Storytelling for Success in a Multichannel World

Once upon a time as a marketer, grabbing the attention of your audience was a matter of allocating budget to the largest mediums or publishers – hedging your bets on a couple of publishers where exposure was predictable.

Today, this fairytale no longer exists as consumers are spending more and more time across an increasing number of channels and devices, to the tune of 6 hours of digital media consumption per day across multiple platforms! (eMarketer)

It’s become increasingly difficult for marketers to keep up with the incredibly seamless experiences consumers enjoy due to the difficulty in predicting where they will go next.

A multichannel approach is imperative to tell a seamless story, but the perceived complexity and expense involved in becoming a true multichannel player has become a barrier for brands to keep up. This has caused many marketers to solely focus their efforts with the largest publishers.

So what can be done to fix this growing divide between brands and their consumers? A recent eMarketer report, “Making Multichannel Marketing Work”, identifies four tactics required for omnichannel success to help brands tell a consistent story and close the gap between what is currently two very different experiences.

“Few companies are capable of integrating the required data sources, technologies and departments to make omnichannel marketing work. Those in this elite group are there because they have mastered four core tactics:

• They take an audience-centric approach, not a channel-specific one.
• They overcome channel silos, both at the organizational and the technological levels.
• They continually work to make their messaging as relevant and meaningful as possible, regardless of device, channel or content type.
• And finally, they rely on multi-channel attribution to both measure and improve omnichannel efforts. This allows them to take a holistic view of their campaigns and evaluate them without bias.”

(eMarketer | Making Multichannel Marketing Work)

These four tactics enable marketers to tell a different story – one that focuses on the advertising that consumers love. A native experience that aligns with a consumer’s personal journey and not one prescribed by a single channel manager.

Getting this right involves an integrated approach across the various touch points available to reach audiences both online and offline – creating a cohesive story that transcends all platforms, publishers, and devices. This is by no means a small feat and requires change from deep within organizations, but technology can help.

Marketers are already evolving their campaigns in a more customer-centric and integrated direction, as shown by research from the PR Council and Association National Advertisers into the top 2 marketing investment priorities:

Successfully creating truly integrated campaigns, hinges upon having visibility into the customer journey and multichannel attribution plays a big role in this. Technology is critical here, to provide not only clarity and analysis, but also take action to optimize data in real time. That’s when the magic starts to happen.

Skai’s Chief Product Officer, Will Martin-Gill, advised “When you’re working in a multi-publisher world, it’s not good enough to have the data at a high level, you need a publisher-by-publisher or an opportunity-by-opportunity assessment of where your next dollar is best invested for the maximum return. And that’s where you need some good forecasting models. You need the ability to take that data and make it actionable. You need to be able to combine reporting and actionability in one interface.”

(eMarketer | Making Multichannel Marketing Work)

The happily ever after resides in restoring the balance between the marketer and consumer, being in the moment with the customer wherever they are, and supporting them along their journey with the advertising that matters.

To hear more on our multichannel marketing capabilities visit Kenshoo.com