Multi Channel optimization 

For the past 13 years, online marketers have all but ignored the intricacies of the Customer Engagement Cycle.  They have failed to effectively integrate online marketing into their clients’ businesses, sacrificing potential sales and contributing to some of the greatest brand failures.

The Customer Engagement Cycle is made up of four different phases: Awareness, Consideration, Inquiry and Purchase.  The goal of a marketing department should be to manage media mix in a manner that guides customers through each phase to the next towards purchase.

Most modern businesses sell their products through multiple channels and likewise, their marketing efforts are directed through a variety of channels, both on and offline. Often, these efforts are at best, not collaborative and at worst, at cross purposes. For example:  A billboard advertisement encourages customers to buy the latest personal GPS. A search for the product online however yields no results for the brand, leaving the customers with competing options and the GPS company without sales.

Or: A potential customer receives a piece of direct mail promoting a cruise-line that instructs him to act quickly before the highly sought-after fares are all gone. He is curious enough to go online to find out more. When he arrives at the cruise-line’s website however, he sees a promotion for 75% off round-trip fares. These two messages create brand confusion, most likely to the detriment of sales.

In both examples, as customers move along the customer engagement cycle from awareness to inquiry, they are prevented from to moving forward because of inconsistent messaging. Though the results of customer engagement are ultimately sales, it is only through the other stages that a customer arrives at the purchase phase. Media should therefore be placed at each stage, collaborative with other marketing efforts, in order to promote the flow of the entire cycle.
 

To find out how MakeBuzz can optimize your marketing mix, speak with an expert at MakeBuzz 212.806.8807 or see our website at www.MakeBuzz.com