Guide to Integrated Brand Marketing Part 1
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THE MARKETING LEADER’S GUIDE TO INTEGRATED BRAND MARKETING PART I CREATE A PLAN FOR SUCCESS CONTENTS FOLLOW THREE KEYS TO HOLISTIC PLANNING 4 DEFINE AND ALIGN ON METRICS 6 OBTAIN MARKETING INTELLIGENCE TOOLS REQUIRED TO ENSURE SUCCESS 8 COMMUNICATE, COMMUNICATE, COMMUNICATE 10 2 WWW.BECKON.COM [email protected] Great integrated campaigns don’t have time-constrained, geographical or elemental boundaries. They are as complex as our consumer: creative, powerful, demanding. Marketing used to be fairly simple: identify the business challenge, develop a compelling idea to drive sales, create a beautiful campaign and put it out into the world through traditional media (TV, OOH, print, radio) and perhaps direct mail if the database was signifcant. “Integrated” meant the same creative campaign idea cut across all channels. After launch, you’d catch your breath and wait until the sales data rolled in to analyze and measure success. After analysis, the marketing team would deliver a report and begin to plan the next seasonal campaign. Looking back, it seemed relatively simple. Then, the digital world blew up. The mid-2000s were a blur. Consumers focked to new social outlets—Myspace, Facebook, YouTube. The online experience became a series of digital rabbit holes. The world got faster and consumers savvier. In addition, smart phones provided another outlet for brands to reach the consumer, changing the way everyone consumed everything. It was as though, to borrow a term from “antiquity”, the information superhighway added a fast lane. Today, we’ve reached a new level of marketing complexity and the landscape is radically changing every day. Seasonal campaigns have shifted to quarterly campaigns and, across some channels, monthly and bi-weekly campaigns. A singular planning cycle is a thing of the past and the modern planning cycle never ends. But, as marketers, we can’t opt out. It is our job to engage the consumer and to magically capture mindshare and market share. We do this by being where consumers are, surprising them at every turn and inviting them to fall in love with our brands. Again and again and again. So, where do we start? 3 WWW.BECKON.COM [email protected] FOLLOW THREE KEYS TO 1 HOLISTIC PLANNING 1. DEFINE OVERARCHING OBJECTIVES. It starts with perspective and objectivity. We’ve all had successes and failures that we’ve learned from. As the leader in our marketing organizations, it’s our job to rise up to the 30,000 foot view and garner learnings and themes that help inform future plans. We can’t get swallowed whole by the details of each campaign, but must get the perspective needed to help paint the big picture. A strong integrated campaign starts with smart annual marketing plans that are designed to support the overall business objectives. The overarching plan illustrates how omnichannel marketing will drive business impact. The plan defnes clear objectives that support the top corporate initiatives. Aligning marketing objectives to corporate initiatives is critical. We need to ask: • What are we trying to achieve? • What are the drivers of success? The plan serves as a North Star. With today’s complex marketing organization, we may have multiple teams and agencies working together to bring a plan to life. Brand marketing, retail marketing, digital marketing, brand communication, consumer engagement, media, creative and digital agencies—it takes a village. The overarching plan keeps everyone on track and aligned against the big goals. The plan is then punctuated with seasonal and quarterly campaigns that will drive unique business units and products across all channels in order to excite the target segments. Here is where the real complexity begins. 4 WWW.BECKON.COM [email protected] 2. HINDSIGHT WITH YOUR TEAM. Before we get tangled in a web of tactics, it’s important to critically assess previous programs—learn from what worked and what didn’t. Collect the program recaps and historical data from similar efforts, if possible. Gather the team and have an honest discussion about what program components were most effective in reaching your consumer and delivering strong metrics. Break down these previous program components, turn them inside out and upside down to understand defnitively what worked. Then, collectively, draw implications for the next program and apply the learnings to the development of the next campaign. It’s important to get everyone on board, to learn from mistakes and commit to making a stronger campaign. In our world, we’re moving at lightning speed. The idea of taking time out for a hindsight meeting may seem like a luxury. After all, the countdown to the next campaign is haunting you. But, it’s your job to slow everyone down, get off the merry-go-round for a moment and learn. Get smarter, get better and, in turn, engage your team in ways that will strengthen their expertise and commitment to the next campaign. 3. GET PARTNERS ON BOARD. Cross-functional collaboration and alignment is wildly underrated. As the leader, you need to get your team engaged and pointed in the right direction, but equally as important is getting your cross-functional colleagues from sales, product development, research and fnance on board. Many teams look inward, work together with marketing peers to get to the fnish line, but ignore the external partners that are impacted by the work marketing is putting into the marketplace. The reason to secure partnerships is twofold: 1) You’ll likely need data from them to ensure you’re effectively tracking against your defned metrics (i.e. sales team needs to provide sales fgures for time period of campaign) and 2) It’s nice to have friends. Other functions tend to be wildly skeptical of the marketing spend. Inviting partners to better understand how the marketing engine works and how marketing activity drives real business outcomes will help ease skepticism and get more people on board. 5 WWW.BECKON.COM [email protected] 2 DEFINE AND ALIGN ON METRICS So, you have a brilliantly laid out plan with a sharp campaign objective, your team is chomping at the bit to get going and you’re besties with fnance and marketplace intelligence, now what? Before you begin, defne and align around campaign metrics. As obvious as it seems, so many teams skip this step and start making work. Everyone is excited to get the new work in front of the consumer and the clock is ticking. But before everyone begins to scramble, clear metrics need to be defned. Without them, an entire campaign can fall fat and you may risk making the same mistakes down the road. With a strategic approach, you can capture the business impact of everything that your campaign does, as well as help predict the outcome of specifc marketing decisions. It’s like a crystal ball for marketers. Here’s where it can be overwhelming. Campaigns are complex—where do you start? Be thoughtful. Campaign to campaign, not all metrics are created equal. Consider these questions: • What are the KPIs that matter? • What are the indicators of success that let you know you’re meeting your business objectives? • Is there a “must hit” sales target that delivers the ROI leadership is looking for? • Is brand equity or market share the campaign priority? • Are you trying to get noticed by a new consumer segment? • What do you hope to achieve across paid, earned and owned channels? Start by prioritizing the channels and channel data that matters most. Don’t try to tackle everything—be realistic. Ensure the data you’re obsessing over is moving the dial for the business areas that support the primary business 6 WWW.BECKON.COM [email protected] objectives. And most importantly, don’t forget to defne your baseline so you know what you’re striving to beat. Obtain a clear vision of the historical steady state—across all channels involved in the campaign—prior to the campaign. Then, take a look at a “gold standard” historical campaign or competitor program (although data available may be limited), so you have a frame of reference for success. Make sure your team is aware of the expectations. Once you have metrics defned, align with your key partners on those key metrics for success. Everyone is invested, everyone wants to succeed. Everyone. If you set out to develop a campaign aimed at increasing your fan base on Instagram and your sales partners rightfully believe that revenue and sell-through is the campaign goal, no one will be happy when the results come in. Get on the same page early on and be sure clear KPIs are your common language. For more on defning the metrics that matter, see The Integrated Marketing Analytics Guidebook. 7 WWW.BECKON.COM [email protected] OBTAIN MARKETING INTELLIGENCE TOOLS 3 REQUIRED TO ENSURE SUCCESS At the end of the day, a campaign’s success depends on the fawless delivery of the campaign to the consumer. In the not too distant past, once a campaign was delivered the team sat back and waited. Did sales go up? Did foot traffc to the stores increase? Did we receive positive coverage in the media? If you were at a big brand, you may have had enough budget to do a bit of marketing mix modeling (MMM) to gauge the effectiveness of the campaign. While they provided useful information, there is a long time lag to get insight and they work best for short-term, broad-based, sales-focused programs. The model doesn’t help capture impact of longer-term activities that help boost brand equity or help you better understand nuances across regions or demographics. Additionally, campaign components such as engagement marketing, sports affnity marketing, social and mobile marketing (to name a few), all vary in terms of the time-specifcity of exposure, so the picture you hope to capture isn’t complete in a classic mix model.