The number and variety of marketing channels is increasing every day. It wasn’t that long ago when all you needed to worry about was your website and your monthly statements…and perhaps a PR or media campaign every quarter. But today between advancements in technology and widespread adoption of email, online, mobile and social media, the landscape of marketing has changed in ways that present new opportunities but also a number of new challenges as well.
With so many communication channels and marketing tools available it can be difficult to know which strategies and tactics to adopt, and it’s easy to slip back into more comfortable and traditional approaches to marketing strategy and potential customer communications. But successful organizations know that now is the time for marketing tactics to be re-invented.
Instead of relying on big-gun campaigns, leading brands are adopting a affiliate marketing orchestration approach across multiple channels with campaigns and communications that get results in new and more profitable ways.
Multi-Channel World
Many iconic brands are leading the way in the multi-channel marketing world. Companies like Bloomingdales, Lexus and Ritz-Carlton, and many others are moving beyond single channel marketing with the goal to provide every consumer with a highly personalized experience that maps to each individual’s journey with the company from discovery to purchase to re-purchase.
Engaging potential new customers with relevant messaging and meaningful content is not only what customers expect, it’s what they demand; and a requirement to compete in today’s marketplace.
New Ways of Thinking About Channels
Companies and brands can no longer afford to retain a campaign-centric instead of a customer-centric mindset. The benefit of marketing orchestration is that it focuses not on delivering standalone campaigns, but instead on optimizing a set of related cross-channel interactions that, when added together, make up an individualized customer experience.
Leading brands are adopting this approach and orchestrating marketing across all touch points – social, mobile, search engine optimization, in print, in advertising – since customers are no longer interacting in a sequential or linear way – its multi-channel, multi-device and much more interactive than ever before.
Going to Mobile-First Marketing Channels
Most consumers today use at least three devices, one of which is mobile. It’s hard to deny that we live in an age of mobile computing: 58% of American adults use a smartphone, over 40% own a tablet, and mobile computing grew by over 80% just last year alone. Indeed, there are more smartphones out there in the world than there are personal computers.
As a result, Forrester predicts that already half of all online adults on the planet are “always-addressable,” meaning they own and use at least three web-connected devices, go online multiple times per day, and go online from multiple physical locations.
These numbers will only increase over the next few years and for marketers the message is clear: Orchestrating your message across these technical and social channels is essential in order to compete.
Moving Forward to New Marketing Channels
It is easy to conceptualize these principles, but the danger is falling back on traditional campaign approaches that simply amp up the volume and not customer lifetime value. Rather than increase the level of noise by increasing investments in mass and untargeted media, marketing orchestration keeps focused on a total messaging strategy designed for each customer.
As a result, companies of all sizes and types find value by reevaluating and reworking their existing communication processes with a different view of customer-facing communications and message orchestration across the customer lifecycle.
How can you move forward? One important way is by adopting a cloud-centric approach to branding, engagement and customer experience management that involves every aspect of a marketing communication strategy. Contact us today to learn more or call 877-377-7274 for a free consultation.