If you have responsibility for running campaigns – using any offline or online media – you will benefit from this course. The programme is ideal for anyone who needs a thorough, jargon-busting introduction or update on how direct and digital marketing works today.
Here is the programme outline for this course:
Day One: The changing landscape
Day one starts with a review of the dramatic changes to the
marketing landscape over the past five years. You will then move on to
the economics of campaign planning and evaluation, the database and how
to make your data work for you, and finally the essentials of
developing successful direct marketing strategies.
How direct and digital marketing are working together
- Customer dominance – Web 2.0 and the advent of user
generated web content has put the customer firmly in control – - how
customers manage the relationship today and how you can engage them to
make them want to stay with you
- The truth about customer loyalty campaigns
- Why
data is still the vital factor but basic data is no longer enough. We
need to understand how to turn data into insight, with customers being
besieged with hundreds or thousands of messages from every direction
only those that are truly relevant will cut through and register
- Understanding
‘internal marketing’ – today every customer facing employee has the
power to add to or detract from your customer relationships
Developing strategies that work
- The five critical success factors
- How positioning works
- Developing and using customer insight – two types of of insight
- Propositions and offers explained
- How segmentation helps us develop successful communication strategies
- The role of the Focus Grid in achieving relevance in B2B campaigns
Costing and evaluating campaigns
- Review of costing models – the essential weaknesses of the allowable cost method
- Strategic and tactical measures
- Measuring and proving return on investment (ROI)
- Campaign based budgeting – a step in the right direction
- The contribution method – the professional way to plan and cost campaigns
- Lifetime value analysis – how it helps you plan better acquisition campaigns and grow your business faster
Offline media planning
- Review of all major offline media - how choose and measure them
- How direct marketing media planning differs from the traditional approach
- Targeting customers and prospects
- Buying and renting external data
- Integrating media for optimum effectiveness
- Using tactical integration to boost response
- Which spaces work best?
- How to buy media cost efficiently
- The value of lifestyle data
- How deduplication helps us evaluate a list
- Why the multi-media approach works – the Media Multiplier Effect
Day Two: Creating effective and measurable campaigns
- Campaign planning
- The 7 stages of planning an integrated campaign
- Defining and setting realistic objectives
- Developing your campaign strategy
- Turning plans into action
- Choosing, briefing and managing external specialist suppliers
- Using process management tools such as PERT and Gantt
- The vital importance of your brief
- Checklists of all key tasks
Getting the most out of your data
- The strategic role of data in modern direct and digital marketing
- Integrating online and offline data
- How profiling, segmentation and modelling work
- CRM and the database
- Keeping it up to date
- Data privacy and the law
- Deduplication and data maintenance
- Basics of data analysis
Research and testing
- The different roles of research and testing and why direct marketers need both
- What research can reveal about your customers and prospects - the key to customer insight
- Things to beware of when reading research findings
- The immense power of testing – how marketers have increased their responses and sales by up to 100% by controlled testing
- Testing techniques offline and on
- What testing tells us about design and typography
- The statistics of testing and the importance of statistical significance
Creative briefing and planning
- What works and what doesn’t
- Importance of specific benefits
- Key stages in developing successful creative work
- Getting the best from your creative resources
- Developing strong propositions and offers
- What is a ‘big idea’ – how to develop one that will last
- Evaluating creative work
Day Three: Real time relationships through digital
Mobile marketing, the ubiquitous medium
- The exploding mobile internet channel
From phone calls to augmented reality
- The role of the mobile in CRM
- The mobile as a payment medium
- How mobile campaigns are measured
- The future
Overview of digital
- The digital marketing toolbox
- The four I’s of engagement
- The starting point – your website
- Testing and measurement in the digital world
Search marketing (SEO and PPC)
- How your target market thinks and searches
- Building your site around them
- Getting the right content on your site
- Attracting inbound links from the best sites
- Making paid search work for you
Online display and email
- How online advertising works
- Formats and creative considerations
- The buying processes
- Key success factors for online display
- The basics of email
- Deliverability – why it’s an issue and how to overcome it
- Integrating email with direct mail
- Measuring email effectiveness and optimising campaigns
- Future of email?
Social media
- Social media overview
- RSS feeds
- Mashups
- Blogging
- Monitoring
- Pitfalls – how to get it wrong
- It’s not about control but influence
Questions, projects and discussion
You are encouraged to ask questions throughout the course – if
we can’t answer them immediately we will find out and get back to you.
Projects are mainly tackled in small discussion groups so you also
learn from your colleagues.