone” campaign ran in print and on billboards. It paired statements — collected from both Nebraskans and neighboring states in a poll about their opinions of Nebraska tourism – with contrasting images. The result was a campaign with a playful tone. 

Like Spotify, these billboards stood out and sparked a viral reaction online. The campaign drove an increase in website traffic, tax collection and requests for travel guides. As of summer 2019, the campaign continues to run in out of state markets.

Nebraska Billboard

When it comes to choosing what channel to run campaigns on, it is important to select the traction channel that makes sense for your client. While it’s easy to blast your message across digital channels, offline has its advantages!

For more content on offline marketing, check out our podcast on Billboards, Buses and Coasters and this video on managing and tracking your offline ads.