Always-on Marketing

‘Always-on’ marketing is a constant marketing effort that is ‘on’ indefinitely. It’s about understanding individual customer journeys and providing relevant and valuable content, when customers are looking for it, and in the format they want. Planning communication pathways and building in automation is key to ‘Always-on’ marketing as people alone can’t cater for the scale ‘Always-on’ marketing demands.

An ‘Always-on’ marketing strategy is on-going, content and communication based marketing activity that ensures customers are nurtured through the marketing funnel from Awareness right through to Advocacy. It relies on usable data to understand customers, connected marketing tech that allows integration and personalisation, sufficient amounts of content, and a willingness to study results and improve where necessary.

Whilst the word ‘campaign’ feels at odds with marketing activity that is ‘Always-on’, it’s often referred to as a campaign – the difference is, it doesn’t end. Fujitsu is a great brand in the B2B space, that uses ‘Always-on’ marketing to boost competitiveness and generate new business opportunities. Using videos, research reports, practical guides, opinion pieces and social media polling it establishes itself as a thought-leader than can guide and advise.

As it’s a continuous approach, ‘Always-on’ marketing delivers a constant dialogue with customers, rather than a possible ‘un-timely’ delivery of advertising based campaigns. It also can achieve further reach than campaign based marketing as it can straddle all channels. Audiences feel that content aimed to educate, entertain and inform is more valuable than siloed advertising approaches, and encourages them to engage with brands on a deeper level.

Initially it’s about creating a communication ecosystem that caters for your audiences’ path to purchase and making sure your data and marketing tech stack are fully integrated. Then it’s about preparing the right content and plugging this into the automated systems and content channels. You then let it run. Data will allow you to start identifying those customers who are being successfully moved through the purchase funnel.