Choosing the right channels for online marketing

Great article by Ron Person, director of analytics for Sitecore, about cross-channel marketing in today's MarketingProfs email. It's worth a read, but here's the bullet-point version:

Build a cross-channel marketing organization by:

1. Creating a cross-channel marketing strategy to align with your strategic objectives.
2. Building a single point of integration for online channels.
3. Measuring a common cross-channel metric so you can compare among all channels and campaigns.

Great stuff. But how do you choose the channels?

Selecting the right channels for online content

We've got a nifty process we use to determine which channels should be used for a given campaign, product, piece of content. We need a strategy for sorting through all the media options and picking the ones that allow us to support business goals. By focusing both on the purpose – the desired result – of the communication and the needs of the audience consuming it we’re more likely to choose the most effective media.

Here's how we do it:

• Brainstorm reasonable media options: Include stakeholders from across the organization, like marketing, CRM, sales, etc. (for more ideas, check out the first box in my content supply chain model)
• Filter ideas through your purpose: What do you want the audience to think or do?
• Filter through your target audience(s): Who are they and what channels do they use?
• Challenge your assumptions: What channels “should” we use because of existing partnerships or corporate expectations? Do any media create legal or regulatory issues? What outlets does our audience expect to use?
• Select the final media mix that best suits the purpose and audience of your online marketing and content.

Here's how it looks as a process:

Click for larger view. Copyright 2010 TTMS/The Word Factory. To see it in action, download the slide deck.

Spending less time, being more effective