This post is part of the #JUMPchallenge, a blogging competition designed to raise awareness of how to join up online and offline marketing, launched to support Econsultancy's JUMP event.

Online and Offline Marketing should compliment each other to gain better return of investment. Due to the increased use of Internet, people who purchase offline might also conduct an online research before making purchases. It happens with both consumer or business-to-business sales. Potential customers often visit a website for new information, promotions, educational content and offerings. It is highly important to update your website as often as you can and keep track of the visitor trending. Let all your online and offline marketing staff know about the advertisments and promotion your company is engaged in.It is really important to include the website URL of your company in every piece of promotional broucher and cards you make for offline promotion. If the online marketing people know about the TV ads and other offline promotion they can promote the same online as well. You can record your online TV ad and upload the same to YouTube and share the same to through online communities.

The reason most companies see it hard to integrate online and offline marketing is the lack of connection between offline marketing team and online marketing team. I would suggest that this two team should help one another and should roll out online marketing and offline marketing campaigns simultaneously. Both team should be aware of the dates for their campaign launches and should be fully prepared for the same. Another important reason why you should integrate you online marketing and offline marketing is to keep the costs low and to get a more focused marketing effort.

If you have a combined online and offline marketing strategy you can always test marketing promotion in the cheaper medium and if it is successful you can take the same to more costly medium. For example if you are planning to do a classified ad you can do it first online and then based on the response you can publish it offline. You can always combine both online and offline marketing strategies to achieve the best results. Use all possible marketing opportunities especially the ones that work for your business.

I would like to hear your views about integrating online and offline marketing.