While looking at the Sunday paper one morning, I began to daydream about how much money I would save if I would just commit to coupon clipping. I then saw a coupon for a client that I work for and noticed that they had a call to action to find recipes and tips online. I thought it would be nice to see how many people would actually use the coupon or take it a step further and use search to get recipes to use the product. I felt it was great that they were using print advertising to bring awareness of their recipe site but wondered why they didn’t utilize paid search to promote their free standing inserts. So for their next Free Standing Insert (FSI), we decided to test the geo- targeting feature (that I discussed in my last blog post) to target certain markets that would receive the FSI in their local paper and see if there was a lift in recipe prints for the promoted recipe. After discussing with the client, we felt that this would be good to test since their next insert would be for one of their most popular recipes.  In my mind, this was a no brainer, but looking at it through the eyes of the client, there are so many marketing verticals utilized and sometimes one can forget the ease and simplicity of search and how it can boost other marketing efforts. Here are a few tips on how to tie different marketing platforms together to boost sales or conversions of a particular product.

Try to synchronize your messaging with search and the other marketing platforms you use.  This tip sounds so simple, yet some advertisers forget this important step. Make sure the messaging is consistent so the consumer can recognize your brand and whatever promotion you have quickly.

But how will I know if I yielded positive results you may ask? Set aside incremental funds and test a small market.  Pull popular converting terms and place them in a geo- targeted campaign to see if you will get a higher conversion rate in those markets. Make sure you are able to obtain data from any marketing vertical (print, TV, social, display, etc.), as well as search conversions.

People may lie, numbers don’t – According to a 2007 survey by Marchex, local search is the second most popular service on the internet, behind email. Yet, only about 5% of the total amount spent on advertising goes to local search. According to The Kelsey’s Group annual forecast of mobile local media (published Feb., 2009), mobile ad revenues will increase from $160 million in 2008 to $3.11 billion by 2013!  If a heavy amount of money is spent on print and newspaper advertising, and in that advertising it points to go online, wouldn’t you want to capture a greater local audience that is familiar with the product? The answer is yes! And search will help you tie the two together.

Take a risk – So you haven’t seen any studies or white papers on what you want to test on your client. Maybe it hasn’t been done before and your test could open up the door for other advertisers! You never know if something will work or not until you try.