Integrate search across channels
Noah Elkin
VP of corporate strategy, Steak
In an increasingly fragmented and competitive marketplace, it's more important than ever to plan your marketing programs to be integrated and consistent. So how do you make sure you get the most out of each channel?
The first step is analyzing how your business functions across a multi-channel environment. Don't look at channels in a vacuum. Instead, concentrate on the customer journey as a whole and examine where different touch points intersect, paying close attention to offline-to-online transitions. Remember that search plays a key role in this dynamic as the first place consumers go when coming from an offline channel.
Take a deep dive into the demographics, psychographics and behavior patterns of your customers. Understand how they act at each stage of the journey, what needs your campaign addresses at each stage and what factors influence a particular action and use of a particular channel. Search often functions as the starting point for offline-to-online conversions, so use deep-dive keyword research to help determine consumer intent and potential conversion paths. Consider paid search as a platform for conducting A/B message testing. Apply the results of that testing to your other channel marketing copy and test it repeatedly.
Once you have a good sense of who your customers are and how they behave, develop and optimize content to meet their differing needs. This includes everything from keyword identification and expansion, optimization of digital media (images, video, news, etc.), content network selection (site targeting and ad network optimization), social marketing and coordination of activities between online strategies and offline placements.
Finally, implement a robust analytics program to track how your campaign is working, which channels produce the highest ROI and what steps you need to take to further optimize the campaign. Make sure all channels benefit from these insights.
THE TAKEAWAY
Search is the pivot point between your offline and online messaging
