Video Transcription
As digital marketers we can sometimes be guilty of acting like the entire world only exists online, but actually, if we’re to engage our audience, it can sometimes make sense to go offline first. In fact, and this surprises a lot of people, but one of the greatest areas of budget spend in the last few years has been event marketing. There are a few simple reasons for this:
- There is SO much communication going on online now. We are bombarded with thousands and thousands of messages every day, and as targeted as we make those ads the fact is it’s really really difficult to engage people. Whereas if you go offline and actually talk to them, you have their undivided attention.
- Secondly, the most effective way of getting emotional buy in is to create an experience and place the consumer at the heart of it. That can of course be achieved online, but it tends to be most easily achieved within an offline context.
- Thirdly, if your product or business is not yet commonly understood by your audience, and there’s a level of education and engagement and feedback required as you evolve your offering, then that again tends to be most effective from an offline perspective.
One of the examples I tend to give when illustrating the importance of the offline world from an online point of view is the world’s largest social media networkk. People tend to think of Facebook as something that’s exclusively online, but how did it actually grow – it was exclusively offline word of mouth.
So if operate in a market where people understand the products or services you’re selling and they’re out there searching for them Google or going onto the app store and searching for an app that’s a bit like the one you’re selling, then by all means, that’s where you should be focusing your efforts. However, if you actually need to engage your audience and build those relationships then very often it makes more sense to go offline and have real conversations with real people.
See you next time.
