Commentary

Cross-Channel Effort Aid Marketing Effectiveness

The foundation of most successful marketing campaigns is an effective cross-channel communication approach. But too often, marketers find themselves facing an inevitable trap involving how we measure and define success as a result.

While we continue to define success as a scalable and cost-effective campaign that delivers a positive ROI, measuring success has become an isolated process which too often limits our view of the entire customer journey.

With constant attention given to channel specific effectiveness and ROI (cheers for branded search!), marketers find themselves left with only one or two advertising streams, rather than a truly cross-channel effort.

This effect is hindering scalability and effectiveness of the greater marketing goal: Are we optimizing ourselves out of growth, for short-term "success?"

As we live through this exciting media inflection point, agencies and clients are looking forward, where a marketing culture based on consumer insights and knowledge is the foundational core for approaching communication planning. Integrated campaign management is a strategic imperative and will thrive once there is greater collaboration across the various interdisciplinary media teams.

Media multitasking has developed a new customer journey. Today's consumer experiences offer a proliferation of engaging touch points, be it in a lean-back or lean-forward medium, or a combination where a three-way multiscreen behavior is now evolving.

The customer journey has become a non-linear, cross-channel behavior which varies by age, demography and psychographics. As their media consumption behaviors evolve, marketers must emphasize the customer/ consumer and not the channel. We need to permit the communication planning approach to provide insights into the complexity of cross-channel touch points and influencers. As agencies become more nimble, they will address the absence of a centralized view into the consumer journey.

The two primary factors which will permit marketers and agencies to evolve and grow into cross-channel marketers are data management systems and organizational structures.

A responsible agency's strategy and approach on campaign management should be a holistic view of consumer behaviors where the right strategy and channel can be deployed to engage the right audience at the right time.

The new marketing and agency framework will permit collaboration and participation at all levels, where we have developed a multiskilled breed of marketers, conversant in their knowledge base of multiple channels.

Let's start with data management or attribution analysis.

Most conversions and brand attitudes are built over long-term complex interactions between a variety of ad units across multiple channels. By nature of offline and online planning measurements, analytics and reporting suites, last-click attribution will still thrive until we can truly track and manage all marketing programs through one system or lens.

Leveraging customer and analytical insight from multiple data streams across multiple channels remains a challenge. Data management across multiple channels remains a manual operation. Once cookies are expanded into the offline world or data systems, such as BVS (television verification) and Doubleclick (third-party ad serving) and Radian 6 (social media monitoring), we will have a multi-dimensional view of customer behavior.

Most importantly, we need to consider how our organizational structures are built. Marketing teams continue to be built on isolated and compartmentalized disciplines. This organizational fragmentation continues to show effects on planning and campaign scaling.

Greater collaboration and education among team members within organizations will mitigate the narrow optimization practices in isolated channels and permit for optimization across multiple channels. As Forrester notes, in a recently published white paper: "Marketing lacks direction and integration across departmental, enterprise, and supplier ecosystem."

As marketers look to grow their respective business, they need not look further than their own structure and capabilities. Scalability will come in the form of expanding media into cross-channel marketing, rather than targeting individual media channel components. Becoming more attuned with the consumer evolution in today's mutlimedia consumption behaviors will establish a foundation of cost efficient marketing with positive ROIs.

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