How To Design An Omnichannel Marketing Planning

Change is a constant in life – and therefore in business too. The digital marketing world changes especially fast, and every year something new and big promises a steady stream of customers or of event attendees. But if you want to meet KPIs and see consistent results, it makes sense to invest in a bullet-proof digital strategy instead of dabbling with whatever happens to be trendy at any given point.

To be effective, such a strategy must be based on omnichannel marketing: the use of multiple channels that complement each other and create a consistent user experience. The idea is simple: don’t put all your eggs in one basket, and go where your clients already are. Let’s take a detailed look at how cross channel marketing can benefit you, and at the best ways of implementing this type of marketing campaign.

RELATED: Developing Social Media Strategies for Conferences and Events

The Benefits Of Omni-Channel Marketing Plans

An omni-channel marketing plan allows you to reach customers wherever they are. And because you can deliver your message using their preferred medium or platforms, your chances of achieving organic customer engagement are higher.

Omnichannel marketing allows the integration of several digital marketing strategies and takes the pressure off operational tasks. Email marketing, customer acquisition and retention, content marketing, or social media campaigns are no longer stand-alone tasks, but instead, form an integrated marketing strategy that is aligned with your business objectives.

Image Source: SmartInsights

RELATED: Event Marketing Strategies to Avoid

If correctly implemented, a cross channel strategy is easier to manage. It can also be easier to monitor the audience response – for example, email unsubscribe link rates. This data facilitates making data-informed adjustments to continuously expand your reach. 

Also, omnichannel marketing works for businesses of all sizes, because the focus isn’t so much on resources or marketing budget, but on knowing your audience inside out and on delivering an impactful message. 

How To Design An Omnichannel Marketing Planning

Omnichannel marketing relies on diversifying marketing communications across multiple channels. And to communicate with potential customers, first, you need to know where to find them and go there yourself.

  • Start by researching the most-used channel’s platforms by your target audience. This could be a mix of email, web-based advertising, social media content, TV ads, blog posts, mobile apps, etc. Whichever you plan to target, remember to do it ensuring your strategy is not redundant, but complementary. 
  • The platform you use may vary, but your message must stay consistent. Find the overlap between your brand identity and goals, and the needs of your audience. Then, make information available at different places where the audience may come across it, either accidentally or because they’re looking for it. 
  • Of course, this means you must have a very granular idea of who is your audience, what they want/need, and where they shop or look for information. A customer persona is a great starting point to determine the ideal engagement model to target.
  • Next, identify the touchpoints. These are every interaction your potential customer has with your brand or message. Identifying them involves seeing the entire process as a journey or an experience –  a holistic view of customer acquisition that takes into account obstacles, needs, and opportunities. Here you can see an example that applies to the MICE industry, but of course, this varies from sector to sector.

Touchpoints meeting industry

Image Source: Weemss

  • Remember that omnichannel marketing can be implemented both online and offline. For example, you can combine digital advertising with ads in a physical location. At events, this could mean using both physical banners and event apps. The right mix is different for each industry, so testing is key. 
  • Irrespective of your industry, never underestimate the importance of social and mobile. The most visited sites in the world are social media sites including YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram. These are not only used for leisure, but also as a source of information and so they are useful tools to reach a targeted audience. As for mobile use, more than 51% of online traffic comes from mobile devices -surely a channel that no business owner wants to miss!
  • On that note, a landing page will direct users from mobile and social platforms to your website. Landing pages play a crucial role in lead generation and conversion. Research suggests they can increase conversion by 300%, and the figures are even better if your landing page features video content.
  • Lastly, take advantage of technology. Digital technology can improve the efficiency of your omni-channel marketing strategy. For example, marketing automation can save precious time so you can focus on analysing results and tweaking your campaign, and their implementation is feasible even for SMEs. If you can pair marketing automation and CRM tools, so much the better!

RELATED: Nine Ninja Tips To Stand Out At Conferences And Business Events

Conclusion

Omnichannel marketing is a profitable strategy that every business owner or event organiser should know about. This type of strategy relies on personalised and targeted communications that capture your audience’s attention wherever they happen to be. The benefits are many: they can boost awareness, create a strong positive impression, generate leads, and streamline your operations. 

If you’d like to establish a strong presence in multiple platforms so you can deliver the best possible customer experience, creating an Omnichannel marketing campaign is the next step. Get in touch and we’ll start planning the most effective strategy for your business straight away.

Does Your Conference Need Social Media?

Social media for conferences is absolutely essential. In the digital age, there is no question about it. As we have touched on before, this is where your target audience lives.

According to Eventbrite, close to 25% of traffic to event registration pages comes from social networks, and people who register after hearing about your conference on social media are 3X more likely to share it with other people.

Firstly, social media effectively serves as a platform for you to communicate with your target audience. Through engaging with them you can build a community, generate brand awareness, increase customer relations and loyalty.

As an association, it is imperative you achieve the following objectives:

  • Increase customer familiarity
  • Improve customer satisfaction
  • Grow brand awareness
  • Determine market positioning
  • Develop competitor insights
  • Identify and establish relationships with partners
  • Keep the conversation going after the event
  • Build a community
  • Generate new leads

Furthermore, to achieve any of this, you need an in-depth digital marketing strategy. Social media for conferences can be quite challenging, but we have got you covered! Try out these 3 tried and tested strategies.

1.  Create a unique hashtag

Regarding social media for conferences, you cannot overlook the power of the hashtag.

By utilising a hashtag consistently, you will boost the online conversation around your conference. When people discuss your event online, they will use the hashtag – especially on Twitter. When delegates post photographs online of themselves at the conference, they will utilise the hashtag.

Just pick one, keep it simple and use it every single time you post.

It can potentially:

  • Group together all online conversation and media around your conference
  • Allow your audience to easily connect with one another
  • Encourage their followers to join in your conference conversation and find out more about it
  • Increase the online exposure of your association and conference

You should make your hashtag clearly visible in the following places:

  • Your social media biography’s
  • Your entire association’s email signatures
  • On registration and website pages
  • Encourage speakers to use it in their online interactions leading up to the conference
  • On all your branded material
  • Use it in all your social media interactions

2.  Organic sharing

In order to promote organic sharing, you first must make it easy for your audience, partners and keynote speakers to share your content or event page online.

This can be done by getting a web developer to include social sharing buttons across your conference website. Furthermore, use your followers as a resource. By urging your followers to engage with your content, you will gain deeper insight into what they value. You can achieve this through the following:

  • Telling a story
  • Sharing an experience or behind the scenes content
  • Speaking about current events within your industry
  • Highlighting and discussing a previous speaker’s speech or theme from a past event
  • Pointing out something important about your audience
  • Sharing compelling visual images
  • Asking an intriguing question
  • Discussing relevant facts
  • Being humorous – sharing unique humour relevant to your audience and industry
  • Telling them why you are hosting the conference – why you are interested in the topics that will be addressed
  • Explaining to your followers why attending the conference will be beneficial to them
  • Asking them what activities they would like to engage in on the day
  • Asking them what they would like speakers to address at the conference

Further to this, ask your partners and keynote speakers to invite their followers to your event page. This way you will harness their following and take a step forward towards expanding your community.

Provide them with everything they need in order to do this. Make it easy for them by supplying them with a content pack including branded images, relevant hashtags, proposed copy and links.

3.  Targeted social media advertising

Social media is a cost-effective strategy for promoting your conference because you can allocate budget for paid advertising which gives you the opportunity to reach people beyond your followers, based on the demographics and psychographics of the audience.

You will first need to identify your target audience as this is an effective way to reach like-minded people that will most likely want to attend your conference or at least show interest and hopefully attend the next one. In addition, you can also use paid advertising to retarget already interested users. For instance, through Business Manager on Facebook, you will be able to identify who has clicked on your registration link but may not have gone through with the full process. These could be individuals who are interested but are waiting for a payday in order to purchase a place at your conference.

By retargeting users, you can remind them of your upcoming event.

Social media for conferences can be a tricky and tedious task, especially in the last three months leading up to the event. Outsourcing your digital marketing is a cost-effective way of ensuring you reach the right people and that your interactions online are professional and productive. Above all, get in touch with me today for advice on digital marketing in the MICE industry.

Content Marketing for Associations: How to Grow Membership in the Digital Space

Content Marketing for Associations. Associations are increasingly looking to the online world to bolster their membership numbers: the lower overheads, and the increased reach of association messaging over the web. Two of the most appealing aspects of this shift.

But moving marketing online requires extra effort in other areas. You are communicating with an audience that has a broader choice than ever before when it comes to the consumption of media. As a consequence, they have a much shorter attention span and lower tolerance for content which does not serve their motivations. Successful marketing begins when you embrace the fact that your audience has the right to choose its engagement – and when you start to offer something which the audience will not only seek out for themselves. But will also share among their networks of friends, family, and peers. That is why it is known as content or inbound marketing. Your leads will identify themselves as such as they engage with your online presence. The key to this engagement is valuable content.

What is Content Marketing for Associations?

To use an analogy: if the internet is a global village, then conventional advertising is akin to standing in the street and handing out flyers explaining why people should buy your product or join your association. Content or inbound marketing, meanwhile, is more like installing a huge window in your premises, allowing every passer-by to see the appealing products and services that you can offer them once they have chosen to enter. The moment when a prospect sees an attractive offering and enters your store? That is inbound marketing in action.

The Rules of Attraction: Why Inbound Marketing Works

It is perhaps not the most water-tight metaphor when talking about the intricacies of digital marketing. But the example does demonstrate a fundamental difference in attitudes between the two methods. One which is valuable for all association management personnel to learn. Content marketing is less aggressive, and it foregrounds the needs, expectations, and motivations of the customer. You are attracting prospects and inviting them to connect and participate, rather than forcing them through a sales funnel with the push of hard-selling promotional copy.

Successful Content Marketing Strategies in Practice

Which is all very well in theory. But how does an association apply a successful online marketing strategy, grow membership, and attract those valuable repeat subscribers? An effective strategy can be broken down into four components:

  • Functionality
  • Informative
  • End-user oriented
  • Value for Money

Functionality

The internet has opened up information for all of us. The challenge today is not about having access to resources, but being able to locate them among the hundreds of thousands of similarly-themed web pages. Content creation may be the priority, but presenting it in a way that is easy to discover should be seen as just as significant.

Established strategies such as search engine optimisation (SEO) improve the user experience. And also the visibility of your content. Effective association management means identifying the niche of your organisation and then targeting precise search engine words and terms to raise your profile in key areas. If you are unique in your industry, emphasise those attributes; if you serve a specific locality or community, make the world aware of your excellent work with region-specific search terms. Remember:

  • Do not overlook the value of web-building basics, either.
  • Create internal links between your pages and invite visitors to stay.
  • Use Social Media tactics and professional data analytics.

If all of your content is informative, and transitions intuitively from one area of interest to the next, then you will be on the right path to establishing yourself as a trusted online resource.

Related article: Advanced Data Analytics: One of our Data-Sets is Missing!

Informative

Of course, once the user base has discovered your content, it then has to delight. Data-rich copy and practical, expert advice is the magic ingredient when it comes to transforming your site from a sterile profile page into a valued resource. Pro-active content marketing for associations includes guest blogs, infographics, multimedia presentations, and industry insight from experienced professionals are among the most popular forms of data-rich content.

End-user oriented

Attractive marketing combines these first two facets and applies the results in a customer-orientated fashion. This means not only delivering the right content but delivering it at the right time. Attract clicks with offers and promotions: discounted subscription fees for a limited time, or free access to exclusive content when a prospect follows a specific referral link. But, most of all, make sure that your leads are discovering your offers when it will meet their needs, not your own. Provide pro-active support for your subscribers. Respond to frequently asked questions and provide solutions that are ready when your members need them the most. Effective marketing strategy blends seamlessly with your customer relationship management.

Value for Money

If you have accomplished all of the above, then you will have created a marketing copy that is more than advertising, and more than customer service: you have created a product in and of itself.

The vast majority of your association’s content-driven online marketing may be free to access. Yet, providing that access in return for customer contact details and an “opt-in” facility turns a blogging site into a potent lead generation tool for your association — additionally, a commitment-free means of participating for your members.

It is perhaps unsurprising then that content marketing strategies for associations are seen as an effective means of cementing brand loyalties.

Related: Social Media Marketing for the MICE Industry

As a content provider, you are cultivating ongoing relationships with visitors that will encourage them to return, time and again, to consume your products and services. In a sector where revenues are often reliant on the ability to grow membership numbers, there can be little doubt that inbound strategies represent a powerful means of promotion for associations today.

Formulating an effective approach to Content Marketing

Many consumers are unmoved by traditional methods of advertising; they watch streaming TV to avoid ads or record TV programmes to skip past the ads, turn the page of a magazine ignoring the advert and use ad blockers online to avoid pop-ups. This has led savvy marketing and digital marketing departments to search for more effective ways of reaching a contemporary audience. In doing so, they discovered the potential of content marketing, or also called inbound marketing. It involves brands, companies or individuals taking a strategic approach to their marketing methods. Here, the focus is mainly on creating content which is helpful, reliable, consistent and appealing to an audience.

Creating strong content has a double effect on both websites and social media accounts. Primarily they attract more web traffic through organic searches. Secondly visitors are retained because they are interested in what’s being discussed. Furthermore, the end result is more positive customer reactions, whether that involves conversions, or just them signing up for a newsletter. Thus, becoming interested in the product or service being offered.

Related: Content Performance Marketing: Making the Right Choices at the Right Times

Successful content marketing strategies communicate with customers in a meaningful way. Without trying to sell them something directly. You provide information to your audience that educates them and makes them feel they can trust your brand. Rather than continually mentioning the benefits of what you have to offer. Once you’ve accomplished that, it’s likely that you’ll be rewarded for your hard work with loyal repeat customers who regularly come back for more. Hence, content marketing is being used online by everyone from small niche bloggers with something to sell, to start-ups and huge multinationals, but how are they doing it? Here are some examples of the types of content marketing you can utilise and how they work.

Some content can boost trust

Although people may be aware of what you have to offer, they may remain loyal to another brand. Your job is to change that behaviour by informing them about your service and building trust. You can use SEO articles to join up with more in-depth quality content to be more discoverable. And, of course, to show industry knowledge when people arrive. Producing a ‘How to…’ video or article with tips and advice is an excellent way of drawing people in, as are consumer reviews on third party sites and testimonials on your homepage from satisfied customers.

Informative content marketing strategies

When people know a bit about your company or service, they want to see what sets you apart from the competition. Use content to show the back story of your organisation. This communication can be achieved by

  • sending out a regular newsletter with interesting articles
  • setting up an FAQ section on your website
  • hosting an online seminar to engage on a more personal level with your audience.

To only name a few.

Consumer generated content

Once you have an active audience, they can be an invaluable source of free content. By getting them involved with your pages and social media accounts, you can provide proof of your reliability to newer customers and build a larger community. Reward existing customers who refer new people with discounts and vouchers. Ask them to create a video testimonial with software you provide and add a comments section, to start a discussion. When these are especially funny, moving or intriguing, inbound marketing in the form of stories told by customers can quickly go viral. And produce huge amounts of free publicity for a company.

Related:Tips For Encouraging User-Generated Content At Your Conference

Third party content is a useful tool

You don’t just need to rely on the content you create yourself. By integrating content that has been written by someone else, companies can enable their customers to understand more about their industry. Naturally, it should be insightful and of interest to the people who visit your page – if you filter the available content well, many people will appreciate the service you provide. Try embedding an RSS feed that has been customised to include details on your industry. Or simply retweet, share and republish content which is well written and relates to your business.

Content marketing that can convert

The type of content which converts visitors with a passing interest into paying customers is always going to be a high priority. Most conversion marketing has an emotional impact. Things like case studies which look at another customer’s journeys work well. As do lists of results and ROI calculators that reveal the economic benefits of switching to a product or service you offer.

At fmwaechter we can help you with your integrated content marketing strategy and execution. Please get in contact with us.