How should B2B brands work offline channels like direct mail and out-of-home into their channel mix?

Offline channels are a good way to standout and diversify your marketing mix. I've found that direct mail is a great way to get started and can be core to an effective and personalized 1:1 or 1:few ABM strategy, especially if you have an interesting direct mail piece. Here's a blog post from Sendoso with a few dozen examples for direct mail ideas to add into your campaigns. Direct mail is much easier to tie to revenue within a typical demand gen organization.

For OOH like billboards or street signage, this is a bit harder to execute against a typical B2B target persona however, if you can find short-term placement around a venue of a major conference your team or industry attends, this is a great way to ensure your market will see you. Many times, using the billboard as a focal point of an integrated campaign will provide extra impact from a brand investment. While OOH is harder to measure and tie to revenue, it does provide a good option for teams with larger budgets or scrappy startups that can get extra mileage from it.

Direct mail is often forgotten but can have a major impact. One thing to keep in mind is that direct mail is expensive and higher-touch, meaning it reaches less people for more money (time and dollars) required per person. It's best fit for larger enterprise deals or for valuable customers. Make sure you're verifying addresses between LinkedIn locations and company database locations, and partnering with sales to actively engage recipients once the mailer arrives. This is usually a bottom of funnel channel asking for a sales meeting, but can be paired with virtual event promotions when engaging new prospects.

Out-of-home is trickier for B2B as it is more difficult to narrow in on your target audience. For high budget brand awareness campaigns it can be a good choice, or for targeted ABM. I once bought a billboard on a big deal primary decision maker's drive to work, to make sure she didn't forget about us during a long sales cycle!

This won't work for every B2B brand, but offline channels can absolutely function as complementary to digital tactics. Consider where your audience prefers to consume their information. Is there an impactful way to get their attention via an offline channel? Does the form of measurement offered help you tell the story of business impact?

Here are some additional areas to consider:

• Does an offline campaign make sense for your target audience?

• How will you measure the impact?

• Can you effectively integrate the offline tactic with your digital strategy?

• What kind of personalization can you incorporate?

Lastly, I recommend approaching this strategy with an experimental mindset. Are there cost-effective ways you can test the concept and invest further if the signals are there?