Now more than ever businesses and advertisers are embracing digital forms of media. Advertisers are reducing the money they spend on TV advertising due to not being able to monitor the number of people that have viewed the ads and an increase in catch-up television and the numbers of people recording programmes to avoid advertisement on commercial television channels. However, this is not to say that television advertising does not have a place within any marketing strategy, infact their are easy ways to link offline media to online media.

Using An Hashtags
If you are spending thousands if not hundreds of thousands of pounds on television advertising why would you not use an hashtag! Too many times do we see really great thought provoking or interesting television advertisements that do not have an hashtag on the advert. Their has been a huge growth in the number of people ‘double screening’ and this should be taken advantage of. Double screening is consuming two forms of media at the same time. It is believed that 34% of people use their mobile device whilst watching television. Many popular television programs will trend on twitter such as #xfactor as people debate about the content of the show. The best way to get a hashtag trending is to give people an idea of what hashtag to use, the perfect example of this is ‘The Only Way is Essex’ which uses the hagtag TOWIE. Not only does the show regularly trend on twitter the brand is now refered to as TOWIE.

It is possible to be imaginative with the trend including using a unique selling point as the hash tag. It is also possible to use a promoted tweet, this is a paid service that will soon be available to everybody. A promoted tweet will appear as the top tweet when people view the trend making it easy to share a link and drive customers to your site. This is also raising brand awareness which backs up everything the offline advertising intends to do and you can track the spike in traffic via analytic tools.

Using YouTube
YouTube is the third biggest search engine and attracts over 2 billion views per day so it makes sense to be on YouTube. Advertisers should use YouTube alongside television advertising if not instead of. The difference with YouTube is the ability to track views and place a link next to the video and target the users when they are in a position to make a conversion compared to television advertising when you rely on audience figures.

Printed Merchandise
It is also possible to link printed merchandise to online. To do this you can use a customised url on your printed material such as posters, flyers and in newspapers which will make it easy to track how effective the offline marketing works. You can also put your website on printed merchandise such as promotional usb sticks.

Brand awareness is important as a long term strategy and by linking all offline and online promotions it can be very effective.

Mario Burgess – Marketing Advisor and Personalised USB Sticks Enthusiast