Maxine-Laurie Marshall highlights five of the best examples of multichannel campaigns from this year’s B2B Awards
Multichannel marketing. Should that even be a ‘thing’ anymore? It’s agreed that all good marketing is multichannel. The word has even been upgraded to ‘omnichannel’ over the last couple of years. So we get that it’s not going to benefit anyone by sticking to silos. But what does a great multichannel campaign look like?
As this year’s B2B Awards winners have just been announced, I’ve highlighted five of the best award-winning multichannel campaigns so you can learn from industry best practice:
1. ‘Secure thinking’ for Fujitsu UK&I by Harvard, DirectionGroup and Coterie Marketing
The campaign: Fujitsu wanted to raise the profile of its Enterprise and Cyber-Security business unit. Its target audience was not in one department. Fujitsu realised its audience for security products could be in IT, procurement or on the board, so it had to pick channels that would work together without causing too much overlap. The winning combination for the tech company was digital, face-to-face, and traditional PR and marketing.
Fujitsu found events and social fit together seamlessly. It organised a security social dinner in partnership with specialist security firm Websense to generate informal conversations about the industry. A downloadable insight paper was then created from the discussions, which was hosted online with videos and an infographic-style report. The new campaign webpages were designed to have a greater visual presence and social was used to distribute the campaign content. To reach an even wider audience, PR efforts concentrated on gaining coverage in UK national business and trade press.
As a direct result of the campaign, Fujitsu now sits at seventh place in the top 10 UK security vendors. It’s also seen a 90 per cent increase in orders.
Why it worked: Digital, face-to-face and traditional has to be the most potent mix of channels. Fujitsu was able to cater for several different audience preferences while maintaining a seamless conversation spanning almost all points of contact. The content repurposing, from turning conversations into downloadable and shareable pieces of content, is a lesson many B2B marketing departments still need to learn.
2. ‘Brother UK electrical label printer re-launch’ for Brother UK by gyro, Carat and City Press
The campaign: Sales of Brother’s electrician label printers were flat; it needed to reverse its underperformance and re-launch the range. Knowing its audience of electricians, Brother’s multichannel activity mainly centered around traditional channels. Activity included a DM pack sent to generate a conversation for sales people, radio and tabloid advertising, branch posters, flyers and attendance at key industry events with celebrity Billy Byrne (from DIY SOS).
Digital channels, however, weren’t ignored in the campaign. A new landing page was created and Brother’s reseller app was updated with enriched content. A lot of the content around the campaign centered on new wiring regulation. A sales training session on the regulation was also attended by marketing, which meant close alignment for both teams, with both involved in creating messaging for campaign assets.
The campaign aided a 304 per cent year-on-year uplift in revenue and saw a step-change in relationships with key channel partners.
Why it worked: Brother knew its audience and knew where to place its campaign messaging. It didn’t give in to pressure to use certain channels just for the sake of it. Its mix of multiple traditional channels led to consistent campaign messaging across the most widely used touchpoints for its audience. This campaign not only brought multiple channels together, it also encouraged two fractious departments to work in harmony.
3. ‘Let’s do business’ for Zipcar by ReallyB2B
The campaign: The car hire club wanted to grow its business arm in London, Bristol and Oxford. Its focus was on new client acquisition. Zipcar approached its multichannel campaign in a different way to the two previously mentioned: its campaign activity was all direct marketing and personalised. ‘Let’s do business’ began with plain text emails that were segmented by city, industry and decision maker type.
Direct mails were then sent so customers and prospects could see their working day if they were to use Zipcar in comparison to their usual travel arrangements. From here prospects were driven to a regionalised URL and encouraged to book an appointment to find out more. Telemarketing was then used to follow up. The campaign generated 338 sales-ready leads, 70 per cent of which converted to new clients.
Why it worked: This multichannel campaign stuck with the same classic marketing technique – direct mail – and really made it work. With the initial segmentation it meant Zipcar could lead its audiences on a journey and be in control of what they saw and when. Instead of hoping its audience would stumble upon its campaign message, each of the channels used ensured Zipcar could specify exactly who saw the campaign and when.
4. ‘DAVE product launch’ for Nuaire by Lesniak Swann
The campaign: Nuaire creates energy-efficient domestic, commercial and industrial ventilation solutions. Its campaign was designed to be pre-launch activity for its new DAVE range of fans. The new product had two main audiences: consulting and contracting engineers. As well as factoring in the preferences for the different types of engineers, Nuaire had to account for the preferences of older and younger engineers.
Each phase of the campaign included targeted emails, press and digital adverts, live events and give-aways. This mix ensured it appealed to the target audience: consultants and contractors, lovers of print and digital, and those motivated by product features and by installation benefits. The campaign saw a conversion rate of just over 12 per cent and saw an ROI of 1469 per cent in the first 12 weeks.
Why it worked: In a similar vein to Fujitsu, Nuaire’s customer base dictated the campaign had to be multichannel. Targeting its changing demographic, the campaign had to cover several channels to meet different audience expectations. It’s great to see customers becoming the driving force behind each campaign, rather than the marketing teams’ preferences.
5. ‘Intelligent operations programme’ for Genpact by The Marketing Practice
The campaign: Genpact transforms and runs business processes and operations. It was founded as a division of GE but has been an independent company since 2005. The business has a declared aim to double its revenue in five years. In order to achieve this, the company needed to generate a high-quality marketing-sourced sales pipeline.
Its multichannel programme was designed to take its thought leadership content and use it for nurturing purposes. Its agency, The Marketing Practice, set up a demand generation programme that included high-impact DM and personalised eDM, paid and organic social activity, hyper-targeted digital advertising and hosted discussion events. An inside sales team was also used to support progression through pipeline.
Why it worked: This multichannel campaign worked because it went a step further than using several channels to reach its audience. It tied all the channels together with a dedicated sales team put in place to ensure the user’s journey across each channel was smooth and connected.
Using multiple channels to engage your audience is one thing, but the main battle is ensuring those channels tie together to create a seamless journey. Each of these campaigns has achieved that in a different way. If you have enough assets, and budget, you can try to cover as many channels as possible. If you know your audience well enough you can position yourself on all the different channels you know they will use. If you want to maintain more control over what they see and when, you can segment your audience and send them your messaging in several different ways, or use a sales team to help guide them along the journey you’ve created for them.
Ultimately, there is no right way to approach multichannel marketing, but there are many ways you can make it a success. Learn from this year’s awards winners and read the case studies in more detail in the enclosed B2B Awards supplement.
