3 Ways to use offline marketing as an SEO tactic

A lot of Search Optimisers and website owners believe that SEO is purely an online discipline, but a recent study by iProspect and Jupiter Research clearly indicates that offline marketing drives online searches.

In fact, 67% of online search users are driven to search as a result of some offline channel.

This means that two-thirds of the searches done everyday are conducted because someone saw something on TV, heard it on the radio, read it in a magazine, saw it on a billboard, received it in the mail or were told about it by a friend.

An even more powerful statistic is that 39% of searchers influenced by offline channels make a purchase. Yet how many advertisements have you seen that don’t exactly make it easy for you to find their company’s website!

How can you use this knowledge to improve your websites traffic?

1. For starters, if you already do offline marketing, make sure you clearly state your web address (URL) in the ad and encourage people to have a look at your site. Also have a look through your website statistics and look at how long people stay on your site and which pages they click on most.

   Use this type of information to better structure your content, try adding some of the content from the pages people seem to be reading on your index page. Simple things like this can lower your bounce-rate and improve conversions.

2. If you don’t do any offline marketing, now could be a good time to start testing and measuring some of the many offline advertising options available. If you don’t have a budget to support a lot of advertising, look at ways you can inspire your clients to talk about you.

   Word-of-mouth is an incredibly powerful offline marketing tool that doesn’t have to cost any money at all. People expect good service, so give your clients exceptional service that they don’t expect; give them a call from time-to-time to make sure they’re happy; if you have a subscription-based service, ask for the clients date of birth when they initially sign-up, then send them an email or card on their birthday;

   These are just a few examples that DO work!

3. Write topical content on your site that’s based on current events… or better yet, try and predict topics that are likely to generate lots of interest in the near future.

   A couple of examples of this is when Darren Rowse from ProBlogger wrote a post about who was going to win the singing TV show ‘Australian Idol’ a couple of weeks before the show’s finale… or when celebrity blogger Perez Hilton wrote a post on Fidel Castro being dead which caused the New York Times to write a follow-up article stating it was a fabrication.

   Just make sure that if you try something like this, it fits with your company image. There’s no point writing articles that generate traffic but have nothing to do with your site.

Hopefully some of the above tactics will help drive more traffic to your website!