How To Brand Leverage Offline Marketing For Audience Growth
By S. Shiva SriCharan
Companies focus on creating awareness, brand building and engagement through digital and social media platforms, to reach their target audience and provide them with products and services.
Now I ask you, what’s the point in targeting an audience in the digital world and ignoring them in the real world? Whether companies are selling products, software like apps or services, having the right approach to your customer is critical.
In the history of business, companies with great products have failed in the market. There are many reasons why but it iterates that the customer is the most important person who companies can’t ignore.
We cannot push products and services into the market and become unicorns overnight. The right approach is to understand what customers need and know their pain points well; only then do you offer products and services. This approach will focus your marketing efforts and ensure long-term engagement with your customers.
Businesses who deliver personalized and unique experiences, ones that compliment their products and services, win the audience game.
To build deeper relationships with customers, companies need to do more than just sell. Companies need to influence others, make referrals and work strategically to bring new products to the market. Customer engagement is imperative and a strategic approach to thoroughly understand their buying journeys and incorporate this information into advertising, marketing and the creation of products and services.
In this digital age, offline marketing is one of the most powerful tools you can take advantage of. When the world is going digital and future technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning, deep learning, block chain and connected devices have become the norms in business, how can offline mediums like television, print, radio and cinema still hold relevance?
Take a closer look at the statistics in the report, ‘This Year Next Year 2019 India’, released by Group M the world’s largest media investment company. Group M is owned by the world’s largest media conglomerate, WPP.
As per the report, Indian advertising expenditure is estimated to grow at 14% in 2019, which makes it the fastest growing Ad market in the world. Digital advertising is the major contributor for growth and traditional media like Television and Print still dominates the market. Approximately 70% of the ad spend in India is driven by television and print media together and 19% goes to digital ad spend.
This reiterates the importance of traditional and offline medium as one of the most powerful tools in our digital age.
How Does Offline Media Help Brands?
Unlike digital engagement, which happens through social media posts, videos, podcasts, downloadable e-books and whitepapers for example, offline engagement is quite different; a mixture of both traditional and offline marketing solutions.
Traditional media and offline media helps you find an audience in the real world, who might be interested in your products and services.
Traditional media like television, print, radio and cinema helps send a brand message to a massive market. Offline media helps to find prospective buyers who engage with your brand’s products and services.
Offline engagement can help businesses connect with prospects who might be interested in products and services.
Types of Offline Engagement:
In this world of distractions and noise, people tend to be on the move constantly. This gives brands an added opportunity to grab attention. A key study reveals that our attention span time today is just over six seconds.
Offline media has taken a back seat due to its lack of accountability, unlike digital media where accountability is transparent. Over the years, companies have found offline media difficult to deal with and have moved towards investing heavily in digital media.
“Businesses who deliver personalized and unique experiences, ones that compliment their products and services, win the audience game.” #TheGrowthHackingBook #GrowthHackingMovement #GrowthHackingDay
Media Disruption Solution
Disruption is the key and it is happening everywhere.
Television has been disrupted through stand-alone OTT (Over-The-Top) streaming media platforms on websites and apps, which can be accessed on personal computers, smartphones and tablets, as well as integrated smart TVs.
Radio has been disrupted through online digital radio and community radio.
Print has been disrupted through digital print editions and ebooks.
Cinema has been disrupted through digital programming solutions from Qube, UFO and CiniCloud, Amazon Prime and Zee 5 for example.
Outdoor media has been disrupted with the digital OOH solution providers like Posterscope and Adonmo, on taxi advertising in India.
Events have been disrupted with LinkedIn Events and through ticketing platforms like MeraEvents, BookMyShow, Eventbrite and Townscript, for example.
Online-to-offline and offline-to-online engagement is a new challenge for businesses to explore, as you don’t want to miss customers on either of these platforms.
For example, LinkedIn used their latest campaign #inittogether in 2019, to bring professionals from different backgrounds onto the platform through online and offline media. They have used outdoor, print, television and airport branding very effectively in all their major markets around the world.
Spotify launched in India in February 2019 and raised awareness through offline media like print, in outdoor bus shelters, foot bridges, taxis and mall branding, to showcase its 40 million song databases and get subscribers to sign-up for the music streaming service.
A decade ago, a major brand like Unilever would take nine out of 10 television advertisements on all the leading broadcasting networks across the entire nation of India. Today the scenario is quite different with emerging technology companies taking the spotlight on every major offline medium.
Over the last five years, companies have spent heavily on offline mediums including television, outdoor and print; due to the emergence of ecommerce and technology based companies like Flipkart, Amazon India, Google, Netflix, Zee5, Swiggy, Uber Eats and Zomato.
The Opportunities
It is difficult to find a person without a mobile phone. India is the fastest growing market in mobile and data consumption with 627 million Internet users and 1.1 billion mobile devices.
In the age of Netflix, social media, TikTok and PubG, how does a brand attract its customer?
Digital media and engagement gives brands an opportunity to know their customers through social media interactions, app downloads and usage, and data analytics.
We know our prospects are in the real world so how does a brand reach out to them?
A prospect can be anywhere:
Offline media helps to grab attention with:
The Numbers Game for Marketers
Television: TV advertising grew to 14% in 2018 to reach Rs. 305 billion. The number of private satellite channels increased to 885.
Print: Print advertising stood at 29% to reach Rs. 217 billion in 2018.
Radio: Radio grew by 7.5% in 2018 to reach Rs. 31.3 billion. There are a total of 386 radio stations in India.
Digital Media: At 42%, digital media grew to reach Rs. 169 billion in 2018. Broadband subscribers increased to 512 million and rural Internet users grew to reach 197 million. Smartphone users number 340 million and Integrated Smart TVs crossed 10 million users. Digital ad spends grew 34% to Rs. 154 billion. Digital subscriptions grew 262% to reach Rs. 14 billion in 2018.
Out of Home (OOH): OOH media grew by 8.8% with a reach of Rs 37.3 billion in 2018. Out of this, Rs. 1.5 billion is generated by the Digital OOH (DOOH), in the same year. About 70,000+ digital displays are in airports, metro and railway stations and malls.
Events: The organized events and activation segment grew to 15.6% in 2018 to reach Rs. 75 billion. Ticket sales contributed to more than Rs. 7 billion and digital events and activations grew by over 35%.
Cinema: In-cinema advertising grew 17% to Rs. 7.5 billion in 2018. There are 9,601 total screens in India out of which 6,651 are single screens and 2,950 are multiplex screens in India.
Source: ‘A billion screens of Opportunity – Indian Media & Entertainment sector – March 2019’, by FICCI and EY.
Conclusion
Offline engagement drives lead generation, brand awareness and business building challenges in the real world and the online world. As technology evolves, so does the industry. In coming years, we can hope to see a level playing field where both offline and online marketing strategies are used.
As existing markets mature, the advancement in technology adaptation allows us to see greater innovations with unique concepts in the marketing domain from new age marketers, technology enthusiasts and start-ups and entrepreneurs who focus on engaging with their customers.
Understand where your customers are, what they do and what they need from you. Plan your marketing and advertising with this information in mind.
Don’t be like so many other companies who waste huge amounts of money on advertising because they didn’t take the time to find out exactly who their customers are and what they want. This is how they lose the game.
Offline and online engagement must strike a balance between the customer and a relevant, engaging strategy. With proper execution and great team support, companies can create magic and capture their market.