Thought Leadership
WORDS
Tasha Woolley
October 4, 2021
Attempting to predict exactly when your potential customers are going to engage with your content is a daunting task to say the least. TWIO’s recommendation? Never turn it off! Always-on marketing allows you to create micro-experiences for your audience, keeping you at the forefront within all stages of the marketing funnel. Here, we’ll explain what always-on marketing is, why it’s important, and we’ll provide some tips on how to put it into action.
What is Always-On Marketing?
Always-on marketing is a consistent and long-termed approach to audience engagement. The goal is to interact with audiences through conversations and nurture relationships over time, rather than sending quick, one-sided messages. Relevant and high quality content is consistently delivered through the buyer’s journey from awareness, to consideration, to purchase. With this approach, your audiences are never left hanging, no matter how or when they attempt to engage.
Why Do We Use It?
- Small Experiences Build a Brand
a. Brands are built upon a cumulation of small experiences. In order to facilitate this, you’ll need to shift your mindset and strategy from overall brand presence to all of the little interactions that build a brand. Concentrating on and personalizing each of these little interactions results in an authentic brand essence.
b. Tactic: Identify and plan for the key questions prospects need answered before moving from one stage of the customer journey to the next.
2. Integration
a. Great marketing must be cross-functional and collaborative. We should always be thinking about how we can take pieces from one channel to another. Always-on marketing requires fantastic content that is built for and personalized to every stage of the customer journey.
b. Tactic: Start with a deep-dive piece (i.e case study, white paper, etc.). This piece of content can fuel the always-on strategy for months. Promote it using all available channels (blog post, infographic, social media post, video, etc.). The end goal will be that no matter the target audience, there is a piece of content in a format and channel that resonates.
3. Personalization
a. Buyers want seamless experiences across all engagement channels...be it web, mobile, social, chat, phone, storefronts, etc. Considering when, where, and how people want to consume information, you start to realize there needs to be some type of content available at any given moment. Always-on allows you to react to your potential client’s needs in real time.
b. Tactic: Invest heavily in creative and content production. Develop standardized practices that allow you to push out quality, true-to-brand content at a consistent pace.
4. Optimization
a. With always-on marketing, your optimization practices should be less of a “burst”, and more of a sustained drip. Tighter optimization windows = less chance of being “off” when it matters most. You can apply this to any aspect of the brand experience that you optimize.
b. Tactic: Launch hyper-targeted campaigns frequently to receive feedback faster and adjust, and optimize future plans for greater impact.
Don’t get caught with the lights turned off. Traditional stop-and-go campaigns can drive awareness and response, but they do little to build relationships and brand loyalty. They are often cyclical, with a lot of time and effort spent for only a few months of content.
How to Get Started?
- Focus on the “little strategy.” Little interactions create a brand.
- Connect your channels. Consider adapting a single piece of content to meet your customers at all of the different touchpoints.
- Plan for longterm. How will your content age? Can you continue to fill the content topic with new, relevant pieces over time?
