O2O Marketing a new way to promote

 O2O Marketing a new way to promote

 

The desire to know the answer to how marketing works from online to offline has led to the creation of the concept of o2o.

What if a company offers products and services offline, but wants to promote itself online? In response to this challenge, a new promotion trend has emerged: o2o marketing.

Smartphones have become so commonplace that they can rightly be considered a window to another reality. Web users easily "dive" in and out of the phone screen, unaware of the boundaries between the real and virtual worlds.

Is it possible to connect the two environments, elevate and take the consumer from the web to the point of sale in a physically tangible world? How effective is this interaction with the target audience?


What is O2O marketing?

There was a time when brick-and-mortar stores feared that their online competitors would offer more attractive prices for a much wider range of products due to their low costs, and then the mainstream of consumers would switch to them. To avoid this outcome, many retailers diversified their sales channels by offering online shopping in addition to offline shopping.

However, time has shown that not everything is so terrible for the real world.

Although this threat seems real for purchases, it is not so clear for many companies whose business model involves physical contact with the consumer. These are cafes, restaurants, beauty salons, etc. Also for them, as for other activities, Internet marketing tools are attractive.

But while online promotion is harmonious for an online store, for the physical world there are many uncertainties. How can you tell if online advertising has worked and if it is even effective for offline?


The desire to know the answer to how marketing works from online to offline led to the creation of the concept of O2O (from online to offline). Online to offline or online 2 offline can be translated as online to offline. Thus, O2O marketing is a system of tools that online promotion uses to direct customer traffic to a company's physical points of sale.

This means that any traditional offline business can use the power of the Internet to get more customers.

That being said, for O2O marketing it is not only important to attract customer traffic, but, as with fully online interaction, to be able to determine the outcome of your exposure, that is, to know which users reached the real store and they made to purchase.
O2O tools

Shopping in conventional stores is impersonal. It is difficult for a business to obtain customer information offline. Things are very different on the Internet.


There, consumers are more willing to share contact information because they simply can't receive their purchase. And since this is so, it is important that offline companies that wish to take advantage of the consumer identification advantages that online companies have, find a way to apply said mechanics online.

On the other hand, as attractive as online trading was, even during the quarantine period in the Covid-19 pandemic, although it grew significantly, its share did not become dominant. This suggests that consumers are not always ready to fully trust the image of the product on the screen, however convenient it may be.

This seriously changes the perception of competition between offline and online sales channels. E-commerce does not remove sales from conventional points of sale and vice versa. They complement each other, the use of both channels makes sales more efficient and the customer experience more interesting.

The task of O2O marketing is to take the best of the two channels of interaction. For example, by offering a customer the ability to order online but skip delivery and pick it up himself at a nearby store, the company has an opportunity to draw someone's attention to its other offerings.


If their contact details are obtained at the time of purchase, other offers can be made to them, and coupons from online purchases can be used to offer them additional discounts offline.

The O2O tool can also be used by a cafeteria or fast food chain, offering the consumer the possibility to place and pay for their order remotely through an application on their phone, and then pick it up at a convenient point along the way.

Once the consumer has been contacted in this way, their geolocation can be used to make additional offers when they are in the vicinity of the business or a branch to encourage spontaneous and pleasant purchases.

Banks operate in a similar way, asking customers to apply for a loan, plastic card or other product remotely through an app or website, and then show up at a branch to complete the application.

These actions make it possible to determine which online advertising and on which channels gives the desired result for the company's business.