Online engagement, community building, likes and retweets. Terms that are indispensable in a blog or tweet these days. It is especially interesting for organizations to engage with their target group online and to hear what is going on and what is needed. However, the real actions often take place offline. How can you motivate people to make that transition from online to offline?
From online to offline
Entrepreneurs want people to come to their shop or catering establishment. It is very interesting if people talk list to data about your restaurant online and if they recommend it to their friends. But as an entrepreneur you want these people and their friends to actually come and eat. Of course, you can also buy many products online these days. In that case, you can also interpret offline as pulling the target group from one channel to another channel, in order to actually make the purchase.
Transition phases
But how do you get your target group to do this? Many communities are aimed at bringing people together and creating discussion. However, there is often a lack of vision, to really use the community to move the target group from one purchase phase to the next. For the Master of Marketing program, I conducted research for my master thesis on behalf of Kittyhawk . The outcome of this thesis is a model that should be able to move the target group from online engagement to offline action. In this first article, I will describe the theory behind the model. In my next article, the model itself will be central.