One thing that shouldn’t be at the top of that list is latching onto every digital craze that some guru touts as the next big thing in capturing your audience—and sales—online. “Brands will be championed by marketing visionaries who advance “interactive” marketing to a new level — where a fusion of tactics powers a new era in brand building,” says Jill Adams, Principal/CEO at Adams-Knight, a premier advertising agency based in Connecticut.
Fusion marketing strategies can encompass many things, but at its foundation is the creation of organic, seamless connections and power partnerships. Fusion marketing is relevant for both B2B and B2C marketing strategies. It involves identifying and implementing the right combination of elements (digital and traditional) to generate the best possible campaign results. From online touchpoints and Web analytics to print coupons and advertorials, there’s no one-size-fits-all formula. But, it may help to keep a few things in mind when brainstorming your brands fusion strategy:
Think Beyond Singular Transactions
So many marketers are still thinking about one-shot engagement points with customers, Adams writes in a recent blog post. Today, a print ad or email newsletter can drive people to a website, to a social media channel, to a “buy now” button. Fusion marketing strategists will “analyze each medium’s specific strengths and synthesize how they can best work together to turn emotion into motion.”
Make it Personal for the Brand
Engagement with consumers and customers is becoming more deeply personalized across digital platforms. Personalization goes far beyond analysis of customer “likes” and “follows” and even beyond what consumers “click on” and when they click (e.g., time of day). Marketers need to provide relevant and authentic interactions and they need to track real-time insights about customer behavior. For example, how customers react to news, special offers, promotional prompts, social commentary, and of course, personalized messages from the brand to their inbox or social profile.
They Might Know of You, But Do They Trust You?
A catchy-tune, a controversial graphic in a campaign, a great tie-in with an advertising partner—these are all relatively fleeting experiences with customers. After all, how many Super Bowl commercials can you really remember and can you remember the product marketed?
Attracting consumer attention is relatively easy compared to building awareness and gaining trust for your brand. A case study presented by Portland based NEMO-HQ demonstrates that brands have to stand for something—or they are branding for nothing. Brands need to give consumers a reason to care about what they have to offer because, for most products or services, “an audience isn’t [just] buying a product, they’re buying into the idea of what your brand stands for, and how it reflects their own values.”
Resources
- "Stop Chasing Digital Crazes," Jill Adams, AdamsKnight.com
- “How Millennials are Changing Marketing Forever,” BCG.perspectives.com. The Boston Consulting Group
- “Millennials: The New Age of Brand Loyalty; A Snapshot of Millennials and their Views on Brand Loyalty,” AdroitDigital.com (PDF)
