How Online Marketing Strategy to Target Group Potential

Many online marketing campaigns are aimed only at the quick lead or sell off - and thus give away growth potential. In this article, I'll explain how you can build a holistic online marketing strategy and unlock the full potential of your campaigns. The basis is the SEE-THINK-DO-CARE model.  

If you've been following our blog for some time, you've probably already stumbled upon the SEE-THINK-DO-CARE framework (short: STDC model). It is a framework we like to work with, as it focuses on the user and promotes interaction between the marketing channels (anti-silo thinking!) And thus provides the basis for a successful online marketing campaign. Strategy delivers.

Many online marketing campaigns focus only on the lower part of the fun of the customer journey. They thus reach the users who are already ready to buy and "ignore" all potential customers who are not actively thinking about making a purchase - here is the unused potential.

The group of users who want to buy now is relatively small. On the other hand, looking at the group of users who qualify as customers holds great growth potential. Our goal should be to get into the "relevant set" of these users. When we achieve this, these users think of our product when they are ready to buy. But how do we make it into the "relevant set" of users? And how can we best accompany users on their customer journey? The SEE-THINK-DO-CARE model helps here.

Before we look at the model in detail, we will briefly talk about the basics.

Create foundations:

Before you think about the right channels, campaign types or messages, you need the basics: the status quo, the product, the target audience (personas can be very helpful) and the competition (small recommendation: Laura explains in detail in her article, how you can conduct a competitive analysis using the SEE-THINK-DO-CARE model).

Goals - Online Marketing Measurement Model:

Of course, the goals must not be missing. What are the marketing goals? And are these goals SMART (specific, measurable, executable, realistic and timed) chosen?

As a template for your goal definition, you can use the online marketing measurement model. If you want to know more about it, I've introduced the model here: Online marketing measurement model for successful campaigns. The model was also developed and fits well with the STDC model.

Web analysis - clean tracking:

To analyze the customer journey and to measure the success of the measures, you need well-founded figures, and you get them with a clean tracking setup. All project participants must agree on a common database. The channels must not be considered independently of each other, but in interaction. Means: The data of all channels (Google Search, Bing Search, Facebook Ads, Retargeting via Criteo, etc.) flow into a reporting - as a "collection point" for this data can be used, for example, Google Analytics . So you can look at all the channels at a glance and see how much each channel contributed to the campaign's success.

Attribution - who is involved in the success?

Far too often, the success of online marketing channels is still rated on the basis of the last click. The last channel right before conversion completion gets 100% of the success attributed. The channels work much more like a football team: The team prepares and one shoots the gate. Nevertheless, everyone is involved in the success. The important thing is: Away from the "Last Click" attribution model.

Ideally, you can use a data-driven model. If you do not have enough data, you could choose the "time history" or "position-based" model.

If attribution is new territory for you, Sina's article gives you a little introduction: Google Attribution: The Future of Attribution?

The phases of the SEE-THINK-DO model

If your basics are, next list all the channels and measures that you are currently using (including the offline measures, such as TV, outdoor advertising, radio, etc.). Also pay attention to the use of the corporate design (logo, colors, wording, imagery) and which messages are conveyed.

Challenge:

The individual channels are often controlled by different people in companies or agencies - one only deals with social media campaigns, the other with search and display ads, then there is someone for search engine optimization and the expert for marketing automation. Not to mention, the team that looks after offline marketing, such as radio, billboards or TV commercials.

The challenge is to coordinate the measures in the individual channels. The following points can be helpful:

A large overview of all channels and measures that are in use (including offline measures and ideally assigned directly to the STDC phases).

Regular voting appointments in which content is discussed (which ads are used, which content is created, which messages and images do we use, what is the wording?). Thus, one can provide the user with a round overall picture of the brand.

A common roadmap visualizes which campaigns are active in which phase and what is planned.