Some 4,000 marketers registered for our live Storm-sponsored webinar, and many more of you have downloaded the webinar since. Below are answers from the panelists to a selection of the hundreds of questions you submitted, which we did not have time to address during the live presentation.
How can we measure and understand the effectiveness of each aspect of an integrated campaign?
Matt Saunders, managing director, Storm Creative
Make sure you split your ROI calculations across revenue, retention, awareness, enquiries, traffic, new customers attained, profit and overall revenue. Assigning a percentage score against all of these areas will mean a balanced and meaningful ROI figure. You can then carry out this exercise per channel and analyse, which is most effective, based on your ROI formula.
How do you integrate mobile apps into your marketing mix without the activity being perceived by customers as an interruption in their personal sphere?
Matt Saunders, managing director, Storm Creative
As long as the application has a benefit to the customer then they will perceive that you're being helpful rather than necessarily intrusive. More and more people are using their phones as a business tool to make life easy on the move; you can create a real differentiator to your customers by cutting across this channel.
Which tools and methods can be used to instill a consistent brand across the organisation's staff?
Katy Stas, head of communication, Osborne
One of the biggest challenges for us as an organisation was that we were working in silos and in very different market sectors. Our primary objective was to create one brand style that delivered flexibility to each of the seven market sectors and the three different audience groups.
Our agency helped us to set up a workshop with stakeholders across the business. Having buy-in from stakeholders early on helped us with the decision making process throughout.
From the outputs of the workshop we were able to create a brief to produce a brand style document with brand guidelines.
To instill a consistent brand across the organisation we produced a creative toolkit and a suite of templates that could be populated internally. The process meant we successfully pushed the brand out internally using brand champions (workshop attendees); locked the key elements of the brand in place; created a consistent look and feel across market sectors and audience groups.
How can small businesses and charities that can't afford agency fees incorporate creativity into their integrated marketing strategy?
Matt Saunders, managing director, Storm Creative
While we appreciate that the SME market has tighter marketing budgets, it's still important to think creatively at your strategy and planning phase. You could consider involving an agency within your planning phase and then rolling the plan out internally.
What is your advice for B2B marketers? Are B2B and not-for-profit marketers mostly limited to offline activity, or is social media awareness rising – and is it measurable?
Suzanne Dobson, chief executive, Tourettes Action
Sounds really odd to say it really depends what you want to do. Your business contacts are of course also consumers both in real life and in business. So many of the same ploys will work and I guess be measurable in the same way; how many have you sold, how many responses did you have, how many entries etc and of course with today's measuring tools you can find out what site they came from (did you advertise there, or was it word of mouth), how long they stayed on your site what was the route through your site, all of which would inform your budget, spend and ROI.
In many ways it is the not for profit area that is more complex to measure. Fairly straight forward if want to know how many donated, signed your petition etc and less to track what they are interested in. And even more so if you are wanting to alter heart and minds or to raise awareness of a particular issue. You will never know if you have sparked off a fierce debate or a life changing decision except for people telling you, you have.
We have found that print information is better received than on line – people like to have something to hold on to; to show their families and perhaps their health professional. It gets passed around, like the newspaper in the staff room loads of people read it. Because we are so plugged in at work and probably at home we forget that many people do not have fast internet at home, aren't allowed to use work's and certainly can't afford the colour printer plus it tells them we value them enough to post something – the flip side is if its too glossy.
How do you balance the wish for an integrated, consistent campaign with the advantages of tailoring messages to the varied audiences reached via different platforms? Will customers feel bombarded by an integrated approach?
Matt Saunders, managing director, Storm Creative
An integrated campaign should also be tailored; it isn't about substituting one for the other. It is no longer enough just to broadcast a message through a direct mail campaign we need to listen and more importantly react to our customers needs. Writing a communication plan that maps out activity over 12 to 18 months avoids bombarding customers, instead each piece of communication is relevant and can add value to the customer journey. An integrated campaign isn't just about delivering the same message across different platforms, it is about identifying which medium is the best for what is does and using each medium to create synergies that increase overall response.
Were the panelists prepared for some negativity from parts of the public when they embarked on a social media strategy – can social media rage out of control? What are your tips for managing the responsibility for updating and monitoring social media?
Matt Saunders, managing director, Storm Creative
Yes, social media can rage out of control. I recommend a social media strategy is integrated into your overall communications plan, which reflects your company's values and personality.
A successful social media strategy results in your message growing organically and creates brand advocates. Try appointing a brand champion to take responsibly for the site and also, for larger companies, to look at the software available that automatically flags damaging comments that are posted. It is important not to remove the openness of the platform but stay in control of managing it.
A more secure alternative is to build a forum, which has many benefits, especially for charities and companies dealing with highly sensitive content. A forum works in the same way as Facebook, but can be monitored more closely, giving tighter control.
Suzanne Dobson, chief executive, Tourettes Action
It wasn't the negativity from using social media that was our problem it was trying to keep some kind of handle on it. It was for this reason we decided to build our own forum instead of using Facebook, A company might be upset if someone says something they don't like about their product and if its really bad take the person to court but when you have vulnerable people using the sites then we have a duty of care to the people we are set up to help and you either need a large technical department to be monitoring, tweaking assisting or you need to have complete control over it and we chose that route.
We still monitor the forum every day all day and whenever we are near a computer in the evening we have a quick look to see all is well. We also ask our users to monitor it for us; either raising our attention or indeed telling people to stop spoiling their space. We have devised a form of words which we have asked people to use when they find something which offends them about ignorance over TS and they leave that as message on the site, no direct confrontation and it will hopefully make other visitors think about what they are reading.
Many live webinar attendees asked for more details on particular aspects of the presentations. For further information on any of the following topics, please get in touch: matt.saunders@stormcp.co.uk
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