Strategic Planning

 

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How to structure an effective multichannel marketing plan

 What are the essential parts of a multichannel marketing plan template?

Multichannel marketing, or omnichannel marketing, is the process of utilizing online and offline marketing communications channels to target and engage with your customers.

As outlined in our popular Learning Path module, structure a plan using the RACE Planning framework, the purpose of a multichannel marketing strategy is to empower marketers and managers to plan, manage and optimize the resources needed to achieve business sales targets. The timeframe is typically annual but potentially longer-term, such as 18 months to three years.

Examples of communications channels could include, for example:

• Websites
• Physical stores
• Catalogs
• E-mail marketing
• TV
• Text messaging
• Blogging
• Direct mail

The goal is to deliver leads and sales targets for defined products and services, which can apply to an organization as a whole, or a single market if there are multiple markets and product or service categories.

An effective omnichannel approach to marketing considers both communications techniques and channels required to enable customer acquisition for particular product or service categories. A multichannel marketing plan strategically connects multiple channels into one, thriving, multi-channel communications approach.

Smart Insights members are planning, managing and optimizing their multichannel marketing strategies with our dedicated marketing training. With bespoke options for small and large businesses alike, we have marketing solutions to help you achieve your goals. Find out how to create your winning marketing strategy today.

When to use it?

The key to a successful multichannel marketing plan is integration; a common challenge that most marketers face. If your organization has established a digital marketing plan, for example, it should not be used in isolation, but used to inform all your omnichannel activities.

Your multichannel marketing plan should set out campaigns that span multiple channels, catering to the customer, and tailoring them to fit multiple channels. Buying processes are controlled by the customer, rather than the marketer so the ‘always-on’ nature of multichannel marketing will reach customers via the inbound or outbound channel of their choice.

Organizations using an effective integrated multi-channel marketing plan will continuously stand out, gain qualified leads, and maximize conversion throughout the customer lifecycle. Your multichannel marketing plan should therefore continually engage, nurture, and retarget customers to convert to a sale.

What should be included in a multichannel marketing plan?

A multichannel marketing plan typically includes:

• Detailed customer profiles and relevant marketing communication channels for each
• SMART objectives for acquiring or retaining customers
• Marketing tactics including content marketing with an inbound focus
• The integrated marketing communications channels to be utilized, across multiple platforms and devices, to attract and convert customers
• How multichannel results will be measured for effectiveness, influence, and exclusion

Knowing which campaigns on which channels has led to the most sales will enable you to establish the success of your activities and the return on investment (ROI) that particular channel returns. Customers move across channels quickly, therefore both your strategy and analytics should simultaneously adapt.

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Introducing the RACE Framework and SOSTAC®

For the perfect multichannel plan structure, I recommend you combine SOSTAC® and RACE planning. Why are two frameworks better than one, when we’re seeking simplicity? The reason is that each has its strengths.

The RACE Framework gives you a structure to plan, manage and optimize the many activities in the modern marketing funnel.

SOSTAC® guides you through the process of creating and implementing your marketing plan.

So, you can see that the strength of SOSTAC® as a general planning framework is also a weakness; it doesn’t apply specifically to the multichannel marketing communications needed to engage an audience through an engagement funnel.

Applying SOSTAC® to multichannel marketing plans

To make sure your multichannel marketing plan has all the essential features, I recommend the SOSTAC® structure developed by PR Smith—Dave Chaffey’s co-author of the printed book Digital Marketing Excellence.

SOSTAC® is a great framework for structuring business, marketing, or digital marketing plans since it’s relatively simple and logical, so it’s easy to remember and to explain to colleagues or agencies. SOSTAC® is a strategic planning process framework that gives you a clear structure to work through to create and manage your plan.

Situation analysis means ‘Where are we now?’ For multi-channel marketers, questions include:

• Are we measuring results accurately through analytics?
• Which type of prospects are we reaching online?
• What are our competitors doing?
• What’s working for them?

Objectives mean ‘Where do we want to be?’

• What is the growth forecast?
• What are the top-level goals 5 Ss (Sell, Serve, Speak, Save, and Sizzle)? Plus, we can build specific forecasts for leads and sales by channel to hit the business plan target. Good objectives are quantified against timescales.

Strategy means ‘How do we get there?’ Strategy summarizes how to fulfill the objectives. It is the shortest part of the plan, but arguably, the most important, as it gives direction to all the subsequent tactics. It answers questions including:

• Which segments will be targeted with which propositions?
• What positioning will we choose?
• How will leads and sales targets be achieved?
• Which channels should we focus our media investment on?
• What communications strategies will be used to support customer acquisition, conversion, and retention?

Tactics are the details of strategy (the marketing mix, communications mix, and channel mix are the tactical tools). They highlight on a campaign timeline exactly which tactics occur when. For example, how do we improve our ‘always-on’ communications, e.g. how to harness Marketing Automation alongside Content Marketing to generate and nurture leads.

To help you plan your multichannel marketing tactics effectively, the RACE Planning system will provide you with a simple framework.

The RACE Framework

RACE covers the full customer lifecycle or marketing funnel from:

(Plan) > Reach > Act > Convert > Engage

There is also an initial phase of Plan involving creating the overall digital strategy, objective setting, and plan.

RACE consists of four steps or online marketing activities designed to help brands engage their customers throughout the customer lifecycle. This infographic shows the goals for each part of RACE and how you can measure them.

1. Reach.
   Reach involves building awareness and visibility of your brand, products, and services on other websites and in offline media to build traffic by driving visits to different web presences like your main site, microsites or social media pages. It involves maximizing reach over time to create multiple interactions using different paid, owned, and earned media touchpoints.
2. Act.
   Act is short for Interact. It’s a separate stage from conversion, encouraging interactions on websites and in social media. For most businesses, the main aim of the Act is to generate online leads. So, it’s about persuading site visitors or prospects to take the next step, the next Action on their customer journey when they initially reach your site or social network presence. It may mean finding out more about a company or its products, searching to find a product, or reading a blog post.You should define these actions as top-level goals of the funnel in analytics. Goals can include “Viewed product”, “Added to Basket”, “Registered as member” or “Signed up for an e-newsletter. Act is also about encouraging participation. This can be sharing of content via social media or customer reviews (strictly, part of Engage).
3. Convert.
   This is simply conversion to sale, online or offline. It involves getting your audience to take that vital next step which turns them into paying customers whether the payment is taken through online eCommerce transactions or offline channels.
4. Engage.
   This is long-term customer engagement and communications that is, developing a long-term relationship with first-time buyers to build customer loyalty as repeat purchases using communications on your site, social presence, email and direct interactions to boost customer lifetime value. It can be measured by repeat actions such as repeat sales and sharing content through social media. We also need to measure the percentage of active customers (or email subscribers) and customer satisfaction and recommendation using other systems.

Benefits of a digital marketing plan

A solid digital marketing plan has:

• Clear, realistic goals which you can be confident of hitting
• The best strategy to achieve these goals against your competition
• Sufficient details of the tactics and actions needed to translate the strategy into action
• A method to check you are on track with your plans

Streamline your digital marketing planning by applying the RACE Framework today. We've got marketing tools and training to support you and your team to optimize your digital marketing channels, platforms and customer experience.

Our step-by-step process is proven to drive growth, so you can win even more customers. Book your free 1-2-1 strategy consultation call to find out more.

Which type of business is a multichannel marketing plan most suited for?

A multichannel marketing plan is suited to:

•  Small to medium-sized businesses (SME/SMB) as an annual communications plan
• Larger businesses as an annual communications plan for one market or audience

It can also act as a longer-term customer engagement plan, focusing on one market or audience.

For larger organizations, implementing an omnichannel approach to marketing planning can be challenging, owing to obstacles when attempting to:

• Centralize goals
• Achieve coherent customer relationship management (CRM)
• Co-ordinate messaging across departments, brands and business units
• Achieve consistency across channels
• Measure frequency and reach of activities

How does a multichannel marketing plan relate to other plans?

A multichannel marketing plan is a marketing communications plan, rather than a broader marketing plan. Key outputs include:

• Marketing objectives
• Marketing budget
• Campaign plans
• Resource plans

Integration with other organizational plans is critical to connect them all into one, strategic, multi-channel approach to inbound marketing. Integrated with a multichannel marketing plan may be a marketing plan, a digital marketing plan, and a campaign plan, for example.  They inform the multichannel marketing plan and vice-versa.

Effective integration and compilation will result in a long-term integrated communications plan for utilizing all of your marketing activities together, to hit lead and sales targets.

Thanks to Sarah Cowman for sharing their advice and opinion in this post. Sarah, Managing Director at The Yorkshire Marketing Agency, is an award-winning Chartered Marketer. Sarah holds over 10 years’ experience in implementing results-driven marketing and communications strategies, plans, and campaigns. You can connect with her on LinkedIn.

By Sarah Lindley

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Marketing Plan (Part 2)

 See Part 1 - http://bit.ly/3Vtvgb5

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Balanced Scorecard Basics

 

What is a Balanced Scorecard?

The balanced scorecard (BSC) is a strategic planning and management system. Organizations use BSCs to:

• Communicate what they are trying to accomplish
• Align the day-to-day work that everyone is doing with strategy
• Prioritize projects, products, and services
• Measure and monitor progress towards strategic targets

The name “balanced scorecard” comes from the idea of looking at strategic measures in addition to traditional financial measures to get a more “balanced” view of performance. The concept of balanced scorecard has evolved beyond the simple use of perspectives and it is now a holistic system for managing strategy. A key benefit of using a disciplined framework is that it gives organizations a way to “connect the dots” between the various components of strategic planning and management, meaning that there will be a visible connection between the projects and programs that people are working on, the measurements being used to track success (KPIs), the strategic objectives the organization is trying to accomplish, and the mission, vision, and strategy of the organization.

Who Uses the Balanced Scorecard (BSC)?

BSCs are used extensively in business and industry, government, and nonprofit organizations worldwide. More than half of major companies in the US, Europe, and Asia are using the BSC, with use growing in those areas as well as in the Middle East and Africa. A recent global study by Bain & Co listed balanced scorecard fifth on its top ten most widely used management tools around the world. BSC has also been selected by the editors of Harvard Business Review as one of the most influential business ideas of the past 75 years.

What Organizations Are Successfully Using Balanced Scorecard?

Increasingly, as balanced scorecard (BSC) concepts become more refined, we have had more inquiries asking for examples of organizations that have implemented the BSC, how the BSC applies to a particular business sector, what metrics are appropriate for different sectors, etc. This page provides a database of working balanced scorecard examples that our research has located.

By 2004 about 57% of global companies were working with the balanced scorecard (according to Bain). Much of the information in the commercial sector is proprietary, because it relates to the strategies of specific companies. Public-sector (government) organizations are usually not concerned with proprietary information, but also they may not have a mandate (or much funding) to post their management information on web sites.

Example One-Page Balanced Scorecard Strategic Plan 

The One-Page Strategic Plan illustrates how strategy and strategic elements fit together and reinforce each other. This one-page summary graphic includes vision, mission, core values, perspectives, strategic themes & results, strategic objectives, strategy map, performance measures, targets, and strategic initiatives. 

What Are Balanced Scorecard Perspectives?

The BSC suggests that we examine an organization from four different perspectives to help develop objectives, measures (KPIs), targets, and initiatives relative to those views.

• Financial (or Stewardship): views an organization’s financial performance and the use of financial resources
• Customer/Stakeholder: views organizational performance from the perspective of the customer or key stakeholders the organization is designed to serve
• Internal Process: views the quality and efficiency of an organization’s performance related to the product, services, or other key business processes
• Organizational Capacity (or Learning & Growth): views human capital, infrastructure, technology, culture, and other capacities that are key to breakthrough performance

The Four Perspectives of the Balanced Scorecard

One of the signature features of the balanced scorecard is that it looks at organizational performance from various Perspectives. Perspectives are the performance dimensions, or lenses, that put strategy in context. It takes several perspectives—usually four—to understand an organization as a system made up of elements that work together, like the gears in a clock or fine watch. Together, these elements create value, leading to customer and stakeholder satisfaction and good financial performance.

Why Does Your Organization Need Perspectives?

Drs. Robert Kaplan and David Norton found in their initial work together that too many organizations were measuring their success only from a financial point of view and that a broader, more strategic set of dimensions was needed. The success of few strategies can be measured from only one point of view. The basic four perspectives enables the organization to use a strategy map to articulate to employees how value is created by the organization.

What Balanced Scorecard Perspectives Should a Private Sector Organization Use?

The four perspectives of a traditional balanced scorecard are Financial, Customer, Internal Process, and Learning and Growth. In the Nine Steps to Success™, the original Balanced Scorecard “learning and growth” perspective has been changed to “organizational capacity”, to reflect the internal capacity building needed to improve internal processes. The four components included in the organizational capacity perspective are human capital, tools and technology, infrastructure, and governance. Learning and growth takes place throughout the whole organization and during the execution of strategy, not just in one perspective. The image below shows the value creation story through the perspectives for business / commercial sector organizations.

How Perspectives Show a Value Creation Story in Business / Commercial Organizations

What Balanced Scorecard Perspectives Should a Public Sector Organization Use?

Civilian government, defense and not-for-profit organizations are mission driven. These organizations use different value-creation logic than business and industry (profit driven) organizations. In The Institute Way, mission-driven scorecard systems reflect the unique nature and value proposition of mission-driven organizations. Perspective nomenclature needs to reflect this difference. For example, governments are not in the business of making a profit, so a “financial” perspective can be a misleading way of identifying this perspective to stakeholders. “Financial stewardship” might be more appropriate, as stewardship connotes a message of wise use of (‘taxpayers’ or ‘funders’) money and fiduciary responsibility, rather than improved profitability and shareholder value. In military organizations, other government organizations and not-for-profits, terms like “resource effectiveness” or “budget effectiveness” are commonly used. For not-for-profits, financial stewardship imparts the concept of using resources cost-effectively, something donors and funders would no doubt like to see. The image below shows the high-level value-creation story through perspectives for mission-driven organizations.

How Perspectives Show a Value Creation Story in Mission-Driven Organizations

Likewise, for the customer/stakeholder perspective in the Nine Steps Methodology (as detailed in The Institute Way), words like client, member, solider and citizen are used because they emotionally tie the management system to the people or groups served by the programs and services of these mission-oriented organizations. For business and industry scorecards, the word “customers” is traditionally used to describe this perspective.

In The Institute Way, the placement of perspectives on government and not-for-profit scorecards is differentiated. Financial should not be the top perspective for a mission-driven organization’s scorecard because financial stewardship is not the end of the value chain for that type of organization—stakeholder satisfaction is the end of the value chain. For these organizations, the value chain ends not with improved business financial results (although that’s a good thing!) but with satisfied members, citizens or other stakeholders. Putting the financial (stewardship) perspective in the second position from the top is more appropriate, as stakeholder satisfaction is derived in large part by the delivery of programs and services that are cost-effective and are judged necessary and sufficient. One client used a hybrid scorecard matrix putting the financial and customer perspectives on the top row to reinforce that both financial success and customer experience were equally important results. The Nine Steps to Success™ framework is very flexible to accommodate modifications like these and still keep scorecarding principles intact.

Can I Change the Names of the Perspectives?

The perspective names can change to fit the culture of the organization, although the underlying focus typically does not. In other words, while a public sector organization might prefer the “Stewardship” label, the focus of the perspective should remain on financial performance. Choose labels that resonate with the organization’s strategy and clearly communicate internally and externally. For example, one organization might use “People and Tools” instead of “Organizational Capacity” (or “Learning and Growth”), and another might aptly describe this perspective as “People, Knowledge and Technology”.

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