Multi-Channel Marketing in 2015 – It’s not rocket science.

B2B mul­ti-chan­nel mar­ket­ing has grown expo­nen­tial­ly in the last few years. Organ­i­sa­tions are dis­trib­ut­ing mar­ket­ing con­tent through an ever increas­ing num­ber of chan­nels. A well-exe­cut­ed mul­ti-chan­nel cam­paign is the dif­fer­ence between suc­cess­ful­ly enabling your con­tent to stand out and be seen, or risk being lost in the noise of today’s com­pet­i­tive mar­kets. This arti­cle will talk about how we approach, plan and launch major B2B cam­paigns here at Adobe and hope­ful­ly inspire a few mar­keters to take a fresh approach at exist­ing challenges.

My name is Tay­lor Chad­wick and I’m a Search Mar­ket­ing Man­ag­er at Adobe. One of my respon­si­bil­i­ties is exe­cut­ing cam­paigns that reach our tar­get audi­ence of dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing pro­fes­sion­als. Over time we have devel­oped a mul­ti-chan­nel cam­paign exe­cu­tion strat­e­gy that works for us and helps us reach our cus­tomers and prospects.

At the core of our approach is com­mu­ni­ca­tion, con­sis­ten­cy and aware­ness of colleague’s respon­si­bil­i­ties. Let’s face it that isn’t rock­et sci­ence. Being aware of oth­ers (who prob­a­bly too have their faces buried in their lap­tops) and of what they do in their day is essen­tial in pulling togeth­er a scal­able cam­paign. You and your col­leagues are the most impor­tant part of the cam­paign exe­cu­tion, it’s the human ele­ment that real­ly counts.****

This approach requires appoint­ing a cen­tral per­son to take charge and organ­ise oth­er indi­vid­u­als. With­in a group there will always be indi­vid­u­als that rel­ish tak­ing lead on a small project, so my advice is to find those peo­ple and take it in turns. Organ­is­ing activ­i­ty that spans across var­i­ous Geo’s and respon­si­bil­i­ties is eas­i­er said than done, but done cor­rect­ly can yield great results.

Anoth­er fun­da­men­tal part of this approach is the co-ordi­na­tion of cam­paign exe­cu­tion. Now this doesn’t have to be done in a James Bond style with syn­chro­nised watch­es, but you do have a lim­it­ed time frame here, my sug­ges­tion is aim for a 3 hour window.

My final point here before we take a clos­er look at indi­vid­ual chan­nels and plat­forms, is to take advan­tage of all resources avail­able to you. While this seems an obvi­ous point we often don’t do this, after all sug­ges­tions can always be dis­missed if you don’t feel they will have a pos­i­tive impact. One exam­ple of this is ven­dor account man­agers, who will be the nature of their roles are always look­ing to help expand and opti­mise cam­paigns, it’s what they are there for, take advantage.

So let’s take a clos­er look at our approach.

Social Media Marketing

Our Social Media Mar­ket­ing efforts span across var­i­ous plat­forms coor­di­nat­ing organ­ic with paid promotion:

**Twit­ter –**Twit­ter is an agile, real-time and more inter­ac­tive plat­form than oth­er chan­nels, so mon­i­tor it appro­pri­ate­ly. It’s great for tar­get­ing pub­li­ca­tions, fol­low­ers of thought lead­ers, indus­try events as well as rel­e­vant KW’s & interests.

LinkedIn –Your prospec­tive buy­ers are spend­ing more time than ever before using LinkedIn to net­work, mar­ket and grow their busi­ness­es. If you’re tar­get­ing a B2B audi­ences, there’s no bet­ter chan­nel than LinkedIn. We take full advan­tage of LinkedIn’s tar­get­ing which includes indus­try, com­pa­ny size, senior­i­ty and even com­pa­ny name options.

YouTube – Google have made leaps and bounds with YouTube’s new tar­get­ing func­tions, and if there are any video aspects to your cam­paign my advice is you look a lit­tle clos­er. We specif­i­cal­ly utilise of YouTube’s InMar­ket seg­ments to tar­get Mar­keters, Adver­tis­ers and the Busi­ness Tech Com­mu­ni­ties, help­ing us dri­ve great engagement.

Blog — Your blog should be a cen­tral point of your cam­paign that aligns around the focal point, it should pro­vide insight and valu­able com­men­tary. It’s impor­tant to pro­vide con­text around blog posts that sup­port lead gen pro­grams and they can’t be too pushy.

Search Mar­ket­ing

Adobe opti­mis­es Search with a 3 pil­lared approach across Paid Search, On-site Search & SEO:

Paid Search (SEM) — Paid Search is the most reac­tive form of Search Mar­ket­ing, it can adapt and change to sup­port cam­paigns quick­ly and effi­cient­ly. When we launch a large lead gen­er­a­tion cam­paign our new adtext & KW’s are wait­ing in the wings.

Web­site Search — Make sure your con­tent is find­able on your web­site by includ­ing rel­e­vant terms in your on-site search tool. At Adobe our onsite search opti­mi­sa­tion is car­ried out by the SEO team as they are aware of most cur­rent trends.

Search Engine Opti­mi­sa­tion (SEO) — Con­tent is still king and SEO should be con­sid­ered in all copy writ­ing activ­i­ties. There are major rank­ing ben­e­fits to ensur­ing the SEO team are locked into every aspect of your con­tent cre­ation process. Get them involved from day one.

Media & Online advertising

Media is a great way to extend the reach and the lifes­pan of your cam­paigns, pro­mot­ing your con­tent, visu­als & videos through rel­e­vant tar­get­ed exter­nal sites. 3rd Par­ty email, syn­di­ca­tion of your con­tent, newslet­ter spon­sor­ship & dis­play all play a key role here. Ensur­ing you define the cor­rect audi­ence (tar­get­ing) & effec­tive process for allo­cat­ing your media spend (test­ing & opt­mi­sa­tion) is a must.****

Web­site

Your web­site will have major influ­ence at var­i­ous stages through­out your sales cycle. It’s crit­i­cal your web team are moti­vat­ed to sup­port your cam­paign by pop­u­lat­ing the most valu­able real estate on your web­site, with con­sis­tent visu­als & content.

It’s impor­tant to remem­ber you prob­a­bly won’t get this right first time and that’s fine. Learn­ing from mis­takes and tak­ing advan­tage of oppor­tu­ni­ties is all part of the game. At Adobe we add, tweak and change our approach con­stant­ly, after all it’s an ever shift­ing land­scape.

How does your mul­ti-chan­nel approach dif­fer from ours, let us know in the comments?

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