Omnichannel Marketing Part 7: The Campaign Formula
Want to make a huge difference in response across all your channels? In this fast-paced digital era, capturing and retaining customer attention requires a thoughtful and strategic approach. But sometimes, we create complicated marketing programs without a true understanding of the consumer or what we ultimately want them to do. The formula for great marketing is quite simple. We must DISRUPT their busy lives, we must DELIGHT with content that emotionally resonates and most importantly, we must DRIVE them to do something.
Let’s break it down.
Disrupt: Breaking Through the Noise
In today’s oversaturated marketplace, capturing customer attention is an ongoing challenge. To make an impact, brands must disrupt the usual patterns and break through the noise. Disruption involves going beyond conventional marketing methods and surprising customers with a landscape of unexpected words, pictures, or even unconventional channels. It’s so easy to embrace a template-driven marketing schema that “works,” but it’s also the point in time in which your messaging starts to be boring and ineffective.
Disruption begins at what they see first! If you can’t capture their attention immediately, then forget about the rest of your message. Only a relentless consumer is willing to dig a little deeper, and those, my friend, are few and far between. So, how intriguing is your home page? Does your catalog cover grab attention with the unexpected? What are you doing to avoid email fatigue? How fresh and interesting is your social content? The answer is always, BE BOLD!
Delight: Creating Content that Emotionally Connects
What is it you are truly selling? It’s not about the product and it’s not always about the discount. Creating delight begins with a complete understanding of your customer’s needs, aspirations, and pain points. Then, and only then, are you able to create content that emotionally tickles desire, which ultimately leads to a purchase. Taking it one step further is the ability to personalize the customer experience across multiple channels, tailoring messages and offers that resonate with individual customers.
Moreover, surprise and delight strategies can create memorable experiences. Offering exclusive discounts, personalized recommendations, or unexpected rewards can leave customers pleasantly surprised and more likely to engage with a brand. Leveraging customer data and advanced analytics can help identify opportunities for personalization and deliver delightful experiences that go beyond expectations.
Delighting customers is crucial for building long-term relationships and fostering brand loyalty. But even more important is to provide a seamless and consistent experience across all channels.
Drive: Creating Immediate Action
While disruption and delight are essential, your goal in the omnichannel world is to drive customers to act. I would argue that this is the most important thing you do, but sadly it’s often overlooked. The “action” may change depending on your conversion funnel. It might be driving them online to learn more, signing up for a newsletter, picking up the phone or engaging with a brand on social media.
To effectively drive customers towards action, your creative team must focus on clear, concise, persuasive calls-to-action (CTAs) that create desire or an emotional response. It’s more than just saying, “Go online for more,” which basically becomes white noise. And it’s not enough to say it once. CTAs should be strategically placed throughout the customer journey, leveraging different channels to increase visibility and engagement.
Sometimes, the perfect CTA comes in a different form of social proof. That is, your existing customers. Incorporating social proof, testimonials, and user-generated content into your omnichannel efforts will instill trust and confidence in potential customers. Positive reviews, ratings, and endorsements from satisfied customers can serve as powerful motivators for others to take action.
Disrupting, delighting, and driving are three fundamental principles that can empower omnichannel marketers to create impactful and successful campaigns. By breaking through the noise, emotionally engaging customers, and effectively guiding them toward action, businesses can maximize their marketing efforts across various channels.
