Channel Planning

May 9, 2022Leave a comment

Effective marketing considers both channels and communication techniques needed to enable customer acquisition for particular service or product categories. Each channel has its weaknesses and strengths, costs and benefits, limits and freedoms, and must be scrutinized carefully to understand how it will or won’t improve the campaign strategy. Therefore, let’s discuss how to determine which digital and traditional channels to use for your campaign.

Target audience measurement

First, measure where the potential audience is spending their time. Determine who you want to target; for instance, are you targeting an older demographic that primarily uses TV, email, Facebook, and radio – or are you targeting Gen Z, who are heavy users of TikTok, CTV and new digital media platforms. Use top content creators and brands in your vertical and analyze their audience engagement across several channels. Meaningful metrics to use include content engagement, audience size, video views, and mobile app usage.

Allocate marketing budget across multiple channels

Establish an overall budget for the campaign and then divide the budget amongst targeted channels. Understand that doubling the campaign budget of a high-performing channel may not proportionally increase performance. Therefore, never rapidly invest a massive amount of money in campaigns. Instead, consider running more ads, targeting new markets, or more keywords to determine which channels are getting more results in terms of reach, impressions, views, and conversions.

Determine how to schedule the campaigns across multiple channels

A campaign schedule will help keep you organized; however, there’s no one-size-fits-all perfect schedule. The ideal timing and frequency of the campaign across multiple channels will depend on your targeted industry and audience, among other things. Moreover, some channels can be active during the campaign’s life, while others will provide a better lift by overlapping during specific moments in the campaign. For longer campaigns, this is more difficult as you must adequately plan the budget for the campaign’s duration. For example, a campaign that will be active for 3 months may not necessarily have all paid channels running during the entire duration to be cost-effective. Therefore, campaign scheduling is essential to enhance your chances of achieving goals.

Track campaign channel utilization

If you’re not using a campaign management platform, create a spreadsheet to document which channels have been utilized for campaigns. Use spreadsheets for items like content and financials. For example, you can track ad spend, budgets and ROAS (return on ad spend). Spreadsheets can also be used to manage campaigns, ad effectiveness, social media posts, blog calendars, web traffic, SEO, and many other metrics.

Gather learnings for creating your next channel plan

Do some in-depth market research to find which platforms your audience is using more in that timespan and mold your campaigns and content to their expectations. Then, you need to constantly track the results to determine how well the campaigns and channels are performing and what tweaks should be done. Essentially, channel planning is all about delivering what the customers need and where and when they need it – vital knowledge that’s driven by data.

Conclusion

By integrating digital and traditional marketing channels, you can attract a potential audience in their preferred way; furnish and motivate sales and marketing teams, and maximize your chances of achieving your desired business goals.

How NBA Team Memphis Grizzlies Uses Walls.io

August 3, 2019August 3, 2019Leave a comment

“We Wanted a More Aesthetic View of Our Social Media Posts Across Our Brands”

by Andie Katschthaler April 18, 2019 4 min read

Many of our customers are loyally returning to Walls.io for all of their events, setting up social walls on big screens for their audience. Others have an ongoing social wall for their brand and embed it on the brand website.

But once in a while, we have one of those customers who really make full use of their Walls.io accounts, running multiple walls, embedding them, showing them off at events and generally putting lots of work into the presentation.

We’re very happy to count the NBA team Memphis Grizzlies among that type of customer. The Grizzlies switched to Walls.io from a competitor and have since set up multiple social media walls, all to an impeccable standard. They’ve fully integrated social walls with their online marketing strategy.

Use case: Multiple social walls across various properties to enhance brand experience
Website: Grizzlies.com, GrizzGaming, Memphis Hustle, FedExForum
Campaign duration: ongoing
Channels connected: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest

Social wall design follows website design

The walls are being used to showcase social content on various websites the Grizzlies are running. The content of each wall is adapted to the website it’s embedded on, and all social walls are styled to fit the look of the site as well.

Here we have two different social walls; one is embedded on Grizzlies.com, the other one on FedExForum.com. The two walls are styled completely differently, each one adapted to fit the website it’s embedded on.

Screenshot of Grizzlies.com website with the social wall embedded. The wall is styled to blend in with the website’s design and colours. — The social wall on Grizzlies.com.

Screenshot of FedExForum.com website with the social wall embedded. The wall is styled in to blend in with the website’s design and colours, for example by using tile colours in the three FedExForum colours blue, orange and purple. — The social wall on FedExForum.com.

We’ve been told that, In due time, a social wall will likely also be shown on a big screen at the Grizzlies arena. That is one way to use Walls.io that obviously excites us a lot and we hope to soon be able to tell you more about this project.

We wanted to know what drew the Grizzlies to Walls.io and how social walls are working out for them. Rolanda Gregory, Vice President of Marketing, told us about how her department is using social walls and shared some plans for the future.

Why did you start using a social wall and what do you hope to achieve with it?

We started using a social wall because we wanted a more aesthetic view of our social media posts across all of our brand website properties. We wanted the social walls to have a natural flow with our other website content instead of having it feel like an afterthought.

We’ve found that it’s a great way to pull in content from our various social media platforms. For our websites, the walls provide fresh, timely and relevant information that our fans find important. We are also able to post promotions and ads within the social wall content.

Walls.io TIP: With Walls.io, you can create custom content like ads, for example, and upload it directly to your social wall as sponsored posts.

How did you find the process of setting up the social walls and integrating them on the websites?

It was actually quite simple. Our Marketing Technology team, led by Albert Hughes, was able to transition from our previous solution to Walls.io very quickly. The social walls also allowed for better branding and configuration of the layouts. The ability to be able to use an embed or iFrame provided greater flexibility for our websites.

How are people reacting to the use of the social walls?

The feedback has been great as the layout of the content looks much better and is easier to read.

Walls.io TIP: Like the Grizzlies, you can use Walls.io’s extensive customisation features to make your social wall look just the way you need it, whether you’re embedding it on a website or showing it off on a big screen.

What other plans do you have for your social walls in the future?

We are currently working on plans to use social walls in-arena for events and campaigns. Meaning that for a specific game or event, we will display a large social wall in-arena and run a hashtag campaign to engage with event attendees.

Due to our satisfaction, we are also looking to extend social walls for our GrindCityMedia.com personalities, as well as integration into our mobile app.

Use social walls to keep innovating

How one NBA team uses social walls shows us how important it is for brands to keep innovating and how social tools like Walls.io can help with that. Social walls are a creative and dynamic tool, so keep changing it up and finding new ways to use them to implement your marketing strategy.

The Grizzlies’ plans to show a social wall in their arena is a fantastic example of that. A big wall where matches take place will let fans engage with the Grizzlies and each other at the most important point of contact. Similarly, the plans to integrate a wall into the mobile app will create another point of interaction between brand and fans, deepening the connection and brand loyalty.

A diverse group of Grizzlies fans are posing for a picture. They are dressed in t-shirts that feature the team mascot Grizz (a blue bear) and say “Memphis Grizzlies”. — Fans love finding new ways to engage with the Memphis Grizzlies, whether it’s online or offline.

Don’t be afraid to experiment

Brands with a diverse portfolio can use social walls for different websites, purposes, etc. It’s fairly easy to design and adapt each wall for its use. And you remain flexible — show a social wall on a big screen or embed it on your website. With Walls.io, you have many options.

Don’t be afraid to use social walls in many different ways. Sometimes you’ll want the social wall embedded in full width on your website, other times a sidebar widget is all you need.

Screenshot of the MemphisHustle.com website. The left two thirds of the page are covered with news articles, the right hand third is taken up by the social media wall in a sidebar. The width allows for posts to show underneath each other in a scrollable column. — Here we see the social wall on the Grizzlies’ MemphisHustle website incorporated prominently in a sidebar on the right. Social walls in sidebars are fully functional, of course, they’re just narrower.

Time to set up an awesome social wall for your own brand

Play around with the customisation options to see what you can do

Create a free social wall now!

Remember, if something doesn’t work for you, you can always change it back or try something different. Adapting your social walls is easy and fast with Walls.io.

Yahoo! Account Breach!

December 14, 2016December 14, 2016Leave a comment

It’s just been announced that Yahoo! experienced a data breach that caused more than 1 billion accounts to be compromised. Hopefully everyone knows not to store or transmit sensitive information on ‘public’ email systems, meaning email providers that give you a ‘free’ account as they’re often the target of hackers. Also your emails are searched for marketing and sales opportunities. In any regards, if you have a Yahoo! account, keep a lookout for suspicious activity – and consider moving on to a different platform.

Omni-Channel Campaigns…Connecting the Dots

May 16, 2016May 16, 2016Leave a comment

When launching a new service, product or startup, it’s important to do so from an integrated and connected perspective. Marketing campaigns should be planned strategically across all available marketing channels. If a particular channel isn’t utilized it’s important to understand and notate why.

Creating awareness and buzz is best done in concerted partnership across multiple marketing channels, leveraging the audience and strengths available in each channel. Omni-channel marketing ensures that you’ve covered all the bases.

Once the purpose, theme, budget and schedule are determined, drilling down to analyze each marketing channel is necessary. Campaigns aren’t one size fits all, so a strategic play on how to utilize digital, traditional and out-of-home, as well how as how key tools such as targeting and segmentation impacts your messaging are important. How you communicate on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, can be decidedly different from Email Marketing, Radio, Banner Ads, Direct Mail, PPC or DRTV so it’s necessary to create customized copy for each channel that ladders up to your overall campaign theme and message.

Measurement is crucial in understanding what roles marketing channels play in the performance of your campaign. Implementing multi-channel attribution tools can assist in this area. While you may not see a direct conversion from some channels, knowing which channels are introducers and influencers are just as critical as knowing which ones are closers.

When launching marketing campaigns, do not do so in separation. Leveraging at least multi if not omni channels will yield better performance. I have witnessed organizations that launch campaigns in isolation – with different teams being responsible. The email team is launching a totally different campaign and message than the social team, etc. with no integration or coordination from the top. Creating an editorial and acquisition marketing calendar will help coordinate the efforts of multiple teams, and ensure everyone is on-message.

On your next campaign, utilize omni-channel marketing to engage consumers on their turf and to see a lift in performance.

Building Your Social Media Strategy

April 9, 2016April 9, 20161 Comment

As an organization focused on either B2C or B2B, it’s important to determine what your Social Media strategy should be.

While we all know it’s important for businesses to be on social media, it’s equally vital to first understand what you’re trying to solve for. Do you have a need to respond to customer issues and complaints, promote new product or service offerings, conduct polls and surveys to obtain data, build a community, etc?

Once it’s determined what you’re trying to solve for. It becomes easier to build the strategy and tactics to execute on each objective.

While social media marketing might mean something different to you, here are some of the tasks and goals that may be beneficial.

Determine which social media sites/apps are best suited for your business.
While paid social can help spread the news of your brand and/or promotion, count on organic as your long-term approach.
Define your communications calendar and determine your communications cadence.
Post consistently.
Listen across all social media and communications platforms to understand impacts to your brand and business.
Respond rapidly, but diplomatically to any negative content and posts. Remember the spotlight is on you.
Sometimes intervention is needed. Ensure you have a mechanism for determining when a post/comment deserves a more ‘intimate’ response away from all the public eyes on social media.
Engage consumers when they post positive feedback about your product or service. This allows you to build a relationship with them.
Review your performance and optimize your creative, messaging, campaigns, etc.
Use targeting to ensure your message meets the appropriate audience.
Evaluate the numerous social technology tools that are available so that you can adequately build your social infrastructure.

Building a social media strategy takes a lot of reflection and knowledge. Managing the day-to-day communications and engagement takes a lot of proactive work. Ensure that you understand your organization’s limitations and strengths when it comes to planning and executing on social. During the initial stages, it may be wise to enlist the expertise of a social media agency to steer you in the right direction.

Social media marketing can work for any organization if the right strategy is in place.

Invest/Maintain/Kill

January 28, 2016January 28, 2016Leave a comment

Invest/Maintain/Kill: These are words to live by for any organization.

Today, we’re starting to learn about the impact of Yahoo’s Invest/Maintain/Kill List. While it may initially sound threatening, cold or insensitive, it is a strategy that all organizations should utilize. And use often.

As an organization, it’s important to constantly evaluate, measure and plan for the future as it relates to your core competencies, technological advantages, people, strategic partnerships, and any other competitive advantages. Having a strong indication of which of these items should be further invested into, maintained as the status quo, or subtly decommissioned or killed is key. It helps to keep your organization nimble and focused on its most critical objectives and goals, while keeping aboard the talent and people who will best contribute to reaching those objectives.

I applaud Yahoo! for taking these necessary and crucial steps.

Learn more about the changes at Yahoo! on re/code.

Twitter Departures

January 24, 2016January 24, 2016Leave a comment

Major changes in leadership at Twitter indicates that the company has major challenges with its business model. Trying to stay relevant to its target demographic and competitive with other Social Media platforms is a huge undertaking. Let’s just hope for Twitter’s sake that its users don’t depart as quickly as its top brass.

How Social Unrest Impacts Social Media

January 20, 2016January 20, 2016Leave a comment

Good stuff from Wael Ghonim about the use of social media for obtaining social and political justice.

Damage Control – What to Do When a Social Media Problem Occurs

January 3, 2016January 4, 2016Leave a comment

You’ve probably heard of Applebee’s blunder on social media. A pastor wrote on a receipt that he shouldn’t have to give an Applebee’s waitress 18 percent when he only gives God 10 percent. An image ended up going viral that led to Applebee’s social media representative writing a defensive comment in reply to it. Applebee’s followers fired back with 10,000 negative comments. The company was then accused of deleting those comments and blocking users, which can be viewed unfavorably by social media users.

This situation is frightening, but it’s preventable. People online will express their opinions, but it’s how you react to them that matters. It’s never a good idea to reply defensively to negative comments. Handle situations like this one professionally by always staying positive and providing the best customer service.

Oversharing Online – How much is too much?

January 3, 2016January 4, 2016Leave a comment

Have you ever had a conversation with someone or even a group of people, and later thought – you know, I wish I hadn’t told them that.

Well, that same experience happens with social media. While it’s normal to want to share details of your life with others, it’s important to actively remind yourself to filter your thoughts and words. If not, you can potentially overshare information with others, which could lead to dire consequences.

This is especially true if you’re utilizing a social media website such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, etc.

With our ‘always on’ and real-time technology world, a misspoken word or thought, can cause irreparable damage to you and others.

Before posting any information online, whether it be an image, video, tweet, posting or comment – pause and ask yourself:

Can this be traced back to me? If so, it’ll be hard to deny any allegations.
If my employer, government agency, professional associations, etc. see the post, image or video, would it cause embarrassment or issues? Remember that some employers and organizations have moral clauses in their contract agreements and by-laws.
Am I revealing information that may be proprietary or subject to a non-disclosure? The legal issues can be tough to overcome if you’ve publicly violated a legal agreement.
Did someone tell me this in confidence, and if so, would they be offended to see it posted online? This is especially important with friends and family, be careful not to share information on their behalf – especially without their prior consent. If there’s any doubt or uneasiness about what you’re posting or sending, simply don’t do it. In this case, the old adage applies, it’s better to be safe than sorry.
And ultimately, could this post hit me in the pocketbook and cause financial repercussions? If so, the answer is apparent, steer clear from posting the content.

While I’ve mostly focused on content published on social media websites, the same advice applies to emails and text messages. Be careful of what you email and text to others, after you hit send, you have no control as to how the information will be handled. It can be forwarded to others, posted on unsavory sites, manipulated, and many other unfathomable actions.

While social media definitely has its place in today’s society, we should remind ourselves that some aspects of our lives should remain behind closed doors.

Marketing Across Multiple Social Media Platforms

January 3, 2016January 4, 20161 Comment

Social media is one of the most affordable and effective methods of marketing available today. Zappos, Ford Motor Company, and Burger King are just some of the many companies that use it. What’s great about social media is that you don’t have to be the owner of a huge company to use it. No matter the type or size of the business you own, you can use social media to market it. Before you jump in though, it’s important to understand how to use social networks effectively.

Challenges of Social Media Marketing

Business owners often complain that posting on multiple social media networks is too time consuming and it doesn’t have a high return on investment. While many people experience this, it’s usually because they are not doing it in the right way. If you know how to save time and make social media marketing effective, it will keep you from dealing with the same challenges.

How to Save Time

You don’t have to be strapped to a computer to post an update on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, or Google+. You can schedule posts to go out at certain times of the day on all the social networks you are using to market your business. This way you can go about your day without having to worry about providing your audience the information they look for from you.

Facebook allows you to schedule your posts on their platform. For Twitter and Google+, you will have to use a social media marketing tool such as Buffer or Hootsuite. These programs will publish posts for you at times it believes your audience is most likely to use the social networks you specify, or you can select the timing for the posts yourself. For sites such as YouTube and Instagram, you will need to post them immediately, but the good news is you don’t have to post multiple times a day on those sites to be effective.

Making Social Media Worth It

Social media marketing builds your business’ brand. When you present your business name and logo repeatedly with posts, people start to remember them. As you post valuable information to your followers, people will start to appreciate you. They will share your posts and recommend them to others. Those people follow you and the cycle starts all over again. Many people will notice who is posting such great content and click on the link to the poster’s website. This is how a business increases its visibility online.

This all doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time to build a following across multiple platforms because you have to test out different posts to find out what your audience likes the best. Some people love to watch videos, while others just like images or text-based posts. You also need to learn what time of the day your audience is online. A post may receive more attention in the afternoon when people are taking a break at work, or later in the evening after they’ve had dinner. The only way to figure it all out is to test it, which takes time, but it’s worth it when you find the times and the types of posts that receive the most attention.

Making Digital Marketing Less Overwhelming

Many companies such as Amazon, Red Bull, Visa, and McDonald’s have used social media to successfully market their products and services, but they have a team behind them handling it all. This team posts for them, handles comments, and works on increasing online visibility. Small business owners can do the same thing by hiring just one social media manager. This person can be in charge of your business’ reputation management by following what people are saying about your business, responding in a positive way, and giving social media users the information they want to read and share with others.

Social media marketing is what small businesses are using right now because it’s low cost and effective. Get started today simply by setting up an account on a social media network such as Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Google+, Pinterest, or Facebook Pages. Before you know it, you’ll be increasing your brand awareness and bringing in new customers. That’s the glory of social media marketing.