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As marketers, most of us know that taking an integrated, cross-channel approach is best. But beyond those buzzwords, how can we make sure that the different components of our campaigns reinforce the same message and also that we “learn” from each component, taking each prospect’s response into account to tailor future messages?
Creating that level of personalization can seem overwhelming, even to the most experienced marketers at the largest companies with the most enviable resources. But it’s a worthy goal, even for marketers at smaller firms.
Instead of running a single start-and-stop campaign or using one marketing tactic, like advertising or email, marketers today are pacing their campaigns with how targets operate—that is, in multiple places all at once.
You’ll hear terms like multi-touch, multichannel, cross-channel and integrated marketing thrown around to refer to the concept of hitting the same customer segment through multiple channels at the same time. By cross-channel marketing, I mean campaigns that are integrated across multiple channels versus those that are simply run simultaneously across different channels. Integrating campaigns is significantly more complex than running them concurrently, but a critical ingredient is available that can help us rise to the challenge—data.
Marketers need to be able to collect data that helps them not only to understand the performance of various aspects of their campaigns, but also to better tailor the campaign itself—that is, to get the right content to the right person at the right time based on where the buyer is on his or her “journey.”
While the sheer volume of potential data sources can be intimidating, there are sources of data that often go untapped.
Take webinars, for example—something I’m intimately familiar with given our business at ON24! Webinars are used across the B2B sales and marketing process, from brand awareness and lead generation and scoring to cross-selling and upselling. Valuable information can be collected about webinar participants’ behavior—from how long they stay to what content they download and how many questions they ask—that can help marketers nurture leads.
This type of data goes from helpful to breakthrough when it is plugged into marketing automation and CRM systems to inform a holistic cross-channel campaign. Marketing automation and CRM platforms track every interaction your business has ever had with a specific customer—including website activity, emails and webinars.
Integrating this data allows you to tailor your communications, considering every individual’s experience with your company, making the customer feel more valued and leading, ideally, to an increase in sales opportunities.
Prospects need more than just one touch point; in fact, they typically need many before making a purchase decision. While perfectly integrating every campaign across multiple channels can seem like a daunting task, collecting data each step along the way by leveraging built-in analytics and marketing automation software can move you toward that goal.
Tom Masotto is vice president of product marketing and business development at ON24, the global leader in webinar-based marketing solutions that drive demand generation and customer engagement. Tom has worked in sales, marketing and business development in the technology industry for 20 years. Prior to joining ON24, he was vice president of business development at Hipbone, a provider of web collaboration solutions. He has also held marketing and business development positions at Hewlett-Packard, VeriFone and Intel. Tom has an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management, a Master’s degree in Computer Science/Electrical Engineering from MIT and a BS in Computer Engineering from Boston University. You can keep in touch with ON24 on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn.
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