Creating a 360° marketing campaign

4 min read

There are so many different ways for you to connect with your customers that a detailed, planned approach is vital for standing out above the noise. And because those customers interact with different channels in very different ways, a generic copy-and-paste approach just won’t cut it: only coordination and variation between all your channels will set you up for the best possible results.

The term ‘360° marketing’ may be new to you, but it represents a major opportunity for you to turn interest into leads, and leads into conversions.

In this guide, we’ll take a look at how 360° marketing campaigns work, the five-step process for getting them right, and how technology can help you bring it all together with ease.

What is a 360° marketing campaign?

The simplest way to describe a 360° marketing campaign is that it covers every base, through a variety of different channels. Like a 360° degree circle, your marketing is comprehensive and targeted in all directions. They are integrated campaigns that have carefully crafted messaging placed across several different points of contact.

These points of contact can include (and are not necessarily limited to): email marketing, social media interaction (both organic and paid media), content marketing, and traditional marketing methods that reach a customer in person or even by post or phone. 

This might just sound like normal marketing practice, but where a 360° campaign differs is that the message is varied from channel to channel, depending on the audiences on each and how they typically interact. For example, a short and snappy tweet doesn’t really work in an email, so a longer, more detailed approach is required instead. 

Nevertheless, the overall message and intention remains the same across every channel: it’s the delivery of that messaging that is altered. This is where a 360° campaign differs from multi-channel marketing - not only does a 360° campaign make use of multiple channels, it keeps the customer experience consistent across all of them, for a fully immersive effect. 

How should you plan out a 360° marketing campaign?

A good 360° marketing campaign is well thought-out, data-driven and makes it easy to accurately measure success. That’s why we advocate this five-step process to getting these multichannel campaigns right every time:

1. Choose your channels

Start by giving plenty of consideration to the channels you want to use in your campaign: it’s highly unlikely that you’ll need or want to use all of the channels available to you. Picking the right channels will ensure the value of your marketing spend is maximised and that you get the most effective results. 

As well as the cost of each channel and your overall goals, you should also take into account the demographics of your target audience. For example, if you’re selling a product or service to a particularly young demographic, then your potential for success with posts on Facebook is limited as its users tend to be older nowadays.

2. Plan your impact measurement

With your channels selected, the next step is to define and quantify what a successful campaign would look like in detail. This should ultimately be a numbers game, of attempting to drive a certain number of page impressions, click-throughs or conversions, or could be a financial figure of how much is generated in sales on the back of the campaign.

As well as establishing these figures, you should also work out how you will collect that data. This is where technology can help in aggregating performance information, often in real-time, so you can gauge overall success in one place rather than having to check each platform in turn.

3. Design campaign actions

Now you can get to work crafting your content, and deciding where and when it will be sent out to your customers. Ideally, you should have a steady stream of messaging being posted on a regular basis, throughout whatever you decide the timeframe of your campaign to be.

At the same time, you also need to decide whether your campaign flow will be fixed or dynamic: that is to say, whether or not you’ll make changes during the campaign based on performance data. Taking a dynamic approach can help you make improvements where needed for better results, but requires quick responses and near-instant access to data.

4. Action the campaign

With everything ready to go, your 360° marketing campaign swings into life as your content starts to get posted and your performance metrics start to build.

You should keep a close eye on messaging that’s been posted, and on your performance metrics, throughout. This is to make sure everything is running as planned, and so you can quickly respond to any issues that arise; this applies whether you decide to run a campaign that is fixed or dynamic.

5. Quantify your success

Connected to the previous point, regularly checking your data can help not only in measuring overall success but also to see if you got your planning right to begin with. If your results are falling short in certain areas, then you may be able to pinpoint areas in your market research, channel selection or messaging strategy that weren’t quite right. Alternatively, it may be that your planning was right at the time, but that trends and sentiment within your target audience have changed, requiring you to shift your approach. 

Either way, detailed data from all your channels can guide the way and help you succeed with future campaigns just as much as a current one.

How Apteco software can help

Bringing all of the above together can be tricky, especially if it relies on lots of different processes and platforms that aren’t coordinated or integrated.

This is where Apteco can help: giving you a single platform from which you can build powerful 360° marketing campaigns quickly and efficiently. Integrations with all of your chosen channels mean you can design and build holistic campaigns that target the right customers, with the right messaging, on the right channels, at the right time. In-built reporting and tracking, along with automated intelligence that delivers extra insights, makes it as easy and intuitive as possible to measure performance and benchmark against your targets.

Take a more detailed look at how Apteco software can support your 360° marketing initiatives here.