MarketingSherpa Blog

Multichannel marketing strategies can be powerful sales and awareness drivers, but they can present challenges to maintaining consistent brand messaging and sales performance.

The marketers at luxury jewelry brand Scott Kay, for example, reach audiences through several offline and online channels, including:
o Website
o Email
o Radio
o Outdoor
o Direct mail
o Retail partnerships

Marketing through so many channels complicates achieving continuously improving results, says Dan Scott, CMO, Scott Kay.

“There is no single silver bullet or one structure or one formula in multichannel marketing that will work,” Scott says. “There has to be assessment and reassessment each year of how the campaigns were structured, if they worked properly and what we can do better.”

Here are two tactics the team uses:

– Test the waters

Scott’s team tests multichannel messages and materials in a small group of retailers and focus groups before releasing them in a broader market. If results are positive, the campaigns are broadened to 10 select markets. From there, the team may adjust the messaging in specific markets to improve resonance and response.

“If in a six-month period the metrics are not performing as forecasted, then we’ll make additional changes,” Scott says.

– Establish checks and balances

The team also uses a system of checks and balances to ensure marketing messages are consistent across channels. For example, the team requires Scott Kay’s retail partners to sign a compliance agreement before selling its products. Part of that agreement requires retailers to submit marketing campaign materials for Scott Kay’s approval.

For example, one retailer wanted to invest heavily in marketing its Scott Kay collection in nearby movie theaters.

“We had to respectfully reject that,” Scott says. “The basis being that the audience was too widespread, too difficult to quantify and the environment too pedestrian for the luxury brand that we represent.”

About Adam T. Sutton

Adam T. Sutton, Senior Reporter, MarketingSherpa
Adam generates content for MarketingSherpa's Email and Inbound Marketing newsletters. His years of experience in interviewing marketers and conveying their insights has spanned topics such as search marketing, social media marketing, ecommerce, email and more. Adam previously powered the content behind MarketingSherpa's Search and Consumer-marketing newsletters and carries that experience into his new role. Today, in addition to writing articles, he contributes content to the MarketingExperiments and MarketingSherpa blogs, as well as MECLABS webinars, workshops and summits.

Prior to joining MarketingSherpa, Adam was the Managing Editor at the Mequoda group. There he created content and promotions for the company's daily email newsletter and managed its schedule.

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Categories: Branding, Consumer Marketing Tags: multichannel