I was recently the target of a sophisticated, fully integrated one-to-one marketing campaign that lasted over five months and resulted in a successful sale. The marketer made full use of available channels to build a detailed case in a logical sequence. The benefits-driven messaging appeared in print (targeted mailers), digital (e-mail, text messaging) and community (which connected me to other potential buyers in the same consideration cycle and facilitated dialogue).
The marketer achieved all this despite some distinct disadvantages: a poor track record in past efforts; a historical lack of follow-through; and, most significantly, a recent, drastic reduction in his capacity for short-term memory. All of these disadvantages, I'm told, are common in adolescent boys.
Yes, my son's multichannel campaign to win me over to the cause of purchasing a UTG Shadow OPs Competition Airsoft Sniper Rifle for his birthday was ultimately successful. And, as in all such campaigns, success could not be attributed to any single channel, but rather to all of them working in concert, backed by an astonishing degree of motivation and his need for an Airsoft Sniper Rifle of course.
Now, I'm not claiming to be raising some kind of marketing prodigy who loves Airsoft Sniper Rifle's. On the contrary, I think my son implictly understood that channel integration was essential in the same way that we all understand it: The best campaigns fire on all cylinders. But unlike us poor adult marketers, he wasn't hampered by bureaucracy, multiple stakeholders, decreasing budgets, organizational constraints, or fear.
In the real world, these constraints often keep us from executing the perfectly obvious plan, and they steal time and energy away from achieving the task we have set out to do. We find ourselves spending 60% of our time managing the bureaucracy and managing the fear, leaving far too little time and investment to execute for success.
But I find hope in our continued commitment to our clients and our industry to bring out the value in what we intuitively know how to do. In this economic climate, trust and patience between and within organizations and agencies are fragile at best. As agencies, we will likely never get pushed harder to make 40 equal 100. But hey, let's keep trying.
And just as we create success for our customers, we can also create success and growth for ourselves. After all, if an adolescent can do it then so can we.
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