Save costs by resorting to cheaper online branding efforts such as buying banner advertisements on websites, or sending direct email offers to mailing lists, the focus of marketing has moved away from traditional or offline branding techniques. However, because of this change, offline branding has actually increased in importance to promoting business activities.
Regardless of how fancy a company’s Facebook page or website is, if the offline branding materials and efforts do not mirror the same product positioning as its online equivalent, the conversion rate of branding costs into customer leads will remain low. Here is why visually appealing, high-quality business cards, pull-up banners and branding remain important in the business world today.
Face-to-face interactions still seal the deal
Even as your company’s LinkedIn page or website is more likely to draw in investors, business partners, and customers, deals are more likely to be sealed after a face-to-face meeting. How business positioning translates from social media branding to brick-and-mortar product and service quality remains key.
Trust remains a major part of business transactions: so while you may attract investors via your online presence or product that is aimed at the luxury market, if your business card or offices do not evoke that same class, investors will doubt your ability to follow through and deliver the product or service with the same standards as marketed online.
That is why Silicon Valley and other industry-specific business areas have mushroomed over the past decade: bright-eyed entrepreneurs following the lead of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Google’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin to what has been called the venture capital investment centre of the world. Angel investors and Fortune 500 corporations alike find themselves converging together in the real world, even though deals can be sealed online.
Aligning online and offline branding
As the race to remain fresh and appeal to the young, vibrant demographic that drives the majority of sales both offline and online heats up, you will find that businesses still structure their branding campaigns and images based on traditional sales techniques and period.
Online, small companies take to hiring freelance designers to give their websites a one-time overhaul, while large corporate companies produce an entirely new branding across both print and web platforms. These are often done close to traditionally hot buying periods like Black Friday, which kicks off the brick-and-mortar retailers’ most lucrative sales run of the year.
Traditional sales seasons still matter
On a local level, businesses flock to local printing service providers. For example, digital printing services in Sydney like Print 2 Day, takes a massive upturn in mid-July every year when the stocktaking sales are on, and stocks from the previous season sell like hot cakes. This pattern is mirrored all across the world, as businesses that support functions as small as local fairs to once-a-year music festivals like Glastonbury put aside massive budgets to ensure the quality of pull-up banners at these events mirror their social media and online branding campaigns.
Similarly, retailers across a range of markets from Harrods to ASDA revamp their websites and boost online ad buying as the festive season nears, just as they give their window displays a makeover. This ensures that there is continuity between both worlds, but more importantly, leads are still converted into sales offline and due to the offline branding like pull-up banners.
With digital printing entering the high-definition world, banners, brochures and cards can be produced in resolutions ranging from 300 dpi to 2400 dpi, so visually appealing offline branding efforts are no longer the province of the rich.
