Where does Collaborative Marketing fit in the media mix?
While it can certainly be a demanding process to organise and manage, brands shouldn't be too quick to ignore a collaborative approach to marketing. Instead – consider for a moment that the consumer is the media channel, and you’ll start to see how Collaborative Marketing slots very comfortably into your media plan.
Rebekah Mackay Miller is UK managing director of TRND.
By facilitating a continuous two-way dialogue between brand and consumer, Collaborative Marketing champions on and offline word of mouth and fuels consumer generated content. By weaving this into more traditional media activations brands can achieve huge reach and mass awareness coupled with the more targeted, quality awareness that ultimately triggers action.
Here we share three benefits of integrating collaboration into your media activations that prove Collaborative Marketing is a powerful tool that should sit in every marketer’s arsenal:
Reduces wastage
Mass media delivers mass reach but also mass wastage, an accepted norm that as an industry we seem to have given up challenging. This is where collaborative marketing comes into play; while mass media trickles down from the top of the proverbial funnel, consumer collaboration seals the hole at bottom. Engaging consumers and letting them spread the word for you ensure a targeted reach because naturally, they will talk to friends they know are likely to be interested in the same product, so you essentially reverse the funnel.
It’s when mass awareness and quality awareness meet in the middle that you see that really powerful impact happening. As a bonus, add real life recommendations to your awareness strategy. Consumer generated content resonates far more than advertising spiel!
WOM boosts the impact of all other media
The right mix of traditional media channels and a Collaborative Marketing campaign can double brand awareness and boost the impact on consumers’ purchase intention up to four times. The key is the combination of a targeted marketing message and credible recommendations spread between friends. Add to this that claims and testimonials generated from a Collaborative Marketing campaign can be used to bolster subsequent marketing activities, and that WOM boosts the effects of all media by 15 per cent, and conversations truly are a metric worth paying attention to.
Harness the potential of real life
In the last 10 years everyone has fallen in love with the digital world, and rightly so – it has opened up a huge wealth of opportunities for brands. But real life prevails and people still spend 80% of their time offline. Think about it, why is offline even called offline? It’s just life.
We know that two thirds of word-of-mouth (WOM) and branded recommendations happen offline, but all too often, brands aren’t fully recognising that. Mainly because they’re caught up in the digital landscape a lot of the time, but also because it might be difficult to measure offline actions so it’s easily pushed to the side. To future-proof your marketing and business it’s crucial to acknowledge not just how you can reach out to people and generate WOM online, but also what steps you can take to be triggering those conversations (and measuring those conversations) offline.
In the video interview above, I chat with Oliver Mayer, international data analyst at trnd International and Aedrian Bekker, managing director and business psychologist at ORConsulting to share our thinking on the role of Collaborative Marketing in the media mix.
Rebekah Mackay Miller is UK managing director of TRND.