Market Your Product Online, Offline, Both: The Sky is the Limit

1) How long does it take you to get to your nearest consumer electronic store? 

2) How hard is it to find the exact product you want in a specific section of Best Buy or Comp USA (and how painful is it finding and talking to the help there sometimes)? 

3) And do you ever wonder if there could be a higher-quality product at another store for a better price just down the road?

My answers: 10 minutes.  Hard (and similar to sewing my eyes open and feeding me sleeping pills).  All the time.

As consumers, we don't like spending time, enduring pain, or wondering if the grass is greener with another product out there.

Welcome the emergence of the hybrid online/offline consumer experience.  A recent study completed by Yahoo on 2,000 U.S. adults, focusing on 5 consumer electronic categories, revealed that while 2/3 of shoppers still make purchases in physical retail locations, 2/3 of the consumers will use online and offline methods to research products before they go to the store to buy. 

"The Internet is far more than just another point of purchase; its biggest impact lies within the awareness and consideration process," said Wenda Harris Millard, Yahoo!'s chief sales officer. "The widespread adoption of social technologies gives marketers an even greater opportunity to continuously engage consumers and make connections across traditional and new media advertising, helping to build brand mindshare and increase offline sales."

Not surprisingly, according to the LA Times, internet ad sales soared 35% in 2006 to $16.9 billion in the U.S.  We're seeing businesses like NearbyNow, which allows consumers to locate items, availability information, and put holds on products for in-store purchase, spring up and streamline the online/offline experience.

Savvy product marketers, and marketers in general, are using the online/offline experience to drive impressive consumer awareness and sales campaigns, for FREE.

Integrating product marketing mixes can allow any company profound online/offline marketing tactic opportunities to get their message across effectively.  This story by Marketing Sherpa highlights how one non-profit organization was able to get its video message viewed by 59% of its target audience by sending out an announcement through the postal mail to the audience 2 1/2 weeks before sending that audience an email which opened up to a video message.  That creative little stunt earned the non-profit $1.9 billion in free advertising last year.

With the internet changing the nature of the game and leveling the playing field, smaller companies have more opportunities than ever, to capitalize on creativity, technological savvy, and integration to market and sell their products.