Planning how companies communicate with customers has always been an important aspect of marketing strategy. But the introduction of new omnichannel marketing technologies in the era of digital disruption makes it even more crucial today

The pace of innovation continues to drive new options for reaching customers across a number of key channels. Savvy business leaders know that to thrive in this market, they must be ready to adapt and develop their strategies. For example, Omnichannel marketing is now recognized as an essential approach for all businesses with an online presence. But how does omnichannel relate back to your customer? Twenty years ago, when digital channels didn’t have the diversity and importance they do now, the choice of which channel to use and how best to connect with customers didn’t influence customer service outcomes so heavily. Today, however, customers have an astounding number of options for communicating with companies — and businesses…

9 pointers for strategic marketers to implement and benefit from cross-channel marketing

What is cross-channel marketing?

Cross-channel marketing is a customer-focused digital marketing technique used by marketers globally to provide an integrated experience across all paid, owned, earned media, and digital experiences. It is a powerful way of designing your marketing strategy and implementing data and analysis to create omnichannel customer journeys towards your goals. Implementing a cross-channel marketing strategy can be a little intimidating. You need to take care of multiple channels while designing your campaigns. Keeping track of every campaign and integrating their analytics is certainly not an easy task. That's where our RACE Framework comes in. So, before we dive into cross-channel marketing, let’s take a moment to assess your business' marketing needs. Did you know you can book a free 1-2-1 membership consultation to discuss your objectives in the context of our omnichannel…

Streamline your digital marketing strategy through omnichannel marketing planning

Knowing where to start and how to structure a plan is often the most difficult part of planning, especially if you aren’t experienced in creating plans. You may already have one plan or several in place and will be thinking you don't need an omnichannel marketing plan on top of that. Depending on the type and scale of business, you may have all kinds of different plans in place - both business-wide and for individual channels where different people are responsible for each. For example: The business plan Marketing plan Digital Marketing plan (may or may not be integrated into the marketing plan) Advertising plan Customer acquisition plan Email marketing plan A retention plan A social media marketing plan Conversion optimization plan That’s a lot of plans and a lot of complexity. All these plans can overlap and even pull in different directions. Omnichannel planning…

As digital transformation continues to shape the new relationship between healthcare providers and their customers, upskill your pharma marketing team with the key digital skills and tools to improve performance

The question of the key digital skills and tools in the pharma industry is an ongoing challenge. Pharma marketing generalists plan and optimize marketing strategies, campaigns and product launches, requiring a T-shaped digital skillset and continuous professional development to oversee all marketing activity. Pharma digital specialists manage day-to-day optimization of key digital channels, the new front-line of customer engagement. Investment in tools and training for these staff is crucial for your company's growth. Of course, the breakdown of these channels will depend on your pharma company's positioning and target markets, which we will visit further on in the article.

Why invest in digital marketing for pharma?

Improved distribution of, and accessibility to, pharmaceutical data and information is accelerating customer-centric disruption…

Good digital marketing isn't just about creating content, you also need to review your performance to see where it can be improved

How often do you review your marketing performance? Creating great content for the various channels you use for your marketing campaign, whether they be social networks, your website or blog, or any other channel you’re using to connect with your audience, isn’t really enough to get you results. [si_monthly_campaign_blog_cta_banner id=160114] The only way to continue growing and evolving is to constantly improve and optimize your marketing strategies. In order to do this, you need to review your marketing performance, consistently. Our Content Marketing Learning Path supports members to plan their approach and increase the effectiveness of their content marketing activities with practical skills development and resources to measure and benchmark their success.

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In this blog post, discover why reviewing marketing performance should be at the top of your priority list in 2021.

When…

With the channels skills-gap currently estimated at 13%, whether you are looking to change company/function or keep progressing in the career you already have, building up your channel-specific skills will help you bring the right skills to the table

While we're adjusting to taking everything online (yes, it really does seem like there is a place for everything in this new physically distant world), as a digital marketer I am finding myself paying particular interest to the roles of different marketing channels in today's internet of things: "Q) How many engineers does it take to change a light bulb? A) Depends on whether or not that lightbulb is connected to WiFi - Arielle Pardes, wired.com" Although lightbulb marketing isn't something we specialize in at Smart Insights (yet?), I do recommend having a mental run-through of your marketing channels, and whether there's anything you've seen in the last few weeks that you…

How to increase communications relevance through more personalised, contextual messages based on customer insight

Data is the key to understanding your customers and delivering new insights, but data in itself is just a series of 1s and 0s until you can bring meaning and interpretation.

Knowing and understanding your data is the first step in delivering relevant communications and customer value, as you turn raw data into information and then actionable insight. Starting this journey however can be a difficult step as highlighted in the 2013 Teradata Data-Driven Marketing Survey which stated:

‘Nearly 50 percent of marketers agree that data is the most underutilised asset in their organisation, with less than 10 percent saying they currently use what data they have in a systematic way’

Where to start?

There are several ways to data discovery and data…