As a brand, you must use all types of data and insights to get a better look at your customers, their behaviors, their needs, and their preferences.
With the right information and the right digital marketing strategy, you have the potential to reach a much wider audience.
Did you know that when customers shop for a vehicle, they hit over 900 different touchpoints, on average? These touchpoints make up the customer’s journey, which can be overwhelming.
However, to better understand the journey of the customer, businesses can use a 360-degree digital marketing strategy.
Keep reading to learn all about 360 marketing!
What is 360 Marketing?
A 360 marketing strategy is a comprehensive plan that focuses on reaching the target audience from multiple platforms and channels.
This type of strategy generally combines both traditional marketing and digital marketing channels as it infuses within the entire customer journey.
Basically, a 360 marketing strategy will ensure that customers have a positive experience of communication regardless of their location or what device they may or may not be using.
For instance, you may see a Coca-Cola ad on a billboard on your way to work. On your lunch break, you may see another ad while scrolling through Facebook. When you get home and sit down to relax and watch television, you may encounter yet another (but more thorough) advertisement.
What are the Main Benefits of a 360 Marketing Campaign?
Brands gain so much from using a 360-degree marketing strategy. Here are just a few of the main benefits that you can reap with this approach.
Create More Strategic Sales and Marketing Campaigns
One of the primary benefits of taking the 360-degree approach to marketing is that it provides the capability of extending the reach of your current marketing and sales teams.
This approach allows your marketers to create far more strategic marketing campaigns and sales by making use of current insights.
For example, if you see that a customer often purchases home décor, your marketing and sales team can create a campaign that targets that particular interest.
Understand Customers and Their Behaviors
The 360 approach also helps brands better understand their customers, behaviors, and interests.
It’s the same thing with healthcare professionals that can understand their patient’s medical history, along with their behaviors and habits.
Is the patient scheduling wellness exams regularly? What preventative measures can be used based on the medical history of the patient?
Deliver More Personalized Shopping Experiences
With the user experience so important, a personalized 360-degree marketing approach helps deliver more personalized experiences.
Brands can utilize data to offer a personalized experience across all shopping journeys they take.
For instance, financial institutions have access to all sorts of information on their customers, including their age. With that being said, once the customer reaches a certain age, they can begin to send out personalized retirement plans and related information.
How to Build More Strategic Sales and 360 Marketing Campaigns
In order for your 360 marketing campaign to be effective and efficient, there are a few components that need to be incorporated.
1. Know Where Your Target Audience Is
Before you get too deep into your marketing campaign and create a plan, you want to figure out who your target audience is and where they are at.
You want to narrow your overall focus so that you are working with the platforms where your target audience is.
Take the time to research your target customers and where they are most likely to get your message and respond to it. You can gather data from social media platforms insights as well as Google Analytics metrics.
Look for any signs of commonalities that will let you know your customers’ demographics, preferred platform, interests, and more — all of which will help you create a buyer persona.
You can use polls and surveys to learn even more about your audience.
2. Determine Your Purpose and Plan
Once the “where” is identified, it is time to determine the purpose of your marketing campaign. Maybe you’re looking to boost brand awareness or launch a brand-new product.
Whatever the case may be, you should take the research you did previously on your target customers and further narrow your focus based on your budget and resources.
Define your goals so that you can then build your 360 marketing plan around them.
3. Map Out Your Customer Journey and Touchpoints
Ultimately, the content, platforms, and strategy you use will vary from one stage of the funnel to the next.
You want to reach your target audience at the right time in the right place. Before you can do this, you must be familiar with your customers.
Look at the customer’s journey from the time they become familiar with your brand to the time they make a purchase to afterward when they potentially become advocates for your brand.
The points of contact will change during the customer journey, and you need to know how to reach your customers during each stage of the buying journey.
For instance, in the consideration stage of the buyer’s journey, customers will be looking for solutions to their problem. You need to have content ready to be delivered to your customers on the platform that they’re more likely to search for additional information.
4. Establish the Channels You’re Going to Use
As you move forward with your 360 marketing strategy, you will need to create a thorough list of the potential channels you will use to reach your target audience.
Don’t only focus on traditional platforms or digital platforms. Instead, you should consider all channels available to you.
While you may not necessarily use every single channel, it is possible that you’ll use something completely new to you.
Ultimately, this approach will help you with offering consistent and relevant content that will guide the customer through the sales funnel.
5. Achieve Higher Engagement Rates on Social Media
There are numerous channels that you can use to reach your target audience, but one of the most common in today’s digital age is social media.
However, no two social media platforms are alike. There are some people who prefer to use Facebook, whereas others hate Facebook and prefer to use Twitter.
With that being said, you must figure out where your audience is so you can adjust your posts accordingly. For example, your strategy will be completely different on TikTok as it is on Instagram.
With your previous research and data in mind, choose the best social media platforms to use, draft appropriate content, create a content calendar, and utilize social media management tools to schedule these posts based on popular times that your audience is active on said platform.
Keep in mind that videos and images work incredibly well on social media to achieve higher engagement. Make sure to use social media trends to your advantage.
6. Use Pay-Per-Click Advertising for Quick Results
If you want to get your products and message in front of consumers as quickly as possible, then you should invest in PPC advertising.
PPC utilizes text, social media, display, remarketing, and Google Shopping advertisements.
Although the attractiveness of the quick results is great, it is important to remember that PPC can eat up your budget pretty quickly. Paid advertising should be a component of your 360 marketing strategy, but it should not be the only component used.
PPC can help improve brand awareness and sales while social media and SEO are gaining traction.
Make sure that the link your audience is clicking on your PPC ads will take them to a page where action is required.
To get the most out of your PPC ads, conduct A/B testing. This will let you see what is working and what isn’t, allowing you to make adjustments in real-time.
7. Enhance Your Strategy with Content Marketing
As part of your 360 marketing strategy, content marketing can play an integral role.
Sit down and brainstorm different types of content that you feel will work for your brand. Then, use that list to connect content to your target audience.
Make sure to craft various types of content, such as blog posts, how-to guides, infographics, video tutorials, white papers, and ebooks.
You want a variety since you aren’t 100% sure what your audience will respond to best. You can then use this content to perform testing and find out what your audience likes best.
With content marketing, the key is to inform and educate your audience with valuable information. This content should be designed to solve problems customers may have or to educate them on the benefits of your products.
At the same time, though, this content needs to make your audience take some form of action.
When putting your content calendar together, make sure that you are using a combination of both evergreen content and articles that can potentially be repurposed. This reduces your future workload.
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8. Nurture Leads with Email Marketing
Since you have likely developed a decent list of contacts at this point, email marketing should be used to your advantage.
Efficient email marketing can help you nurture the leads you have thus far and build a certain level of trust with your audience.
Make sure to take the time to segment your lists so you can customize the messages to the audience that you are emailing.
Because personalization is so important, link your email marketing automation software and customer relationship management tool to enhance your email marketing campaign.
A/B testing can help you identify what’s working and what isn’t, from subject lines to the CTA to the images.
9. Go Back to the Roots with Face-to-Face Marketing
Traditional face-to-face marketing is a great component to add to your 360 marketing plan, as it will help you communicate better with your audience while getting some necessary feedback about your brand.
Reaching out to your customers can be done through trade shows, local community events, conferences, and more.
The ultimate goal of this type of marketing is to get your brand name out there and build trust with your audience.
Don’t focus on an extensive sales pitch, as face-to-face marketing is more about building customer relationships.
10. Ensure Cohesion Across All Marketing Channels
Regardless of what marketing channels you decide to use, it is absolutely imperative that you maintain cohesion across them all.
You are now very familiar with your target audience as well as customer touchpoints.
This information should be used to create your overall content plan. The key is to ensure that your message — regardless of where it is being used — is the same.
This is true whether you are using a billboard or an email.
11. Monitor Your Results and Track Conversions
To finish up your 360-degree marketing plan, you need to monitor the results and track the number of conversions and where they came from.
With some channels, you can check your metrics as often as every day, allowing you to make any necessary adjustments quickly.
By assessing this data regularly, you will know whether your research into your target audience was right.
Keep in mind that you must remain flexible, as the needs of your audience may change as a result of the latest trends, lifestyle, etc.
Wrap Up
If you haven’t yet noticed, research into your target audience is what drives your overall 360-degree marketing strategy.
Without audience research, you cannot know what steps to take next to ensure success.
Once you know your audience, you can use a compressive marketing approach that consists of PPC, social media, and even face-to-face marketing to take your brand to the next level.
With your 360 marketing strategy, your content must be on point.
Learn how to create content that will lead to more conversions with our recorded webinar!
