4 Ways to Integrate Social Media With Traditional Marketing

Generating interest for your product or service requires calling the attention of your prospective market. This can be achieved using the time-tested methods of putting up banners, pennants, feather and decorative flags, and other traditional forms of advertising, which still have their place in marketing.

If you want a wider reach, however, you would be wise to hop on to the social media bandwagon, if you haven't already, and make both traditional and digital platforms work to your business' advantage. Each has their own uses and strengths, and you can generate a much broader awareness and increase your product visibility by combining the best of both approaches. In the United States alone, online retail sales are predicted to grow at 9.5% annually until 2018, and this is going to be driven by ease of access to mobile purchases and a significant shift of wallet share to web channels.

So if you are looking to drum up sales for your current inventory or next product roll-out, or simply generate that viral buzz that will propel your brand above the competition, consider integrating social media with traditional marketing channels as suggested below.

Use social media plug-ins to your website or blog

If you are creating useful and engaging content, readers are likely to share it around their social circle in the social media. Take advantage of this free word of mouth by making it easy for your readers to spread your brand around. The more your website or blog is liked by more readers, the higher your authority ranking, and the higher your authority ranking, the higher your page rank gets. Your page ranking also climbs as more and more readers are organically driven into your website. If many people consider you a trustworthy brand online, that reputation is likely to make a jump from the virtual to the real world.

Include online links on your invoices, receipts, forms and business cards

The more your customers know how else to reach you online, the higher your interaction with them becomes, and the easier you make it for them to use your product or service.

Add your online links to banners, streamers, decorative flags

This is one of the easiest way to let your potential market know what services you offer by making it seamless for them to look you up online and see if you have something they need now or in the future. Disseminating information this way may sound very old-school, but information found in banners, streamers and decorative flags often fill the gaps that social media overlooks.

Incorporate social media logos or your website address in promotional giveaways

What better way to generate awareness for your brand and at the same time inform your present and potential customers that you can be reached via multiple platforms? As promotional giveaways are a way to let the customers sample your product or service, should they be interested in what you have to offer, they have a way to reach back out to you if you have provided them the means to do so.