Can offline marketing and advertising help you save money in digital marketing?

Posted 15 March 2008 20:07pm by Ashley Friedlein with 1 comment

We know that offline marketing and advertising drives demand that can be captured, and monetised, online. The correlation between TV advertising and paid search performance, for example, has been much discussed; and direct mail, or catalogues, drive online sales.

But do you know of any examples where the cost of offline marketing or advertising has been more than offset by the savings in the online marketing?

We regularly talk to companies who are spending more than £1m a month on paid search with Google. The 'rankings' of their paid search ads can go up whilst the cost per click remains the same. This is because their 'quality score' has improved.

Most likely the click through rate on their ad has improved. And this might, in part, be due to better creative/copy, in part due to seasonal or external factors, but often will be as the result of offline marketing or advertising that the company is doing.

As their ranking goes up, so too does the volume of clicks they get. Assuming a steady conversion rate on their site, then it is quite possible for their click costs to go down, but for their sales volume to go up. Which is nice.

If a company spending £1m a month on paid search could make a 10% such improvement then they stand to save (or make an additional) £100k.

So I'm wondering whether it is possible to invest less than £100k in offline marketing and advertising to drive a 10% improvement in online marketing efficiency?

It must be possible. But I'm not sure I know of a case study to show this yet? Anyone know of one?

Ashley

Ashley Friedlein
CEO
E-consultancy.com

Ashley Friedlein is CEO and Co-founder of Econsultancy. Follow him on Twitter (3,800+ followers) or connect via LinkedIn (4,500+ connections) or Google+.