Omnichannel Marketing Part 6: Campaign Coordination
Crafting memorable creative that will compel and delight an audience is likely the most challenging task in the campaign process. Without a creative, brand-right theme, the campaign won’t get traction and meet objectives. That said, coordinating and executing the big idea is just as important. If the campaign isn’t organized and executed well the investment will be wasted.
Here are the five essential steps for getting a marketing campaign off the ground:
1. Get the channel leaders on board The most important step in launching a campaign is getting the leadership in each marketing channel on board. Getting agreement on the campaign helps drive real ownership. To create a seamless and convincing experience for the consumer it’s imperative that each channel leader promotes the campaign through the ranks. That means from store associates to managers in ecom and print marketing, wholesale, social and HR. That’s right, HR! Getting the internal organization familiar with the campaign and its objectives will create awareness that will ensure all team members can deliver the campaign message at every consumer touchpoint.
Most campaigns benefit the entire brand and all of its channels.
2. Budgeting While you’re getting the channel leadership on board, you’ll want to address costs. Most organizations have advertising dollars budgeted by channel. There may be a desire to break out the contribution that each channel makes based on the sales return. If it’s a very focused campaign with a specific call-to-action, like driving web traffic, then it may make sense to saddle ecom with the lion’s share. However, I would argue most campaigns benefit the entire brand and all of its channels. The return on investment in a campaign may be realized at different rates for different channels. What might be an immediate sales boost in stores could manifest later as increased followers on social networks and awareness for wholesale. This is especially true for campaigns that use outdoor and broadcast. The best way to fund a campaign is to think of it as a brand building activity and trust the benefit will find its way to each consumer touchpoint.
3. Metrics This is also a good time to get agreement on the campaign metrics that will be used to assess effectiveness. Since the goals can be varied by channel, you’ll want to get agreement up front on what to track. Metrics can include driving traffic, top line sales, followers, sweepstakes signup, customer acquisition or all of the above. The last thing you want is disagreement among leadership on a campaign performance. The outlier here would be a pure brand awareness campaign without a call-to-action. Bolstering awareness can be a protracted process, mostly measurable by research. Typically, only big brands invest heavily in strict awareness campaigns, think Coke, Budweiser, Chase Bank and the like.
4. Coordinated launch Because you want a concerted campaign launch, closely examine production schedules for all channels to ensure the campaign creation will work with the earliest production due date. Ecom and social typically have the latest kick-off where catalogs and retail collateral (shopping bags, signage), have the earliest with longest lead times. And, if you’re considering TV that may be even earlier.
The ultimate goal is to create a seamless experience for the consumer. Whether they log-on, go to their mailbox or walk into your store, you want them to experience the same messaging, visuals and eventfulness of a well-conceived campaign.
Closely examine production schedules for all channels to ensure the campaign creation will work with the earliest production due date.
5. Assign a wrangler With so many moving parts across multiple channels things fall through the cracks easily. Production deadlines, asset approvals, budget tracking and reporting performance are key items that require a degree of active management. This doesn’t require a full-time position. But establishing a single point of contact who can set up tracking tools and issue progress reports is important. Nothing fancy here, someone with basic Excel skills and a knowledge of marketing should be able to handle it in a few hours a week.
Here’s a simple chart that will help keep your omnichannel campaign coordination on track:
Creating energy and momentum for a campaign is key. Not unlike a political campaign, success depends on keeping the messaging clear and the campaign workers energized. In a marketing environment it’s a top down process. Once leadership is on board, they can collectively support the teams who are responsible for creating and launching the campaign. By enthusiastically communicating the importance of the campaign’s success to the organization they can bring employees together across channels and energize the entire enterprise.
Want to talk details about your omnichannel campaign coordination? Give us a shout.
