Reading the recent special issue of BtoB Magazine on marketing to vertical industries I came across Matthew Schwartz’s article “Radio still dials up small business at local level despite cable and Internet“. Matthew’s article was actually published in November of last year.

This article reminded me of the most common problem we see in Internet marketing today – lack of integration.

The article talks about how radio remains an excellent advertising medium for local businesses, and we agree. But, the gap needing to be crossed in marketing is the offline to online integration and conversion tracking gap.

This is one of the most common initial oversights we see in online marketing. A company will come to us and want to set up online marketing communications program, but they try to put the project on an island.

The fact is all of the offline and online mediums work best when working together. For instance, one can integrate a local radio advertising campaign, by providing a unique domain URL, radio.www.capturetheconversation.com to give out to the listening audience, and then tracking the visitors and conversions coming from that radio ad.

Not only should the domain specific URLs come in to play with radio, but also a local PPC campaign. So if someone heard your ad in the car on the way to work, but couldn’t quite remember the name of the company, or the URL but remembered the topic or subject, when they go to search for you online, your PPC ad should appear making it easy for them to find you.

These two simple offline/online integration tasks (domain specific URLs and Local PPC) can drive significantly more awareness and increase conversions for your radio campaign.

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