Inner Circle

Digital Marketing  

Orchestrating a Seamless Prospect Experience

In today’s integrated media landscape an intelligent, omni-channel marketing campaign is critical to ensuring that your tactics are strategically in tune. Here’s our advice for getting your instruments playing in perfect harmony:

Step one: Begin your composition
An effective omni-channel campaign begins well before you deploy your first tactic. A solid understanding of the big-picture strategy will direct tactical executions to keep everything working in unison. What does the conversion journey look like? How are you strategically disseminating information? Through what channels? At what time? How are they working together? It’s essential to look strategically at your ultimate goal, your resources and how to effectively combine those resources to reach that goal. When planning, consider all the tools at your disposal—PR, web, digital, social, direct mail, print, email, international marketing, on-site experience—but only commit to those you can successfully manage.

One of the events we market proved the value of integrated messaging—the root of omni-channel marketing. Emails produced 18 percent more registrations when they were disseminated within a week of the delivery date of a direct mail piece. The highest spikes in conversions and clicks for our digital campaign occurred when we ran digital ads focused on education and dropped an evergreen education-focused newsletter that included a cross-promotion callout advertising education at the show. Hitting our prospects with the same message, using different channels in the same time period, translated into more registrations than a single tactic or multiple tactics with different messages

Step two: Play from the same song sheet
As harmonious as your strategic and tactical plan may be, expect the unexpected. Major shifts happen in your industry. New marketing tools emerge. Unanticipated speakers or sessions are added. With an omni-channel marketing campaign, it’s essential to adapt your campaign tools and tactics to capitalize on serendipitous opportunity.

For one client, we learned about a massive charitable donation they would be making at an upcoming event. We rallied our team: Our web specialist developed a webpage; the social team set up a photo contest; our PR lead deployed a press release; teams on site coordinated an announcement; and we created a post-show momentum plan surrounding the donation. Capitalizing on this donation meshed perfectly with our campaign strategy, which was to bring the integrity of the organization to the forefront in order to build trust with our audiences. We used all relevant marketing channels to create significant buzz around this donation to drive registrations, increase brand awareness and relevancy, and maintain momentum after the event.

Having an established omni-channel communication plan from the beginning also helps you evaluate each channel’s effectiveness. Maybe digital ads are driving huge conversion numbers, but your Twitter ads aren’t driving any. Open communication between your digital and social teams allows you to identify opportunities and threats early, discuss how to optimize each channel and make adjustments quickly.

Step three: Return for an encore!
Omni-channel marketing doesn’t stop once your show starts. The show itself is a marketing tactic that needs to blend into your full-stack campaign. Attendees and exhibitors are on your social channels, observing your marketing on site and checking your website throughout their presence at the event. If their on-site journey starts to feel complicated and disjointed, that may be their only memory of your event.

Let mdg help you b sharp (not b flat) with an omni-channel campaign. Contact Kimberly Hardcastle today.

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