5 Ways To Integrate Your Inbound & Traditional Marketing Efforts

There's been a lot of buzz about inbound marketing in the last several years, and for good reason. Inbound marketing is cost-efficient, organic, and it has the ability to drive traffic and leads to your site for months, even years to come. Yet, this style of digital marketing should not serve as a complete replacement for traditional marketing efforts. As you continue to leverage various channels for your marketing efforts, it’s critical for you to start pairing your inbound and traditional marketing efforts to take your integrated marketing strategy to the next level. Not sure where to begin? Consider these five ways:

1. Add a digital component to your trade show efforts. 

Trade shows are still an effective marketing tool. They get you in front of a target audience in a way that's time efficient and cost-effective for the number of contacts you will likely make. But it’s critical to not forget about how digital marketing can make your trade show even more effective.

Consider adding an email marketing element to your trade show efforts. You can send pre-show emails to your contacts who will likely be at the show, letting them know about your booth activities, sessions you’re speaking at and ways to set up a time to connect with your sales team. Also, promote the event on social media to let your followers know you’ll be at this event and give them opportunities to engage with you.

At the end of the trade show, be sure to implement a strategic follow-up campaign that encompasses email marketing, automation and one-to-one sales follow-ups to those people who stopped by your booth. This is critical to keeping the conversation going and ensuring you maximize the efforts of the show.

2. Leverage video marketing.  

With a traditional outbound marketing initiative like television commercials, businesses are initiating the conversation and sending out a broad message to a wide audience. This type of advertising still works and is important as it boosts overall brand recognition. But why not take that same content and go a step further with inbound marketing techniques?

Consider promoting the video on YouTube to gain more subscribers and link to a dedicated landing page on your website. You can also share the video on both social media and through email marketing to ensure you're getting the video in front of your current audience and prospective followers. Your video may need some post-production work to ensure it’s ready for a variety of different digital channels, but this is a great way to leverage video content and make sure your prospects and customers are getting a consistent brand experience.

3. Drive prospects to digital assets from offline channels.  

Use print publications, commercials and magazine ads as a strategic way to connect your offline experience to your online experience. For example, when you have a magazine ad or other offline promotion, you generally want to drive those people to a digital channel so you can start to connect with them online in a more meaningful and consistent way.

You can do this by pointing individuals to a dedicated landing page, asking them to submit their email address to claim an offer, inviting them to join the conversation on social media and more. This will help showcase your brand in an integrated way both offline and online and give your prospects and customers every opportunity to become part of your sales funnel and customer experience.

4. Leverage print publications. 

In addition to using traditional marketing to drive consumers to your digital assets, you can also leverage the printed content you create for offline promotion to use for online purposes.

For example, if you've created a print publication or even sales collateral to use offline, see how you may be able to repurpose some of that content for online use. Often, sales collateral content can be a great way to jumpstart a new email marketing campaign targeted to prospects or customers. Or, if you have a larger print publication, you may have articles you can leverage for your blog that can be promoted via social media and email marketing. See what other assets you have in print form that can be repurposed to maximize their effectiveness.

5. Invest in an interactive billboard, kiosk or other digital signage. 

This strategy will largely depend on what type of business you have and whether or not you have a brick-and-mortar location. For the right company, blending traditional, point-of-sale advertising with inbound marketing tactics can be a huge success. Traditionally, billboards, kiosks and similar types of digital signage remained static.

But with new technology in this space, kiosk and digital signage tools are starting to become much more interactive, giving you other ways to connect with the consumer. While the prospect or customer is physical at your location, consider ways to leverage this channel to capture email addresses via quizzes, email signups and more.

As you can see, there are many elements to consider when integrating your offline and online efforts. Ultimately, these strategies will help you save time and resources as you cross-promote and leverage content across multiple mediums. Think about ways you can start integrating these channels to save you time and money while also continuing to give your prospects and customers a consistent brand experience.

Do you want to discuss ways that you can start integrating your inbound and traditional marketing channels to maximize your results? I invite you to schedule a consultation with our team to discuss how you can best combine these efforts to grow your brand.

This article was originally published on Forbes.com.