Combining Media Can Produce Synergistic Results

Early in my career , before the internet existed, I began with a focus on marketing research and testing. One of my larger projects involved testing and measuring different combinations of newspaper, radio and TV advertising for a national department store company. Results were compiled and measured for each combination, in different markets, at different times, and with different products. It got to a point where I could predict sales results with a reasonable degree of accuracy. The most important outcome of these tests was developing an understanding of which combinations had an incremental effect on sales and profits. While results might differ in other markets, the underlying principle would generally apply – using the right combination of media to market products or services will produce synergistic results and increased profits.

These principals are just as relevant in an online environment, or for an offline/online combination. As is the case with traditional media combinations, the trick is in determining which online combination is most effective for your business – and the only way to arrive at this is through repeated testing.

An online combination that can be particularly effective is a website and blog. HubSpot (a marketing services provider) conducted a survey of 1,531 of its customers (mostly small and medium-sized businesses), comparing those that blogged with those that didn’t. They found that, on average, the companies that blogged received:

55% more visitors
97% more inbound links
434% more search engine indexed pages

Results of the study are available at Hubspot

You can further maximize the impact of a blog (with or without a website) by adding social media to the combination to call attention to the blog. For example, the WordPress blogging platform can be set to automatically Tweet an announcement to your followers: