How To Design An Omnichannel Marketing Planning

by | Digital Marketing

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.

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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

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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!

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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.

How To Make Facebook Ads Work For You

by | Digital Marketing

More than 3 million companies now advertising on Facebook, a figure that suggests that Facebook ads can complement the online marketing strategy of every business. When properly designed and managed, Facebook ads can give your company exposure to a global audience, boost lead generation, and improve SEO ranking in a very cost-effective way. But how exactly can you achieve this? This is your starter guide to making Facebook ads work for you.

Related: 5 Effective Techniques to Market Your Conference on Facebook

Do’s And Dont’s Of Facebook Ads

Facebook ads can be a fantastic opportunity for business owners who want to get their brand message out there. Here are some best practices to ensure you make the most of Facebook’s targeting capabilities and create an ad campaign that works.

DONT’S

  • Don’t skimp on research: Researching your audience is a must before you even start thinking about how the ad will look like. Facebook’s advertising platform is only as precise as your knowledge of your audience! The same applies to the campaign’s goals, which should be research-based and specific.
  • Don’t stick to the same ad format: Facebook ads come in more than ten formats, from full-screen videos to carousel ads, so don’t be afraid to create variations of the same ad and use a format that resonates with your target audience.
  • Don’t overwhelm the audience: Social media users have a preference for visual content and not so much for written text, so use carefully chosen visuals and don’t bombard the audience – think quality vs quantity.
  • Don’t forget the call-to-action: No ad is compelling enough unless it ends with a clear call-to-action. This motivates viewers to take action, whatever that action may be (sign up to a newsletter, grab an offer, make a purchase, app download, etc.).

DO’S

  • Define the campaign: Use the ad account interface to set the campaign’s goals, start and end dates.
  • Define your audience. Facebook offers a wealth of targeting options within its advertising platform, but you will need to know which demographics make sense for each campaign. Targeting can be very broad from everyone on the social network to people who have liked your page, or custom audiences. You can create a custom audience based on their location, age, gender, interests by keyword, etc. The general rule of thumb is to start small and gradually broaden audience characteristics as you test the ad’s effectiveness. Moreover, targeting small groups is cheaper., so this is how you want to get started.
  • Make use of the advanced budget feature: This not only lets you allocate a budget to the advertising campaign, but also to schedule when you want the ads to appear based on the time when your audience is likely to be online. You can also use this feature to specify whether you prefer to be charged based on the number of impressions (the times an ad is shown) or post engagement.
  • Choose a suitable ad format: You can find a few basic guidelines here. Bear in mind that Facebook has specific requirements regarding the size, file format, word count, etc. of the ad’s photos and copy. Here’s a cheat sheet that you may find useful.
  • Get the copy right. There are dozens of copywriting formulas out there, but it’s best to keep it simple with something like the AIDA formula:
    • Attention: grab the viewer’s attention with a compelling headline
    • Interest: the ad should make it clear that your product/service is going to do for your target users
    • Desire: bring proof of benefits (short testimonials), or mention offers and special rates
    • Action: tell viewers what they need to do next
  • Test and re-test: A/B testing is the cornerstone of modern content marketing. The beauty of social media is you can test in real time and make changes to ensure every ad is an opportunity for business growth. Simply put, A/B testing means you create two versions of the same ad (A and B), create two custom audiences, ensure they are shown a different version of the ad, and measure their responses. You then modify the ads accordingly, for example by experimenting with predominant background or image colours, headlines, typography, call to action, etc.
  • Track the campaign’s performance: You can do this by looking at:
    • Ad or video views
    • Total Reach
    • Engagement metrics (likes, comments, and shares), although bear in mind that getting more likes doesn’t necessarily mean getting more exposure or conversions since usually, people like a page or an ad and rarely revisit it, unless there was something that was especially attention-grabbing.
    • Website click-through rates and redirects to your business site
    • Enquiries or direct messages received
    • How many of these interactions end up with a sale (conversions)

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

  • Rotate the ad: One of the reasons why Facebook ads always don’t work is because the audience can become saturated quickly. This means you will need to have a variety of ads ready and change them every 7 to 14 days to reduce what is known as ad fatigue. To do this, Facebook experts recommend creating ad sets consisting of approximately five ads each. The specific rotation details will be ultimately determined by click-through rates or other metrics like the ones listed above, which can be accessed via the Actions tab in the Ad Manager dashboard. If something doesn’t work, change it, change the frequency, or do both.
  • Stay up-to-date with current trends: Things change fast in the world of online advertising, so it’s vital to know what drives your target audience at any given point. Some important Facebook advertising trends to keep in mind during 2018 include:

Conclusion

Advertising on Facebook is an excellent way of generating exposure, loyalty, and brand awareness. To make Facebook ads work for you, make sure to design a data-driven and visually appealing ad campaign that resonates with your target audience — or even better, get a professional digital marketer plan and manage the campaign for you.

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

by | Digital Marketing

Marketing is apparently not what it used to be. Online retailers are now vying for the attention of an increasingly demanding public; mainly about what can only be called a fickle millennial generation. Thus, it is very much “out with the old and in with the new” when looking at successful marketing strategies. This is arguably the main reason why content performance marketing is now being embraced across the boards. How can this approach be employed to measure critical data accurately and more importantly, how will this data-driven method continue to change the marketing community? 

Content Performance Marketing: The Critical Role of ROI 

From a broad aspect, the ultimate goal of content performance marketing is to understand the demand for specific content. The ability of the advertiser to leverage past and present analytics will provide a much more seamless approach. Of course, this strategy can also help to predict the ROI associated with an ongoing sales campaign accurately. To be quite clear, this is a different methodology when compared to more traditional forms of content marketing. 

Related: Formulating an effective approach to Content Marketing

Past approaches would gauge marketing performance by merely churning out material and observing which approaches worked the best. Unfortunately, this would often fail to target the appropriate customer base, and without a firm connection with the consumer, substantial amounts of revenue would be squandered. Performance-oriented marketing stresses quality over quantity. The on-demand material will also help to evaluate present and future ROI; essential for any business.  

Predictive Analyses and Performance Marketing 

Another tenet embraced by this type of marketing involves data analyses and performance optimisation. To put this another way, the marketer will leverage all available information (through existing analytics) to better understand how to segment and distribute the content itself. For instance, some campaigns would be much more efficient as email advertisements while others are intended for a social media audience. Understanding how a brand will perform in the eyes of its audience will also help to increase ROI and to maintain a stable connection with the buyer. The enterprise can better understand what is working and what is not. 

Segmenting the Buyer Community 

Past companies would essentially disseminate information to the masses. If they threw enough jam onto a wall, perhaps some would stick. Doing so is once again incredibly wasteful concerning ROI, and in some cases, the audience itself could become alienated. 

Analysing the performance of content enables a company to make timely decisions and to deliver the correct material at the right time to the precise audience. This granular and segmented approach can also help to increase brand loyalty; a benefit not to be overlooked in such a competitive atmosphere. 

Related: Mobile App Marketing for your Business or Organisation

Content Performance Marketing: Lean and Versatile 

Another reason why so many firms are shifting their focus towards this strategy is that in-house expenditures can be dramatically reduced without sacrificing quality. Correct performance analyses will enable management to build leaner teams and enhance interdepartmental accountability. Establishing strong data-driven connections associated with any sales campaign can provide the insight and clarity to make the best choices at the best moments. 

Tying Together Performance and the Customer Experience 

18 billion dollars was spent on content creation during 2016 within the United States alone. It is therefore easy to appreciate why understanding how this content is performing using real-time methods is so important. Content marketing is here to stay. Regarding sheer efficiency, take advantage by measuring your performance.

The article Content Performance Marketing: Making the Right Choices at the Right Times was first published on fmwaechter.com. Author Frank M. Waechter.