INDUSTRY GUIDE
MULTICHANNEL MARKETING Define, Design and Deliver Campaigns with Impact Part Two: The Art
Multichannel Marketing Part Two: The Art
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Multichannel Marketing Part Two: The Art
CONTENTS Introduction
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Understanding the audience
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What’s your story? 6 Creativity is the key 8
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Multichannel Marketing Part Two: The Art
INTRODUCTION Now that you’ve set your campaign goals and key metrics and have your operational foundations in place, it’s time to develop the campaign messaging and creative. At the heart of every campaign should be a compelling story that will dictate your overarching campaign theme and shape your campaign messaging and creative. This of course needs to permeate every activity, asset and all campaign messaging for consistency across each channel. The key to a successful multichannel campaign is effective integration, cohesion and consistency.
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Multichannel Marketing Part Two: The Art
UNDERSTANDING THE AUDIENCE Before you even consider your campaign messaging however, you need to truly understand the audience you’re targeting. Knowing the basic demographics of your target audience isn’t enough. You need to map out the individual personas within your target audience and really get to know them on a deeper, psychological level. This involves analyzing both qualitative and quantitative data to build an accurate picture of who they are, what motivates them, how they interact with your brand and online channels and, ultimately, what drives them to make a purchase and to choose you over a competitor. There are sophisticated tools on the market you can use for this, but persona definition doesn’t need to be an onerous or overly expensive process. You can use the tools you already have in place to help drive persona insight web analytics, CRM, marketing automation, email platforms etc. The key is to collect the most relevant data from each platform and piece it together to form a holistic view of your audience. From here you can validate this through relatively basic customer/prospect research exercises. The end result is a well-informed representation of the real people your campaign content needs to embrace, inspire and add value to.
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Multichannel Marketing Part Two: The Art
WHAT’S YOUR STORY? Once you know whom you’re targeting, you want to build a campaign that strikes a chord, appeals to their pain points, and inspires them to respond. The campaign theme, the story, the creative, the content, the packaging - it all plays a pivotal role in winning the audience over...or falling flat. First, there is the story you want to tell. Your story needs to line up with the business drivers of your personas – it is rarely a one-story-fits-all scenario. So for every persona you target, the story needs to shift to appeal to their pains, challenges, and motivators. For example, if you need to target a business audience as well as an IT audience, you can’t expect that the same message is going to resonate with both. It needs to be targeted to address what they care about and what keeps them up at night. Furthermore, you need to engage your audience in the story on an emotional level. Your content should resonate with your audience and make them feel empowered. As Maya Angelou said: “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” This quote has been used a lot in the world of content marketing but the message is still just as powerful. Your story needs to strike a chord with your audience in order for them to remember your brand.
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Multichannel Marketing Part Two: The Art
As the content marketing space becomes more and more saturated, it’s vital that you’re investing in the creative process to ensure your central story and your content offering is compelling in order to ‘cut though the noise’. Effective content creation is all about maximizing what you have and being savvy about how you produce and repurpose content. A white paper becomes a series of blog posts, a Slideshare presentation, an animated video, a series of tip sheets, a podcast, an interactive infographic – which in turn becomes a series of bite-sized graphics for social media channels. At the same time, that story needs to be told swiftly and succinctly. Nobody wants to read through pages of content or watch cinematic-length videos to understand what you’re trying to communicate to them. It needs to be brief, direct, and to the point. If it takes you too long to convey your message, you’re probably not conveying it correctly.
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Multichannel Marketing Part Two: The Art
CREATIVITY IS KEY Which brings us to the design and packaging of that content. There’s no question that we live in a more visual world than ever before – “a picture is worth a thousand words” – which means that the design and packaging of your campaign is even more critical than the actual words you use. And that takes us back to our audience and the story. The visuals and packaging are an extension of the story – they will reach or repel the audience before a single word is ever read – so they need to appeal to the individual personas in the same way that the messages behind the story do. For example, that executive audience is likely protected by an army of assistants who check their email and discard unwanted messages. The IT audience might never see their desks during the course of the day, but are glued to their smartphones since that’s the primary vehicle through which they respond to the individuals they support. And in either case, they’re probably so used to being targeted with the “same old, same old” creative from other players in the industry, they’ve likely tuned out most vendordriven communications altogether. That’s why you need to think differently. You need to think about them first – how they act, what they care about, the pressures they’re under, and the conveniences they appreciate. You need to think about appealing to them as human beings versus a mass target. Then you need to design and package accordingly. Otherwise, you risk looking like everyone else. Once you’ve developed your story, messaging and creative and have a thorough understanding of who you’re targeting, the next step is deciding how you deliver it. Read Part Three: The Delivery to learn how to choose the right channels for your campaign and how to maximize and integrate your campaign activity.
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Multichannel Marketing Part Two: The Art
With contributions from:
About us LEWIS Pulse is the digital marketing team of LEWIS PR, a full service global integrated communications agency. LEWIS Pulse specializes in social media marketing, search engine marketing, advertising, web design and development, analytics, content and mobile marketing. LEWIS Pulse serves a full range of client industries including technology, financial services, automotive, consumer, travel, sports and healthcare. Find out more at www.lewispulse.com or contact us at hello@lewispr.com Š Copyright LEWIS Pulse. 2015 all rights reserved.
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