No Brick-and-Mortar Location? No Problem: Multichannel Marketing for Nonphysical Brands
by Hannah Cox-Schroeder
10 Steps for a Successful Direct Mail Campaign
by Casey Rush
Hannah Cox-Schroeder
- Nov 09, 2022
No Brick-and-Mortar Location? No Problem: Multichannel Marketing for Nonphysical Brands
The digital aspects commonly include: landing pages, digital marketing, and social media advertisements familiarizing potential customers with your brand, re-energizing previous customers, and enticing buyers with special offers or new products and services.
But what about print marketing opportunities? Just because there are no aisles to adorn or displays to deck out, that doesn’t mean print marketing is off the table for non-brick-and-mortar brands. Far from it. From mailers like postcards to yard signs to sample kits and beautiful product packaging to vehicle wraps and other signage, print marketing plays as big a role as digital for non-brick-and-mortar brands.
Fortunately, OneTouchPoint is obsessed with creating powerful multichannel marketing strategies whether our clients have physical locations or not. But since we spend so much time talking about brick-and-mortars, let’s take a look at how we can specifically help brands that don’t have physical locations.
Asset Management
Even if your brand doesn’t have physical stores, it’s likely there are multiple cooks in the marketing kitchen. Perhaps, for example, you’re a franchise in an area like home repair or home healthcare, with franchisees working from home offices (and from their vehicles) across the country. Every brand representative will need access to the latest approved brand and content, as well as easy to use, marketing campaigns, in order to connect with their own customer bases in a way that both maintains brand integrity and speaks to those local audiences’ unique needs.
Empowering those reps with customizable marketing resources is easy with a centralized content hub like OneTouchPoint’s U.Connect platform. Making the latest, corporate-approved collateral accessible twenty-four-seven on a centralized platform—instead of sending files via emails that are liable to get deleted or buried, or dropping them into Google Drive folders that users may or may not keep sync’d up and organized—means local reps have everything they need at their fingertips and national leaders don’t have to worry about outdated collateral or inaccurate messaging circulating among potential customers.
An added advantage of a content hub like U.Connect is support for modular content, which enables franchisees or other (approved) brand representatives to easily update collateral with information specific to their own audiences—contact information, landing page URLs, or QR codes leading buyers to local order forms, for example. This way, every marketer can take advantage of the power of personalized local marketing without running the risk of interfering with corporate-approved design and messaging.
The best part? The system is built to support franchisee owners with little to no marketing experience. Easily find then download or order the marketing content and assets that support their business and leverage the pre-built marketing campaigns.
Digital Marketing
- Paid Search
- Display Advertising & Retargeting
- Email Marketing
- Microsites & Landing Pages
- Social Media Content
- Reputation & Social Media Management
- Data Analytics & Tracking
All of these components ensure that, wherever they are online, your audience is able to engage with you in a way that is consistent, authentic, and supportive of your brand and its reputation. And yet, managing every moving piece adds up to multiple full-time jobs.
Fortunately, OneTouchPoint has added support for all of these digital marketing activities to our suite of end-to-end marketing management services. This means your marketing teams and brand reps have all the support they need to create and implement robust digital marketing campaigns—and track and analyze their success. (Learn more in our digital marketing services data sheet.)
Print Marketing
Whether you need to produce and distribute brand kits for ten new reps, postcards for 25,000 potential buyers, or swag bags for 200 holiday party attendees, our full-scale commercial printing facilities, matched with our national partner network and mailing capabilities, enable us to produce and distribute world-class print marketing material—in no shortage of volumes, shapes, sizes, or formats—for our clients.
Bring Your Multichannel Marketing Strategy to Life
Learn more about OneTouchPoint’s end-to-end marketing management services here; then, when you’re ready, we invite you to contact us to talk with our experts about how OneTouchPoint can deliver phenomenal results at a great price.
Casey Rush
- Jun 16, 2022
“Quick Design Requests” Cost More Than You Think: A Case for Through-Channel Marketing Automation
For multi-location brands like franchises, nationwide retailers or service providers, it can seem like the requests for new marketing collateral never stop coming. The store manager in Austin needs a point-of-sale poster to advertise an upcoming local promotion, while the Midwest sales rep wants a leave-behind flyer highlighting this season’s new products, and the corporate marketing team needs to advertise the same new products via social media graphics.
With all these requests coming in at once, it may seem like the easiest option is to forward them on to your in-house design team—or the handful of trusted freelancers who know your brand standards inside and out and turn the collateral around quickly.
Here’s the catch, though: every “quick design request” takes away from the time the design experts’ have to work on bigger, more strategic projects for your brand. (And, in the case of freelance designers, each request means spending money to have your designer basically recreate something she’s already spent her time—and your money—creating.) The designers get frustrated with the onslaught of distractions, the delays start to pile up (tempting local marketers to DIY their own collateral, to varying results), and before you know it, all those “easy” requests have cost more in lost opportunities and clean-up efforts than they were worth.
Let’s take a look at a few of the hidden costs of all these piecemeal marketing collateral design requests—and a better alternative.
Drawbacks of Piecemeal Marketing Collateral Desig
Inefficiency
Brand Inconsistencies
However they happen, these inconsistencies in brand messaging and design compromise brand integrity and customer experience—diluting customer trust and risking valued long-term relationships.
Compliance Failures
In many highly regulated industries—such as healthcare, finance, or alcohol and beverage—the stakes are even higher when it comes to potential branding inefficiencies. In these industries, there are specific messaging requirements and promotional regulations that may vary from state to state. Designers and local marketing reps likely aren’t well-versed in these requirements, so asking them to take on that compliance burden—no matter how detail-oriented and meticulous they are—is putting the company at risk not only of customer dissatisfaction but of potentially devastating legal ramifications as well.
Instead, Empower Local Marketers with Through-Channel Marketing Automation
So, how can far-flung brands ensure every rep and marketer has the collateral they need without the cost of burdening individual contributors with every request? Relief—not to mention watertight brand integrity and legal compliance—comes in the form of a through-channel marketing automation (TCMA) platform.
TCMA platforms, like OneTouchPoint’s U.Connect, are SaaS solutions designed to centralize brands’ distributed marketing efforts, enabling retailers, distributors, agents, franchisees, and any other local brand representatives to quickly access approved marketing collateral and resources twenty-four-seven.
This is all made even easier with the use of modular content, which is content that’s been divided into the smallest possible preapproved “blocks” that local marketers can localize and customize into any number of assets with very little effort and, more importantly, no actual design work. These include text blocks (think: disclaimers, value statements, and product descriptions), and visuals (think: product shots, brand approved images, partner logos, and infographics). In conjunction with the TCMA’s asset hub, modular content goes a long way to ensure global brand consistency while still giving users the flexibility to create relevant promotional assets in local markets
And that’s just one of many benefits of through-channel marketing automation.
OneTouchPoint’s TCMA platform, U.Connect, empowers our clients to accomplish their loftiest multichannel marketing goals, starting with collateral design and going much, much further. We pride ourselves on providing our partners with a centralized marketing hub and full-service support that enables reps at every level to create and launch powerful marketing campaigns that build brand awareness and drive growth at every turn. To learn more about how OneTouchPoint helps brands grow with through-channel marketing automation, we invite you to contact us to talk with our experts about how OneTouchPoint can deliver phenomenal results at a great price.
Casey Rush
- Jun 18, 2020
10 Steps for a Successful Direct Mail Campaign
Use this checklist as a guide to help you get started planning your next Direct Mail or EDDM campaign.
Get Started Checklist: Direct Mail & EDDM®
- Identify your goals (as part of a multichannel campaign)Are you offering a coupon to drive sales, looking to create brand awareness, advertising a new store opening (or reopening), or sharing news and updates with loyal customers? Make sure you have a specific goal in mind.
- Define your target audience. Will the mailing be sent to a specific audience, to known customers based on demographics, or to a localized area or specific zip codes? Make sure you identify the right target for your offer.
- Set your budget. Based on your goals and desired reach, determine how much you are willing to spend. Keep in mind the overall spend if it’s part of a larger campaign—you may need to adjust your final counts.
- Map out the timing. Is this a standalone campaign, part of a bigger, multichannel strategy, or are you announcing a time-critical opening or reopening? Timing the offer and when people will get it, is key.
- Create your copy. Powerful headlines, concise copy with a clear CTA (call-to-action) that drives action and appeals to your target audience is critical. Where it makes sense, create a dedicated landing page to drive traffic to for a specific offer/CTA.
- Design your assets and keep localization (and spacing in mind). Be creative and convey your brand. If you are personalizing content—names, maps, locations, phone numbers, social pages, etc.—make sure the piece is built to accommodate all of the detail. And makes sure the CTA stands out.
- Create your mailing list. Are you planning to target specific zip codes or regions? If so, an EDDM mailing may be optimal (and the cheapest). If you are reaching out to loyal customers, you’ll want to make sure your list is up-to-date and accurate. Looking to target specific demographics, or have a more niche business? List Rental can ensure you are targeting the right people for your business.
- Define success metrics. Outline what success looks like for the campaign and understand how you will track your responses (i.e. coupon codes, web visits, telephone tracking, form submission, etc.).
- Prepare your (sales) team for launch. Make sure the necessary teams are informed. From assigning who will handle new leads or inquires to training staff on how to track coupon codes, you want all hands on deck and up-to-speed to make the campaign a success.
- Launch campaign – then track & refine. Launch your campaign, and then review and monitor your pre-determined metrics to evaluate your ROI and help refine your marketing strategy for future campaigns.
Direct Mail & EDDM at OneTouchPoint
We’ve made it easier than ever to get your mailings out the door as quickly, and cost-effectively as possible, and into the hands of your customers. Learn more here.