Leveraging the Marketing Mix for Better Results

You may have heard of the marketing mix before. The marketing mix is everything that a company uses to influence its intended audience, such as messaging, graphics, location, etc. Essentially, everything you do to reach and persuade consumers to buy a product or service is part of your marketing mix. 

The marketing mix is categorized into four Ps for better understanding. These are product, price, promotion, and place. The purpose of this article is to not only discuss the marketing mix but also help you understand why cohesion is crucial. 

Firstly, let’s take a look at each variable of the marketing mix.

• Product – This is the goods and/or services your company offers. Things like brand name, design, packaging, product/service quality, and so on.
• Price – Anything involving the cost of the product/service such as payment options, discounts, credit terms, etc.
• Promotion – This is everything to do with communicating your product/service benefits and features to the target audience. Things like advertising, PR (public relations), sales promotions, cold calling, etc. that aims to persuade the audience.
• Place – Also referred to as distribution. This any activity that makes your product available to consumers such as social media channels, locations, logistics, transportation, etc.

Cohesive Marketing

Highly successful businesses combine all of the four Ps to create a cohesive campaign. A cohesive marketing campaign creates a connection between all marketing activities across various mediums. 

The basic idea is that it’s much easier for consumers to identify or recognize your business when marketing activities are united. That’s why at Helium, we recommend this approach to our clients. Everything should work together to support your organization’s communications and help meet consumers at all stages of the sales funnel. 

However, marketing activities are often done in isolation, which causes misalignment. This means it doesn’t create a sense of connectivity that can make a brand more memorable.

Cohesive Multi-channel Marketing

To think cohesively is to embrace multi-channel marketing. Multi-channel marketing is the practice of using several mediums to reach an intended audience. Some marketers refer to this as cross-channel marketing. 

Brand awareness and conversion rates typically increase whenever multi-channel marketing is employed to reach customers. The results increase even further when cohesivity is introduced to multi-channel marketing.

The goal of cohesive multi-channel marketing is to provide the same quality of communication and brand style across multiple mediums. Also, it helps companies reach consumers on their most comfortable networks or channels.

For example, you can run a podcast, YouTube channel, and blog simultaneously, while using different distribution formats (video, text, and audio). All of which are connected in ways that facilitate brand recognition. 

Hands down, marketing is much more effective when multiple channels are used and there are many options available today. Some of them include, but are not limited to the following. 

• Paid online advertising (PPC or pay per click, display ads, etc.)
• Websites (blogs, news publications, etc.)
• Email marketing
• Retail stores (or other physical locations)
• TV
• Direct mail
• Mobile (social media, smartphone apps, etc.)

Your customers are everywhere and embracing a cohesive multi-channel marketing approach ensures you’ll reach more of them.

Designing a Cohesive Multi-channel Marketing Strategy

By now you know that cohesive multi-channel marketing is about using various channels to accomplish your objectives in a harmonious way. But how do you even start? Well, we’ve got that covered too.

1. Know the Target Audience

Firstly, know your customers. That means understanding the target audience in an intricate way. A good exercise is to create buyer personas. These are fictional representations of your ideal customers and you only need a few. Each one must include relevant data like profession, demographics, goals, pain points, etc.

Here’s a pretty cool template from Buffer.

2. Identify the Hang Out Spots

Find the marketing channels or mediums that are relevant to your business on the basis of whether the target audience is there. Focus on the mediums that have the largest audience base so you don’t spread your resources too thin. 

For instance, a local barbershop may decide to focus efforts on YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, search engines, and the local radio station.

3. Each Medium Must Work Together

Make sure each channel can work well together since modern consumers use multiple electronics to stay connected. For example, consumers that use mobile devices are most likely utilizing their desktops/laptops simultaneously. Therefore, you can maximize results.

Also, timeframe matters too. For example, one target group may enjoy listening to the radio while using their desktops/laptops between 9 am – 5 pm. Another group may enjoy using their mobile device while watching TV between 6 pm – 11 pm. 

Be sure to conduct audience research to uncover these details or consult with a marketing agency. 

Benefits of Multi-Channel Marketing

As you’ve undoubtedly realized, there are several advantages to cohesive multi-channel marketing. Here’s a quick run-through of all benefits.

• More attention – You can earn more attention when present in many places, which leads to more customers. Providing that each channel invested in supports others. For example, according to a Hootsuite study, a correlation between social engagements and search engine rankings exist. Hence, advertising on both social media platforms and search engines will be a good match.
• More sales – Being able to meet consumers on their favourite channels can improve sales. We tend to buy more or complete transactions when feeling comfortable.
• Consistent branding – Your brand will be consistent across mediums, which can enhance not just brand recognition, but reputation too.
• More customer touchpoints – In general, you can collect more data about the target audience when there are more touchpoints. This information can be used to measure success and improve outcomes wherever necessary.

Time to D-silo Your Channels

The pairing of devices by consumers is probably the biggest reason why you should be running cohesive multi-channel marketing campaigns. Coordinate your multi-channel marketing efforts with the ultimate objective in mind. Always think about how to touch different channels with your marketing message while maintaining cohesivity.

For example, Google Adwords has a feature called click-to-call that allows local businesses to include a phone number with their ads. So not only can companies be reached via search, but they can also be reached by phone from the same platform. All in all, cohesive multi-channel marketing is ensuring every effort is harmoniously integrated.