Offline Marketing for Data Center, Cloud Services and Mission Critical

With all the hype that every announcement from Google, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn gets, you’d think there’s not much hope for offline marketing -- especially regarding campaigns for data centers, cloud services, and mission-critical kinds of businesses.

But don’t count offline marketing out yet- even among tech-savvy buyers. Here are four tips to improve your results:

1. Track offline marketing --  If you can't measure it, find another way to invest your marketing budget. In the digital-first world that we live in, there is absolutely no excuse to spend money on campaigns that can't be measured and compared against each other for the bottom line and return on investment (ROI) impact. Just like an inbound campaign, every offline campaign needs SMART goals (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timebound).
2. Think ROI all the time --  Regardless of whether you measure your revenue in a CRM system with closed-won outcomes, accounting software, or an e-commerce system, all of your offline marketing campaigns must feed into your centralized database for segmenting and nurturing leads. With closed-loop returning, you can and must tie specific offline marketing campaigns to specific new client wins. This is critical for determining your return on investment -- and understanding your true cost of client acquisition (COCA) as it compares to your average client lifetime value (LTV).
3. Pursue speaking opportunities -- While your website can and should be a very valuable way to attract, convert, and nurture potential speaking opportunities, inevitably, some offline marketing -- such as direct mail, networking events, and, if you must: cold calling -- can generate leads and sales opportunities for both paid and unpaid speaking opportunities. Treat each speaking opportunity as a separate campaign with its own SMART goals. This way, you can measure the time and money expended to deliver your presentation and compare it to the leads, sales opportunities, and revenue generated in other ways.
4. Host public events and parties -- The #1 mistake data center, cloud services, and mission-critical companies make when hosting events/parties: they forget all of the best practices they use to make their digital marketing accountable and fail to apply that same discipline to their event planning. Buyer personas, lifecycle stages, and SMART goals must all be part of planning successful offline events.

What have you found to be most important when planning offline marketing campaigns related to data centers, cloud services, or mission-critical campaigns? Let us know in the comments below.