Expert: Online marketing doesn’t exist in a vacuum

Print is a necessary ingredient to a successful integrated marketing campaign, according to a column by Liana Evans at marketing website Clickz.

Starry-eyed predictions from some media pundits and an understandable eagerness to get the jump on the competition, Evans writes, may lead some companies to dive into the online media marketplace too quickly and with too little knowledge of the proper practices.

Learning the smart way to provide links to a company's online sources of information – whether as simple as a corporate website or as advanced as a professionally designed Facebook page – is key, Evans says, and even something as simple as adding quick reference codes to a printing and mailing campaign can do wonders.

Integrating other offline content into the online effort can also pay big dividends, according to Evans, as a well-written brochure can often work just as well as a piece of copy for a website.

Other experts assert that many gung-ho online marketing enthusiasts fail to recognize the actual potential of their campaigns. While it's true a viral video can single-handedly be a marketing juggernaut of its own, the overwhelming majority of such campaigns never get that far.