Capture Value from Offline Advertising, Part 1: Creating the Ads

Many businesses are steadily increasing their investments in online advertising. And for many of the most successful campaigns, it is a combination of offline and online ads that ultimately creates sales.

The first step in measuring the success of your offline ads is to set up a website that your offline ads will direct customers to. Then using a Web analytics tool, you can gauge the number of visits to the URL in your ad. Here are some ways you can use offline advertising channels to direct visitors to your website:

• Print ads: One way to link offline and online analytics is with a unique-destination URL. Users can see the URL in a print ad and then type it in to find your landing page. The destination URL typically has a campaign tagging ID attached to the end of it, allowing a Web analytics tool to categorize where the visits come from.
• QR codes: A new, increasingly popular advertising tool is the , or QR, code. A QR code looks like a square geometric pattern and can appear on direct mail campaigns, brochures, and print advertisements. Using a free generator that creates the codes, you can store a URL, text, phone numbers, or a video in a QR code. Then the recipients of your ad can use their smartphones to scan the QR code via various apps that can be downloaded for free. This way they can obtain whatever message you’ve included in the code. URL shorteners such as bit.ly and goo.gl can also generate QR codes. 
• Outdoor advertising: Billboards, kiosks, or any other outdoor venues can show your destination URL. With analysis, a tagged destination URL can indicate whether a billboard is encouraging traffic to your website and from where. This method also extends to handouts. For example, PayPal hired workers to hand out candy bars on Valentine’s Day in New York. The wrappers included a destination URL to PayPal’s Twitter account where visitors could win prizes.

No matter what type of advertising you use, the basic rules apply. When combining offline ads with online analytics, the goal is to encourage visitors to take an action, whether it is to go to a page, submit a coupon, or sign up for email alerts. 

To learn how to analyze the success of offline ads, see .