Level 2 Certificate in Digital Promotion for Business (601/6673/3)

Unit 04 Coordinating offline and digital media for business (R/507/4154)

In this NCFE unit we will explore how to coordinate digital media to create customer conversions

1.1 Give Positive And Negative Points Of A Range Of Offline Media For A Business

The following is for the business called Foydigital. This is an online business which is a digital consultancy that designs and develops websites.

Offline Media	Positive	Negative
Events at trade shows	Meet the target audience Very visual and can be simple Very direct	Expensive as a business staff member have to travel to the location of where the trade show is based
Local papers news publications	This is hard to measure success	Need to repeat and have a campaign
How to guides, top ten tips (top 10 tips) and Q&A's as hand outs.	Good way to show a business are an expert in a subject measured	A business may print to many documents or not have enough at the time of meeting customers
QR code	These quick response codes can be measured	People need to have the software on their mobile device to take use of it.
Radio	Great for general awareness when using local language	Need a good budget to make people aware of the businesses Need to localise the advertising content for language of customers

Here are all the other digital media which could be used for other businesses.

Offline Media	Positive	Negative
Local or national TV	Tested been used for years and gets result if repeat frequently. Reaches everybody who see it.	Can be expensive for a small business. Not the best medium to push travel to a website
Cinema	Can be very local and focused to push trade toward a local business which has a good niche website offering	As above but not as expensive
Bill board on the street	Can be electronic so this will be increasing an option for time sensitive campaigns and localisation used. Could also be used with NFC technology to target people	A business would need to work with a agency to get the best results from a campaign this would be expensive
Print media Newspapers local or national Magazine	Above the line mainstream brand awareness	Not targeted. Is a daily or weekly paper able to work at this moment in time for the right reader. Magazines can be kept however
Below the line
Direct mail Door to door leaflet drop	Selective lower cost Tracking	A door to door campaign require that addresses are known for the best targeting
Trade shows collection of data from a competition	Face to face is a great way to do business it is the tried and tested way. If this is back up by good digital follow up it will lead to conversions	Not everyone wants to be scanned for more details Need to give away lots of promo items to find qualified customers
Catalogs	If a customer is using a media they are very interested in the business, they are ready to compare and buy	Need a long lead time to get into publication
PR and classes	If a business has a show man or show woman this is a great way to market the businesses. CTA should be used as often as possible	Requires lots of energy and focus in marketing and sales technique to convert customers to email sign up as an example
Local sports team, venue or event sponsorship	If a business has a sports team or person that does well then this is considered a great investment. Lots of options where a brand can be seen offline i.e more than the shirt	If a business sporting team or sports person does not do well then this can be seen as a bad investment. There can be negative PR if the event is not staged well or sports person behaves badly
Guides, white papers as hand outs Business cards	Paper hand outs are a way to prove a business is an expert and prompt for more by asking for an email Always a good way to direct traffic to a website or CTA with an email	Requires good information that is up to date Lots of businesses card are thrown away so a business never know how good they are for the cost
QR code	A way to connect a business print media to the word wide web. Newspapers Magazines Product Packaging Business Cards Signs Billboards Use is Ghana as payment technology Can use the code and company logo combined	Need the app to read the code. NFC now an alternative for smart phone connections
Intelligence-based telemarketing	Qualified numbers collected from a competition or business cards can be called to foster business. Can also text web addresses to numbers	Can be seen negatively if a cold lead is called. Need good telemarketers to go through the numbers and convert
Coupons/deals/incentives to past customers	Loyalty based on if customer like this they may like that. Can track with QR codes. Coupons can be time sensitive	Relies on the customer keeping the coupon and using them at the right time
POS (point of sale) promotion	Email voucher sent straight after sale is made, online pro or discount code for a service like a meal at a restaurant	Relies on the customer being open to spend more at the POS because they are happy with the sales today
Referrals	A business can offer a reward for a new lead	These are hard to get, but can be achieved through social media platforms

1.2 Describe The Role Of Offline Media In Generating Online Traffic

The main role of offline media in generating online traffic is in pushing prospective customers to the online world.

Some of the offline digital media used will be more successful in doing this than others, for instance radio, cinema and TV when used are a success for known brand names in pushing traffic to a website. If a small business uses this then the website name must be easy to find online. It must easily reflect the service or product which it sells. Big business with big brands would always look to use this form of media and may or may not direct traffic to their website. An example of this is compare the market. The brand is well known as they heavily advertise over the TV, radio and in cinema at the top of the marketing funnel which is all about awareness. If a client types in the key words in a search engine they will find the company's website easily.

Outdoor adverting on billboards again is used by big business for awareness and campaigns may include a URL to the company website. The effectiveness however would not be as good as physical printed media as a customer has time to respond to an advert.

Using printed media like leaflets, newspaper adverts, magazines, white papers, guides, direct mail, coupons and POS is more effective for a small business since the URL or QR code can be added to the hard copy media directing customers to a company's offerings. It can be one click away from a sale by using this method.

A business will be pushing out a message and pulling in traffic to their website. Traffic is acquired by many different means, organic search engine, paid adverts, email marketing, social media and social media. The only other main method is direct, unfortunately this can not be measured accurately but it would be from offline marketing like PR, radio, trade shows, business cards etc.

Read Search Engine Optimisation For Business

1.3 Describe The Ways In Which Offline Media Complements And Supports Digital Media

The budget for the business Foydigital which is a digital web design and development agency for the markets of Ghana and Ethiopia is mostly spent at trade shows which is about pushing our message out to the market. More that half of the money and an intense period of time will be spent meeting people face to face on a stand with outbound marketing. Handouts which will be guides and demos of past work need to be ready for these meetings, pulling in clients to visit our site with the aim of registering their email.

There needs to be excellent coordination of the use of offline and digital media to meet business needs and objectives before the event, during and after. 30% of the budget is used in months one to four setting up the business in a positive light. This would include keyword search for the local market, blogs, how to guide handouts and downloads pdfs for emails, online searching for prospects on Linkedin. There would be some radio ads in the local market a few days before the event which again is all about pushing our message out to the market.

Off and online activity at the event would be trade show magazine QR codes, social media posts, face to face email collection, demo of work, handout of guides with CTA directed to the website.

After the event there would be follow ups with emails and Skype calls to conversion. Some budget would then be spent on feedback and learning.

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Read Coordinating The Use Of Digital Media For Business

2.1 Business Needs And Objectives Identified

Business Needs

Get found by people on line in the country of Ghana and Ethiopia.

Sell the service of website development and design to business leader and entrepreneurs.

The business Foydigital needs clients from the countries Ghana and Ethiopia. Businesses that can pay qualified (typical business profile) and have a size of 10 or more employees and a good turnover £1,000 000 per year but they lack the skills in website design and development.

We would like to talk to these business decision makers offline at trade shows. We would like to move them along the marketing funnel to one to one email conversion to sales.

Business Objectives

New customers from Ghana and Ethiopia. We would like to satisfy these customers. We want repeat business from customers in Ghana and Ethiopia and for them to refer us. For every one customer one other prospect per 2 months.

Read NCFE Level 2 Certificate in Digital Promotion for Business (601/6673/3) course units

2.2 A Planned Coordinated Offline And Digital Campaign For A Business

The following is for the business called Foydigital. This is an online business which is a digital consultancy that designs and develops websites. The locations are African countries such as Ghana and Ethiopia. The plan will be SMART.

A campaign would be directed towards trade shows events like Africa Com. The idea is to meet the target audience. It is a 6 month plan with 4 month lead up to the show and 2 month conversion and after sales. We would like 1 paying customer per month from this campaign.

Months 1 to 3 budget 20% of the total

The first online activity is SEO before the event using keywords for the local market and the event title. Looking for trends in the market for this time.

The campaign will be 3 blogs for 3 months of 300 words photos and pictures and infograhics directed to the target market of business leaders. Each blog piece will be promoted on Linkedin and twitter. The blog will be highly targeted to the prospected market and measured in shares, likes, tweets and click throughs.

The first offline activity is How to guides, Top 10 tips, Q&As handouts images/pictures/infographics, giving them an offer of free information. CTA with our email for an email.

Months 2 to 4 budget 5%

The second online activity is with social media Linkedin company information will be search for 5 prospects per month to also target in the country of Ghana and Ethiopia. These people will be qualified leads and targeted. How to guides.pdfs on website design and development for Africa.

Month 4 budget 5%

The second offline activity is using radio over the two day event 3 days before to the local city.

Month 5 budget 55%

The third offline activity is the trade show magazine with QR code directed to the online landing page with time sensitive offers. Making sure we are on google with our business (maps, location).

The third online activity

Social media platforms will be used specifically Linkedin and Twitter to grow the network by connecting with prospects before, during and after the trade show. As these platforms are very good for networking with Business to Business.

The fourth offline activity is trade show face to face meetings and demos. Be very active in collecting emails. On the stand I will have How to guides (How to set up a website in Ghana?), Top 10 tips (Top 10 tips on designing a website in Ethiopia for a coffee business), Q&A's (about web design in Ghana for a business) handouts images/pictures/infographics, giving them free information with our CTA.

The fourth online activity

After the trade show we update the main website, follow up with emails and social media platforms like Facebook.

Convert to sales via Skype or Zoom. 

Month 6 budget 10%

Follow up with online Meetups, Zoom webinars on how to design a website in Ghana and Ethiopia and video calls on Skype to seal the deal this is the final activity of the main campaign.

After sales of other services. We would then be looking for referrals.

Month 7 budget 5%

Feedback and learning

Campaign feedback and survey online with Survey Monkey. We would then go back to month 1 to improve the campaign based on qualitative and quantitative analytics. This last activity is about learning from the facts.

This plan differentiates between the role each digital media will play in the campaign.