539
Flickr
Companies consideration of their motives and actions for social media activity -see our last Digital Trend - is representative of a larger trend where companies are looking to be less silo-like with their approach to digital marketing. This involves considering how digital tactics fit in to each of the communication channels you use and considering all activity 'holistically' in relation to overriding business objectives.
In 2011, there are now many more channels where your customers can:
- Talk about your brand, business, services or products and service delivery
- Engage with you – either pre-sales, at point of sales or during after sale customer support
- Find out about you (and your competitors) – what you offer, what you think, how you do things, how you present your business and most importantly, what others think about you
So, companies are starting to ask a number of questions:
- "How do our Twitter account, Facebook page, LinkedIn group, blog and website fit into the customer lifecycle?"
- "How can we use these channels to better communicate?"
- "Should we develop a mobile app?"
- If so, "How can we use it to improve our customer experience?"
- "Given we can track our online campaigns better (which let’s face it makes our ROI analysis easier) shall we stop or significantly reduce our offline activity and budget allocation?"
To help you answer these questions, we offer a few thoughts...
| Principle | Explanation |
|---|---|
|
|
|
| Your communication over each channel should interact with customers in a way that is appropriate to that channel | A tailored approach can produce far greater engagement and thus ultimately a much better return on investment (ROI).
Some examples of this:
|
|
|
|
| An integrated strategy is vital to avoid a fragmented approach | For example, if an email marketing campaign promotes a new product or service structure that doesn't correspond with your website, you could potentially quickly confuse and lose your audience.
Key to the multi-channel approach is producing an integrated strategy that maps what tactical plans exist for each channel and how you expect your target market to respond. But be prepared to be surprised! |
|
|
|
| "Old School can be New School" | Given the detailed on-demand tracking available for website and social media visitors, people can be quick to dismiss traditional channels such as direct mail, print and display advertising.
However, these channels may be more effective as the first touchpoint to your B2B audience, so great advice is to incentivise leads by providing premium content via a trackable mechanism such as a pURL (personalised URL) microsite. |
|
|
|
| Don't forget the "Brilliant Basics" | "Content is king" - what you deliver over each channel has to be worthwhile for the receiver, otherwise you may be undoing positive promotion on other channels. "Life shouldn’t be printed on dollar bills" However, as a business, your continued success will be based on sales and customer retention. So, it’s vital to map the ROI, but acknowledge that in a multi-channel world, the return from activity in one channel may actually be represented in another. Here, traditional customer relationship management (CRM) systems can be enhanced with B2B lead automation tools. |
|
|
|
So, we summarise our third trend below...
Companies will look at their digital marketing in the context of each and all communication channels and look to produce an integrated strategy overseeing all tactical activity.
Next in the Digital Trends 2011 Series - "More accuracy in measuring digital visitor behaviour"
