It’s not just small businesses that are trying to wrap their heads around the convergence of offline and online marketing. Even large publicly traded corporations don’t fully understand it yet.

I was driving behind a city bus the other day that had a billboard ad on the back of it for Husky Energy.  The ad said “Win Fuel For Life”. My first thought was that the offer must be like a lottery where they consider life 20 years. So I immediately started looking for the asterisk and fine print, but I couldn’t find it. My next thought was to look for the call-t0-action. Surely I’d be able to follow the call-to-action and then read about the promotion. The only problem was there was no call-to-action. My next thought was to look for the URL of the companies website, but once again no luck.

I must have scanned the ad four or five times trying to find a call-to-action or the companies URL. I started to think I wasn’t seeing straight. A company of this magnitude didn’t even put their website address on a public billboard ad.

This just seems like a waste of money. A potentially great promo with poor execution. Just think of the lost dollars. Because there was no call-to-action, there is no way for them to track who has seen this ad and who has converted from it. Had there been a call-to-action and had I participated in it, they would now have my name and email address, which I gave to them with my permission, which means they could market to me down the road potentially selling me on something else.

Come on guys, closing the loop on your offline marketing isn’t rocket science. But if you need a hand, that’s whey were here. Have you seen any poorly executed offline marketing lately. Chime in and let us know your thoughts.