multi-channel marketing is the go-to for every brand that takes itself seriously. The term refers to marketing campaigns that spread across media channels to engage with consumers on- and offline. Sadly, the industry focuses on digital marketing, as it’s easier to measure online performance. That pushes the offline media channels on the side. So much so, that we associate performance marketing with online media and branding with offline media. The truth is that offline channels have as vital an impact as online channels. Thankfully, you can measure it for the benefit of your business.
The key to effective omnichannel marketing is to:
- Use all your data resources.
- Measure both on- and offline channels.
- Make insightful decisions.
Read how to nail these steps here!
Choose the right attribution tool to unlock the correct insights
When it comes to marketing, one thing is always true: there are plenty of tools for analytics, optimization, and planning. The downside? Every tool is used for one channel only and limits your omnichannel perspective. While you become very good at optimising on a channel level, you lack the insights to form higher-level strategic decisions.
Choosing the right attribution tool can spare you the trouble. The unified marketing measurement (UMM) accounts for channel synergies and defines the impact of offline media on your campaigns. With UMM you pull data from your various channels- such as Paid Search and Facebook- and cross-examine them with the outputs of your offline sources – like OOH, TV, and radio. Even better, Objective Platform can do it for you. Our marketing measurement solution attributes value to each of the channels you use (on- and offline). This means that you have an independent and clear overview of which channels affect users the most. Is it TV, Facebook, or Paid Search? No matter the channel, our solution helps you find the ideal channels to increase your ROI and prove the effectiveness of your marketing efforts.
Remember, being granular doesn’t mean that you cannot have a complete overview of your channels. And according to Forrester, UMM can improve the efficiency of marketing budgets by 15% to 20%. Successful campaigns come together when you optimise on both macro-and microscopic levels. That’s the only way to balance your online and offline media to serve your business goals.
Combine the right data from your online and offline channels
Campaigns that spread across touchpoints require in-depth insights on the performance of every channel. To assess a campaign’s performance, you need to track and analyse the outcomes of both your online and offline channels. The question is, how do you know which data will give you the correct insights?
For online channels, you always know where to look at; clicks, engagements, conversions. But for the offline channels, you often lose the bigger picture and rely on gut feelings. Measuring the direct impact of your online performance and the interaction with offline media unlocks exclusive insights. Objective Platform gives you these insights, so you can start using your offline channels to boost the performance of your online activities. One of our biggest multichannel retailers drove a significant increase in revenue by beginning its awareness-focussed TV advertising two weeks before it released its sales-focused online ads.
And that’s only one way you can use data from on- and offline channels to optimise a campaign. With our optimisation tool, you start planning based on forecasts and allocate your budget towards the right channels. Not only that, but you can also tweak the campaign along the way as the data transforms.
Align stakeholders and KPIs to take control of your budget allocation
When you measure and optimise per channel only, you end up having siloed teams that work independently on their own KPIs. One of the risks is that they might perform well within their ecosystem but their contribution to the greater KPIs might not be as effective. Even worse, CMOs lack a clear overview of their teams’ performance and have trouble allocating the budget accordingly. It’s not a secret that traditionally online channels seem to perform better and get most of the marketing budget. However, offline channels boost the effect of online channels and deserve more recognition than they get.
You can only allocate your budget correctly by aligning the teams and the KPIs. Instead of having each team working independently on multiple KPIs, you can coordinate the online and offline teams towards the same goals. To do so, you need to have a single source of truth that provides you with insights, cross-examinations, comparisons, outcomes, and channel synergies. From that point on, you can measure the effectiveness of each team and start planning a campaign based on the right KPIs and with an optimal budget allocation.
Not only can you define the actions of each team, but you can also pinpoint the sweet spot of your investments. Our forecast tools use the intelligence of past campaigns and experiments to help you plan a campaign and distribute the budget amongst channels. So, you can successfully integrate on- and offline media channels and have the work to serve your main KPIs.
Need real numbers? Read how we helped a leading E-Commerce retailer merge their online and offline media channels and the goals they achieved.
