Marketing: Reaching Your Target
Every company works hard to get its products into the hands of customers. Are you doing everything you can to compete? In this course, you’ll find a winning formula to turn a product idea into real sales. Follow along through the fundamentals of the marketing mix and see how companies successfully bring products to market.
In the current world of digital marketing, it can be tough to stand out. But some campaigns have managed to make their mark despite the oversaturated landscape. And often it means venturing beyond just social media with 360 marketing.
What is 360 Marketing?
Rather than focusing solely on digital channels, this holistic marketing approach focuses on diversifying your advertising. The messaging is promoted on a variety of platforms, from digital to traditional, as well as customer touch points. As the name suggests, it targets customers from multiple angles, simultaneously.
Marketing: Reaching Your Target
Every company works hard to get its products into the hands of customers. Are you doing everything you can to compete? In this course, you’ll find a winning formula to turn a product idea into real sales. Follow along through the fundamentals of the marketing mix and see how companies successfully bring products to market.
For example, if McDonald’s were launching a seasonal burger, a 360 campaign could involve a social media strategy, TV commercials, ads on public transit, and adjustments to their website to push the new product.
360 Marketing: The Core Principles
- Integration of online and offline content
- Having a consistent message
How many recent marketing slogans can you remember? Not that many. But what made those companies stand out was the consistency of their messaging across platforms and the integrated marketing both online and offline. How do you know certain brand slogans? Likely not from just one source. It’s probably been reinforced consistently across different mediums.
3 Marketing Methods to Cover All Your Bases
It’s easy to forget how many ways advertisers can promote a product because we’re so used to seeing ads all the time. In 360 marketing, the channels are separated into three main categories:
- Traditional: Television, radio/podcasts, outdoor advertising, print, etc.
- Digital: Social media posts, email, SEO, content marketing, influencer sponsorships, etc.
- Customer Touchpoints: Company website, customer service interactions, product packaging, reviews and forums, etc.
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Benefits and Risks of 360 Marketing
Instead of just throwing money at a digital ad campaign, 360 marketing pushes you to take a step back and audit each step of the customer journey. But like all marketing strategies, it comes with both rewards and drawbacks.
Benefits
- Higher brand visibility across diverse channels
- Better customer engagement and increased loyalty
- Access to data from various sources
While digital ads can be easily blocked or clicked away, an ad on a subway ride might be harder to ignore. Seeing an ad for a product you’re mildly interested in online is easily forgettable, but if you see the ad throughout your day in different locations, it can gently, but still effectively, reinforce the messaging. What does this mean for advertisers?
Risks
- Overinvesting in one type of media.
- Reducing your impact by going after too many channels.
One of the difficulties of this style of marketing is deciding how much of your advertising budget to allocate for each category. When Coca-Cola launched its “Share a Coke” campaign in 2014, social media marketing was still in its infancy. But looking back on their strategy, Jeremy Rudge, Creative Excellence Lead at Coca-Cola says “We’d probably spend a fraction of what we spent on TV. As I said, there wasn’t the confidence in social media then that there is now.”
When your content is spread across multiple mediums there’s always a chance you could end up having several weak campaigns instead of one strong one. But that’s the gamble of choosing between the strategies of divide and conquer or going all in.
What do you need to get started?
- Unify your message
Once you’ve decided to go ahead with a 360-marketing strategy, get to work on your messaging. You want simplicity and consistency with your assets. This could mean creating a brand book for color scheme, typeface, images, tone, slogans, etc. The goal is to have an easily recognizable brand image regardless of where your advertising is displayed.
- Integrate your channels
Next, you need to have a way to track data across different mediums. Given the volume of data produced, this will likely mean investing in marketing automation tools as well as training on how to use them. Take your time to set up a system that is scalable rather than something that “works for now.” Data management is a huge undertaking but offers incredible ROI.
- Measure the results
Once you have a system in place for effectively gathering and monitoring data, it’s time to check the results. This should be an ongoing process so you can adjust your investment throughout the campaign. Once the campaign is finished, take the time to summarize the findings with your team so you can all learn from the wins and losses.
Key takeaways
Like most projects, with 360 marketing, you’ll get as much as you put in.
Remember that you don’t have to go after absolutely every type of media on the customer journey. Most companies simply don’t have the marketing budget and resources for that elaborate of a campaign. Instead, go for a diverse but manageable selection. Will you get it perfectly right on the first shot? Probably not. But that’s where the data comes in.
The world of marketing is constantly changing, but if you have a solid handle on your messaging, your customer journey, and reading the data, the 360 approach gives you the flexibility to adjust.
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