Online and off: integrating your company's digital and print messages.

• Author: Kronemyer, Bob
• Position: Media & Marketing

Successfully integrating one's online and offline message is more important than ever with the increase in Internet traffic.

By creating an online and offline strategy at the same time, "you can visually see that things are matching up," says Thom Villing, founder and president of Villing & Co. in Mishawka. "But this is not always easily done because of timing issues."

Leveraging marketing dollars can be achieved by ensuring that there is a consistency in the corporate or brand-identification image. "Unfortunately, the online presentation is frequently done by someone other than the people responsible for the traditional advertising," Villing notes.

For the Broadway Theatre League in South Bend, Villing & Co. developed subscription brochures. "The visual of a stage curtain opening is obviously static in print, but on the Web it is animated," Villing says. "The curtain opens and you see the big logo of the upcoming performance such as 'Beauty and the Beast.'"

Similarly, the marketing-communications agency has developed a strong consistency for Damon Corp., an Elkhart manufacturer of recreational vehicles. "The message in the trade publications and sales literature is consistent with the online presentation," Villing says. In fact, Damon print advertising uses the same fonts and images that appear online at DamonRV.com, with a lineup of motor homes in an industrial setting headlined "We're Ready to Rumble."

The trade ads and sales literature for Damon not only reference the Web site, but the Web site contains all the literature in PDF form for easy downloading. "This saves a tremendous amount of money," Villing points out. He estimates a savings of about $5 each time a literature request can be fulfilled online versus having to mail a hard copy.

According to Chris Wirthwein, chief executive officer at 5MetaCom in Indianapolis, "generally speaking, people have a communications presence offline before going online, in particular those who are not transacting business on the Web. So the Web is usually a secondary communication function." However, dramatically different content and strategy are needed for simply having an online presence compared to selling online.

"One of the great things about the Web is that you can deliver more information than you could afford to deliver offline," Wirthwein says. For instance, "instead of buying 10 pages of magazine advertising, one full-page ad can direct readers to your Web site. But you can't simply paste...