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Consumers have become increasingly demanding when it comes to the attention they want from businesses. They want to have instant answers to their queries and other engagements that marketers are not always available to provide.
Always-On marketing provides a means to better meet these expectations and more effectively convert a potential customer to a paying one through sustained marketing effort aimed at building visibility, retention, and acquisition.
This approach is different from traditional marketing campaigns that run in bursts. This means that marketing material is sent out over specified periods. Always-On marketing campaigns are more sustained and run indefinitely. These campaigns are sometimes also referred to as drip marketing. An easy distinction is that burst campaigns are usually run in line with a specific promotion or new brand. Always-On marketing is ongoing and advertisers the core or standard services and products.
Always-On marketing activities are planned to be ongoing and usually controlled by a daily or long-term budget, meaning there does not need to be major changes every day to the advertising campaign. Instead advertisers will look for trends in data and make optimisations based on getting the most out of the budget across a long period of time.
How Always-On Marketing Works
Always-On marketing provides engagement for potential customers, whenever they want it with the aim to persuading them to convert. This applies whether the person is a newly engaged or repeat customer. Different digital channels and campaigns are used for this including SEO Services, Ads on Facebook and other Social Media, along with Search Engine Marketing (SEM or Google Ads).
Through all these media and channels, customers have the opportunity to encounter and learn about your business or brand. With every engagement, they are nurtured using content. This content can be shared with them through various channels including social media, websites, email marketing, SMS or push notifications.
The success of always-on marketing is hinged on gathering and analysing as much data as possible and applying the insights provided. This makes it possible to personalize the marketing journey for every targeted customer. Dynamic Ad personalisation helps nurture customers and should be tested and improved upon consistently.
This process of continually making digital marketing efforts to meet customer demand is what Google refers to as the zero moment of truth. It is a never-ending cycle that repeats every time a consumer becomes aware of a product and delves into researching it but the seller is not yet aware of this interest or decision to buy.
Always-On marketing requires that brand experiences that customers enter into are personalised, automated, and are executed at scale. To get the process started, businesses will first need to look at the existing brand experiences. That means reviewing earlier engagements that lead to the building of existing brands. These simple and minor interactions are what build visibility and hype around a brand.
By understanding the network of interactions through one channel, marketers can consider how they can apply the same approach to another channel and scale. It is important to note that different types of customers will respond differently to various stimuli.
As you develop your always-on marketing model, it will be vital to take into consideration the different expectations and the different channels you will encounter customers. Much data and analysis will be required during planning and optimising your strategy, meaning it may take even years before your model is ready to be deployed.
Benefits of Always-On Marketing
There are good reasons to undertake both burst and always-on marketing campaigns. Both have a role in boosting brand visibility, nurturing conversions, and overall sustaining the business. Many businesses that already engage in content marketing can easily adapt to always-on marketing as they share many common features and are a good source of data that help develop the insights that fuel dynamic personalisation and optimisation. Here is why always-on marketing is worth the investment.
Sustained Marketing
Always-on marketing is a sustained effort. This means you will have a marketing strategy that is always at work even as you intermittently engage in other burst marketing efforts. This system also helps build momentum and keeps your brand visible at all times, even when you may need to focus on other aspects of your business. It is marketing that is never switched off. Awareness of your brands is continually sustained.
Higher Conversions
Nurturing leads is at the heart of always-on marketing. Businesses become better equipped to take every client through their own personalised journey that pulls them deeper and deeper into the sales funnel. Every query or concern they have is addressed, helping to eliminate roadblocks and bring them closer to making a purchasing decision. Drawing on the customers’ profile, previous online behaviour, demographics, interests and so on, they are steadily enticed by engagements that have been carefully planned for, leading to better conversions.
Cost-Effective Strategy
Being Always-on, the strategy is to naturally be there when your customers are searching, and also remind them whilst they are still in the consideration stages. This is naturally a smaller audience size than if you were to target a broad audience, so an Always-On approach can also be considered a very cost-effective way to market your business.
If you have any questions relating to Always-on marketing or digital marketing in general, reach out to one of the team at Phoenix Media today for a free consultation.
