The Omni Channel Approach – A Fail Safe Marketing Campaign Strategy
Marketing is more dynamic today than it has ever been before. With so many channels to explore and the different forms in which media is available for the users, brands have to be extremely careful about the places they showcase themselves and the ways in which the brand is presented. A trend that I have been noticing among the best agencies today is that they are more focused towards an omni-channel approach rather than pursuing outdated models of marketing.
The market is going through pivotal changes when we look at retail and the spending habits of the consumers. A recent eMarketer study forecasts that mobile payments will spike to 61.8% within the year. This prediction tells us how crucial digital marketing is going to prove to brands. However, when you plan a personalized campaign strategy, there is a lot more to it than taking out a huge chunk of your capital for marketing investments. There is a lot more to it than simply using every media channel. Without developing a strong relationship between the client and the agency, you may not be able to meet the needs of your audience the way you envision it.
When it comes to planning a marketing strategy, brands will let the agency know what they want but it is the job of the agency to find out what truly needs to be improved. This requires immense research and an insight into the strategies of competitors as well as clear communication with the clients. A successful marketing strategy usually involves the steps that I am going to outline for you. Brands and agencies can use these steps to monetize on their marketing strategies.
Data
An agency cannot excel in every single vertical market. So when a brand comes to you for a marketing strategy, you will have to conduct extensive research and collect data with regards to the industry you are dealing with. A marketing campaign relies on complete understanding of the business or brand that you are dealing with. So as an agency, your job is to evaluate the industry closely before you take the plunge into developing a marketing strategy for your client. The following information is going to provide you with the base you need to start with your marketing strategy:
- The extent of the industry – You can measure the extent of the industry in terms of dollars, locations in which it is available or the amount of products and services that are sold.
- The growth percentage – The percent of growth will help you identify if the industry is a fast paced industry or if it moves steadily. At times you may also be dealing with industries with a slow growth rate.
- Analyse competition – Does the brand face tough competition or does it stand out as stiff competition for others. You may want to analyse if there is room to compete or not and check what other brands you will be competing against.
While these are some basic questions that you need to ask to create a good marketing strategy, depending on your client or brand, many other factors may sprout for analysis. Make sure that you analyse everything closely to determine what you have to know to come up with a good strategy.
While the business will lend you some great insights, there is a lot more to strategizing. Check for previous campaigns that failed and those that were successful. Use them to help you implement your strategies more effectively. Your observations will help you understand the overall trends so that you can create a successful marketing strategy.
Customer Insights
Successful marketing campaigns work in sync with the needs of their customers. So listening to your audience is peremptory for the success of your campaign. Some very fundamental questions that can help you strengthen your marketing strategies are: Which segment of users frequently visit your website? And what is their perception of your brand? While I call this fundamental, I am not going to be surprised if you were not aware of it yet.
Without understanding your customers, you are trying to dart a target after blindfolding yourself – there is a chance that you may hit the target, but the chances of missing it is higher. Listening to the opinions of your audience will help you understand their needs so that you can create a marketing campaign around these needs.
Agencies and businesses employ different methods to find out the needs of their users. While some test the efficacy of previous marketing campaigns to learn more about the audience they will be dealing with, others may resort to researching the market to find out what the customers need. You need to build a certain level of trust with your customers if you aim to augment the conversion levels.
You can also try to survey their opinions to get a clear understanding of what they need. Till the time we can come up with a way of reading minds, we may have to resort to surveys to know their opinion about certain things. Look for answers to the following questions when trying to attain insight into your customers:
- Which aspect of your brand do your customers care about?
- What are the benefits that they value the most?
- What are the most used media channels among your customers?
- What reason do they have for trusting your brand over other?
A thorough research which helps you understand the needs of your customers will empower you with the strategies needed to build a successful marketing campaign.
Give Form To Your Assignment
Now that you have done the leg-work and the data and insights are with you, you are ready to put your assignment to work. As an agency, this is where you will be communicating to your client what you plan to achieve, and how you will be taking it forward. Whether it is a certain area of their marketing strategies that need to be improvised, or a poorly executed marketing plan that needs to be corrected.
The way you form your campaign will decide the marketing future of the brand you are dealing with. The company may have already explained its goals to you, and it is time for you to form a marketing campaign which is in line with the bigger picture. The goals of the company will help you identify your specific goals from the marketing campaign you intend to build.
Knowledge of a few things like:
- Does the brand intend to emerge as a thought leader in the industry?
- Who is your target audience (B2B or B2C)?
- What is the intended result from the campaign? Is it to gain the attention of customers or is it aimed at gaining actual customers?
- What media will be the most effective for the audience you are dealing with?
Whether you are a part of an agency or a marketing campaign for your company, understanding the basic needs of the assignment is extremely important because it forms the backbone of the campaign. Once the assignment has been formed, you move to the design phase.
Creative Design and Content
The creative team add flesh and bones to your marketing plans by giving life to your assignment. They do it by crafting a brand image that intends to accomplish the goals of the brand from the marketing campaign. The right set of brains in a creative team will be able to add momentum to the marketing plan and give a brand the outlook which it needs to make itself stand out from its competitors.
The right blend of design and content will allow you to set the tone of your message. The creative team should try to provide a variety of copy options so that brands can identify the best possible way in which they can establish a connection with their customers while marketing their products and services.
Omni-Channel Execution
This is the most important aspect of your marketing campaign today because of the ways in which marketing has evolved over the years. You cannot rely on just one source of media to do your marketing work for you and hope that you will be able to generate leads through a single source of media only. There are more than one channels that need to be explored and there are more than one ways in which every channel can be used. So utilizing the different platforms in the right way is what Omni-channel execution is all about.
Understanding your customer is inarguably the best way to figure out which channels will work for your brand. We do not live in an age where we can send marketing messages to endless users hoping at least a few will be influenced. On the contrary, we have been relentlessly evolving into a marketing age where the audience is targeted before a marketing campaign is formed.
Once you have formed your marketing campaign, you must roll it out on the right channels so that the collaborative efforts of the agency and the brand begin to show as the audience becomes responsive and visitors turn into customers.
