Multi Channel Planning

Module Three of Squared Online started to dig into the detail of digital marketing, introducing some of the key channels and exploring how they fit together. As a reasonably experienced marketer, some of the content was familar. However, that’s not to say it wasn’t valuable. The digital landscape is changing so fast that for even the most experienced professionals, it’s impossible to keep on top of the finer details of every discipline. What’s more, many agencies (and clients, but to a lesser extent) tend to operate within highly specialised, siloed teams. It can be hard for people to break out of these silos and understand how each channel fits together as party of a truly integrated strategy. This module was an attempt to bridge the divide.

The classes on Search, Display, Content and Video helped to lay the groundwork and to demonstrate some of the possibilities open to brands in the modern media. These sessions were not particularly hands-on, and as a search specialist with intermediate knowledge of the other channels I’d say they weren’t especially advanced. However they did provide a useful overview. It would have been good to have seen more on Affiliates, SEO and email marketing, but it’s probably to be expected that on a Google backed course, the main focus would be on AdWords and the variety of advertising options across the GDN and YouTube.

From my experience, some brands seem to be blinded by media fragmentation and new technology, buried beneath data and jargon that they don’t fully understand. It often seems that the established marketing principles of segmentation, targeting and positioning are too easily lost. In an uncertain world, I can understand how some businesses are guilty of falling for the hype around the latest media trends, whether it’s Vine or Pinterest or Infographics. It’s a common trap for marketers to fall into, to take a brand-centric view of the world,  after all, they spend their days obsessing in exhaustive detail about their companies. However, in the real world people just don’t care as much about engaging with corporate sponsored content as marketers think they do. Most people don’t want to be friends with their breakfast cereal manufacturer or their insurance company. Of course there are some brands that can demand a higher level of attention, brands that represent a particular lifestyle or identity association such as Red Bull or Nike can turn customers into fans. However, for commoditised brands, most people will never share your Facebook content or subscribe to your Instagram feed. Good marketers understand this and invest their efforts in media based on whether it is likely to be appropriate for their brand and effective with their target audience.

With this in mind, module three did a good job of focusing on the most important (but often forgotten) part of any digital strategy, the consumer. The assignment brief was to pull together a multi-channel media plan for a fictional hair colouring brand called Tonacity. While the task was primarily designed to enable us to demonstrate our knowledge of the digital media options available and to outline creative tactics, students were encouraged to start with the consumer in mind. The requirement for us to carry out consumer research and to develop personas based on defined target segments ensured that some thought was given to the kind of messages that would be relevant and the kind of channels that would be appropriate. My presentation could probably have done with more detail and a better understanding of the existing market, but with a tight deadline and a ten slide limit, here’s what I pulled together.