In today's digital age, the average consumer is expected to interact with a brand at least seven times before making a purchasing decision with 87% of potential buyers wanting a consistent experience at each encounter.
Simply put, effective cross-channel marketing is built on leveraging multiple platforms to promote your brand holistically across the sales funnel and increase personalisation, leading to higher conversion and customer retention rates.
In this virtual session, our experts ran through the ‘checklist’ of a great inbound campaign - including consistent creative, intelligent cross-channel targeting, SEO, and digital performance - to leave you with a game plan for upping the ante on your strategy.
Our experts:
- Daniel Swepson, Head of Marketing, Next Chapter
- Laura Arens, Senior Digital Strategist, Impression
- Nicola Glancy, Senior Digital Strategist, Leith
- Will Hughes, Head of Digital Media Strategy, IMA-HOME
View our upcoming events calendar
In this Round-up article:
- Recent changes in audience behaviour and expectations
- The main blockers to investing in a cross-channel inbound campaign
- Key considerations before starting your inbound campaign strategy
- Setting your inbound campaign objectives and KPIs
READ OUR KEY LEARNINGS FROM THE SESSION BELOW, OR WATCH THE FULL WORKSHOP HERE
Recent changes in audience behaviour and expectations
Nicola highlights, “audiences are generally feeling a bit more empowered, and so that need and expectation of personalised, relevant content is at the highest it’s ever been.
Moreover, audiences expect a seamless experience across different devices and platforms, in-store or online. An example we’ve noticed, with that shift towards working from home since 2020, laptop usage has increased.”
Nicola adds, “having different creatives at various touchpoints with that aligned messaging throughout the customer journey can allow your campaign to engage with people where they are most active and most receptive, thus building stronger audience connections.”
View our Round-up: Leveraging your Consumer Behaviour Data for Better Business Outcomes
The main blockers to investing in a cross-channel inbound campaign
Dan says, “people can get quite overwhelmed when you talk multichannel, with the idea of focusing on too many areas, and not having the capacity or headspace to even think that bigger picture.”
Long Purchasing Journeys
Dan adds, “with inbound campaigns, there is more of a hesitation when you've got long purchasing journeys, as you’re investing a lot of time and money on creating this content, which you may not see a return on for six to eighteen months, depending on your product or services.
Brands must trust the process and allow their inbound strategy to work because it can take time, it doesn't necessarily deliver immediate conversions or revenue.”
Learn How to Improve your Customer Journeys for Better Conversion
Key considerations before starting your inbound campaign strategy
What is your campaign goal?
Laura says, “firstly, consider what you’re aiming to reach with this campaign, what is its goal or objective, as this will guide not just the strategy, but also the asset creation and the channels that you decide to work on.”
View our Round-up: Investing in Content: Finding the Right Strategy for you
Who is your target audience?
“Secondly, identify the target audience and see which one will have the biggest impact - think about:
- Why do I want to target this audience?
- Why is this important for the campaign?
- How do they move through the funnel?
- How much time do they spend at the top of the funnel?
- How fast do they go to the bottom of the funnel?”
What are you measuring?
She adds, “once your campaign goals and objectives are set, you must consider how to measure these things. So, if you're planning to increase brand awareness, then your measurement will not be revenue, it would likely be brand uplift, search share or such other top of the funnel KPIs.”
What is your media/budget plan?
Laura says, “then take these considerations and put them into a media and a budget plan so that you can see how you can scale this campaign, identify the frequency – how often you want to send out the ads – how much is your range potentially?”
Discover 7 Ways to Get Genuine Stakeholder Buy-In for your Marketing Strategy
Setting your inbound campaign objectives and KPIs
Will highlights, “every business will have its own way around how to set KPIs and business objectives. It should involve everyone from the marketing team through to the finance team.
At IMA-HOME, we have a scorecard to guide our media planning, based around what we call the four R's – reach, relevance, resonance and reaction."
Read IMA-HOME’s article: Reassessing Media Planning with the 4 Rs
Will adds, "eventually you reach that performance plateau, where there's no move, no matter how much more you invest in your channels, you're just going to see diminishing returns. It's at that point where you set KPIs around expanding your audience and demand generation.
A lot of that will be around the quality of the channels that you're selecting for your lead capture, essentially, what we're talking about here is inbound marketing, and then also the quantity and scalability of those.”
WATCH THE FULL WORKSHOP PLAYBACK
If you're investing in an inbound strategy this year, make sure you're getting the most from your time. GO! offer cost-free agency recommendations, pitch management, and more - get in touch to get started.
