Six Ways to Achieve Multichannel Marketing Success

Executing on new digital marketing strategies can be a daunting task. Do you have the right environment? The right tools? Where do you start? While there is no —˜one-size-fits-all’ approach, it does help to look at your company from a fresh perspective.

As director of Vault PromoMats strategy, I’ve helped many Veeva customers evaluate their requirements for multichannel marketing execution. Throughout this journey, I’ve identified six major elements for a successful approach. By using these points to navigate your multichannel program, you’ll be well positioned to overcome common obstacles and deliver impactful campaigns across all customer touch points.

1. Executive Sponsorship
When a project or capability can potentially have a tremendous impact on your organization, the idea of having your organization’s executive team on board is important. Whether it be your CEO or CMO, gaining executive sponsorship is a key starting point and will drive buy in and alignment across an organization. Success relies on clear mandates and a commitment from the management level, directing the key stakeholders in a cross functional team.

2. Program Vision
Program vision is a critical step in which you develop your vision and a charter for your effort. Determine what you are trying to achieve by asking, “Why are we doing this?” Once you’ve determined your intentions, map out attainable goals which will be unique to every organization. After laying the foundation, determine how exactly all of the moving pieces in your multichannel vision will function and operate. This will make it clear to the entire team, whether it be someone in marketing or an important stakeholder, what everyone’s role is and how to work together.

In addition to a program vision, there should be a vision related to how this program is supported by your operational functions. Include operational colleagues early so they understand the program vision and can ensure the people, processes, and technology are in place to support your vision and enable innovation. Be clear of the operational imperatives including speed to market and the ability to support multichannel execution. Stay realistic about the capabilities and capacity you have to move this through the digital supply chain to meet the needs of the market.

3. Internal Alignment
Communicate your plans early and often so that everyone understands their role. Think of the flow of information through your organization and who needs to touch the campaign and the content. Your team will be made up from a lot of different people in various areas. Too often we operate in silos without taking a step backwards to really understand who else needs to hear and understand our plans. It’s important to overcome the silos and bring the strengths of cross discipline contributors and teams under a common goal for the organization and the customer in order for multichannel marketing to function well.

4. Experienced Partners
A massive multichannel program requires partners who understand the vision while also having the necessary skills to bring it through to the end. Taking on a more robust multichannel initiative requires an expansion of your partnerships. As we rely on agencies to be creative and innovative, we can also depend on our agency partners to drive more robust programs that require collaboration with multiple stakeholders. Sometimes the observations or assistance from an outside consultant can be exactly what you need. These partners can help build content and get you and your team aligned with collaboration, planning, timing, workload, proper use of your resources, and communications. It’s paramount to select a partner who can execute at multiple levels.

5. Actionable Planning
Put time into your brand planning and execution to ensure it moves forward. If you don’t have a solid plan, your stakeholders will not have insight into how your content is progressing which can backslide your efforts. The plan should not only include what you plan to do, but how you plan to get it done. Since you are coordinating across many different mediums in multichannel marketing, failing with one component can bring down the entire effort. Your plan should also allow for some shifts in priorities for unforeseen changes that can develop during the program. There is an 80/20 rule of multichannel marketing planning where 80% of your plans are locked and 20% of your plans can and will be dynamic.

6. Enduring Commitment
Commit to your plan. There are organizations out there that encounter a hurdle and aren’t able to adapt, causing their efforts to be unsuccessful. It’s essential to maintain an enduring commitment that you think of as a long term vision and develop in a way that’s systematic. Be sure your team is up to speed on the vision documentation, the roadmap, and that each individual recognizes their responsibility and how they are sharing failure and success across the organization.

In the end it’s all about visibility, communication, and ultimately celebrating your success. To be successful, you need to talk to stakeholders, customers, and your team. Be sure everyone is exchanging information and ideas in a clear and transparent manner and be sure to ask the right questions. For more insight into how to successfully get your innovative content to market, listen to our previously recorded webinar here.