How do you measure the impact of offline media on online conversions?

In my experience, defining goals and KPIs is crucial when measuring offline media's impact on online conversions. Start by identifying clear objectives, such as increasing website traffic or boosting online sales. Next, select KPIs that directly reflect these goals, like the number of online actions attributed to offline campaigns. Utilizing unique URLs or promo codes in offline materials can track these conversions effectively. Remember, alignment between your goals and KPIs ensures a precise assessment of your offline media's online efficacy.

Having a clear Key Insight (a triggering discovery) that is always part of the creative concept to engage the brand with the target, should be as important as setting Goals and KPI’s for any media strategy. All media activities will successfully engage if the creativity is build around a key insight on human behavior. Therefore if the triad Insight-Goals-KPIs is known beforehand, this might trigger new ways of grasping the real effectiveness of the campaign beyond the regular ones (i.e, hashtags, UGC, changes in real time sales dynamics or brand usages, sentiments in digital conversations, etc.). It’s kind of Insight + Goals = Attuned KPIs

Brand search is one good way to measure the impact of offline media on the online conversions. Look at your Google Search Console numbers. Are more people searching for your brand/company name right when the offline campaigns get launched? Measure the delta (clicks before vs while the campaigns are running) and you'll know how many people got interested in your brand and searched it online. Now, here's a problem: GSC doesn't allow you to measure the conversions (Google is evil!); for that, you are going to need GA4 (where you have no data on the queries people are searching for, ups). A smart marketer, however, would compare the GSC & GA4 data and ger a blurry and yet realistic picture of how much impact the offline campaigns are bringing.

If you are using streaming advertising, OTT, you can add a pixel to your website and track conversions and store visits if it's a brick and mortar.

Also consider looking at Google Trends. If you see a spike in searches for your brand or campaign name, chances are you're doing something right.

Watch your direct traffic spikes, which are typically users directly typing in your branded web address, in Google Analytics for the time period during the ad run and 30 days after to track if there was YOY increases or MOM. However, if you are a sales organization some months may always trend up or down, so YOY maybe best.

Run A/B tests or regional rollouts to measure the incremental impact of offline media. Experiment with different channels, times, and messages to find what drives the best online results.