360 Degree Marketing.

360 Degree Marketing Strategy

Most people have heard of 360 degree marketing in passing yet do not fully understand this unique approach to converting prospects into paying customers. In short, 360 degree marketing is centered on acquiring new customers with the use of a truly cohesive approach.

This is an integrated marketing campaign with a concentrated message presented across several points of contact. The artful placement of your company’s message uniquely tailored to your target audience reinforces the overarching message, helping you make headway in your quest to convert prospects into paying clients across a wide array of channels.

The best 360 degree marketing campaigns are data-driven. There is no sense attempting to get your message, brand and logo out there in unison without a guiding strategy. Rather, the aim is to create the impression on prospective and current customers that your brand is ubiquitous. This means pinpointing the channels that will be highlighted in your 360 degree marketing campaign is of the utmost importance.

Crunch the numbers to determine where current and prospective customers engage with your company. Between YouTube, Facebook, email, search engines and traditional marketing avenues, there are all sorts of different channels to analyze.

The Types of 360 Degree Marketing

Email marketing is a commonly neglected yet uber-important 360 degree marketing channel. Email marketing spreads the word about your company’s value offering, specials, sales, new products/services and announcements related to the company.

The best part of email marketing is it transmits messages to those who have a genuine interest in your business’s unique value proposition as they proactively signed up to receive your messages.

Social Media

Social media is an essential platform for connecting with target customers. Nowadays, social media is used as much for sharing pictures as it is for connecting customers and businesses. Take full advantage of social media and your business will directly contact target clients and also re-engage current clients.

Ideally, your social media posts will go viral or at least be shared by some of your followers, helping to spread the word about your value offering to that many more social media users.

PPC

PPC is an acronym short for pay-per-click. This component of 360 degree advertising is centered on paying for each click of the ad, typically presented in the form of a banner on search engines or other websites.

In other words, you pay for PPC based on the level of interest the ad generates. Zero in on the best keywords for your unique industry and product/service and your PPC ad campaign will prove worth the money.

Search Engine Optimizer

Search Engines Optimizer or SEO for short, has quickly become one of the most effective components of 360 degree marketing. This inbound marketing strategy makes it that much easier for your website to generate traffic.

The aim of SEO is to enhance your site’s visibility and steer visitors to a component of your online footprint. Keywords, key phrases and local identifiers are the primary components of SEO.

Content Marketing Campaignn

Content is no longer centered on entertaining or informing the audience. Rather, content has transformed into an important covert inbound marketing avenue. The addition of content to your blog, website, social media and other components of your online footprint will heighten brand awareness, steer online traffic in your direction and help you acquire that many more customers.

Offline or Traditional Marketing

Don’t forget about offline marketing! Traditional marketing away from the internet is a key component of 360 degree marketing. Interpersonal interactions between your team and prospective clients are still important. Door-to-door sales, meet-and-greets, billboard ads, commercials on TV, pamphlets and simply handing out business cards is the metaphorical icing on the digital marketing cake.

Planning & executing a 360 campaign

It is a mistake to immediately jump into a 360 degree marketing campaign, attempting to connect with customers through each of the channels noted above. Instead, sit down and take some time to plan your 360 degree marketing campaign. Think about the best channels for connecting with your customers.

A truly comprehensive plan will help your business connect with customers at several points of contact as time progresses. Write out a plan, be disciplined by sticking to that plan and execute it exactly as envisioned. Be patient, let the results take shape and you will find your 360 degree marketing campaign was well worth the effort.

How a 360 Campaign Helps Your Business Grow

Every business is looking to grow. A 360 degree marketing campaign is the best way to facilitate such growth. This comprehensive approach to connecting with new customers touches base with prospects through numerous channels, essentially ensuring your marketing team casts a wide net, albeit in a strategic manner.

After all, those who use social media might not spend much time reading blogs, conducted searches on Google or reading other forms of online content. The key is to connect with each unique type of customer on their preferred channel through a truly comprehensive 360 degree marketing campaign.

However, plenty of businesses have failed to recognize the merits of 360 degree marketing. Gartner Research reports less than 10% of businesses have implemented a 360 degree marketing campaign, meaning these companies don’t view their customers as diverse and unique individuals who use a wide variety of platforms.

Furthermore, Gartner Research also found merely 5% of businesses use 360 degree marketing campaigns
in a truly data-driven and effective manner. In short, these businesses are missing out on an opportunity for growth.

If you own or manage a small business and find it is difficult to track your customers’ buying journeys, understand your customers or pinpoint the specific channels where these targeted individuals tend to congregate, resist the temptation to make assumptions and put all of your metaphorical marketing eggs in a single basket or two.

Instead, opt for 360 degree marketing. This approach to marketing essentially provides your team with a birds-eye view, helping you understand your customers all the more. This understanding ultimately fuels your company’s growth.

Adopt a 360 degree view of your customers, collect and analyze data pertaining to their preferred platforms for digital interactions, social media behavior, purchases, and so on. Get to know your customers, connect with them through numerous channels and roll out your 360 degree marketing plan in a truly calculated manner.

The overarching message of this article is not that the only way to grow your business is to have a strong presence on every single digital platform. Rather, the aim is to make your target audience feel as though your business is present at all avenues and truly worthy of their hard-earned money.