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With online channels such as SEO, Social Media and Pay-Per-Click (PPC) now supplementing these former methods, complementary marketing techniques are now beginning to shine as they ought to.
While clearly an advocate of targeted online forms of marketing, utilising a marketing plan which immerses itself in a variety of advertising actions is far more effective rather than 'putting your eggs all in one basket'.
A collaborative approach can produce highly relevant target audiences being engaged with your marketing message.
Far too often marketers can become consumed with constantly comparing various verticals and how well they perform against each other, whereas the focus should be on how they can be unified and merged to create the desired result.
With any ad spend and budget forecast, you want to know where your money is going and what you're getting in return.
It's this exact reason why traditional marketing channels are so difficult to track and measure; there is simply no way of tracking and measuring how many people will be exposed to your marketing and how many of these then results in leads and conversions.
With online marketing, you can track and measure exactly who engages with your marketing, where and how they are engaged, and furthermore, you can utilise this data to inform marketing initiatives in the future.
The immediate examples which come to mind includes PPC advertising, such as Google AdWords, which is highly targeted and can be tracked across all types of connected devices. The highlight is of course in the name, Pay-Per-Click, so you only ever pay when someone clicks on your ad. It equals greater conversion rates because you're targeting the people you want to engage with.
Another great example is Social Media advertising via platforms such as Facebook. Again, their ads platform enables you to create highly specific and targeted ads.
The next logical step is to think of how these two platforms, for example, can best support each other, and then implement this into your marketing strategy.
Of course, in order for your Facebook advertising to be successful, your target audience needs to be on Facebook which means they need to actively use an account. Google AdWords, on the other hand, can be viewed by anyone who has access to the internet without the need for a profile.
An integrated approach would look at this and exploit the fact that your reach can be increased by targeting your known audience on Facebook, and use Google AdWords to attract new consumers, which can be triggered by relevant keywords, to that audience.
Now you'll easily be able to find many blogs and online articles which like to compare and contrast the two platforms to see which one is better than the other, but the best approach really is when they are used together.
Yes, together really is better!
The above is only one instance where you can utilise the power of a combined marketing method to extend the impact and reach of your advertising goals, but now that the seed has been planted, a world of new, hybrid online marketing approaches will come to fruition. Enter, Complementary Marketing.
