Are trying to look up yet another way of using Excel for outlining your marketing initiatives? Have you ever wondered how many Excel spreadsheets and Word files you’ve created over the course of your career? Read this post to learn how you can achieve detailed planning, management and execution of marketing activities across the business and globally.
Now that you know how to set-up an initial framework, you can begin to integrate marketing strategy into your calendar. Typically, most strategy is developed in a top-down manner with the following areas: Sales Events / Promotions & Holidays Marketing Campaigns Marketing Vehicles Let’s dive into each of these a little further so we can begin to understand their place …
In our last post, we laid out exactly why the marketing calendar is an asset to businesses. If that resonated with you, then let’s see what we can do to help you get started with establishing a marketing calendar framework. We’ve narrowed the many facets of a marketing calendar down to three basic components: Timelines Brands, Divisions & Geography Marketing Channels …
In a previous post Establishing a Global Marketing Calendar Framework I shared several steps that need to be followed in order to layout the framework for your marketing calendar. Two follow up posts Weaving Marketing Strategy into your Marketing Calendar Framework and Applying Metrics to Strategy in a Marketing Calendar outlined the contents of the marketing calendar that will help …
Your business is a well-oiled machine that’s being fed by your marketing efforts. Each prospect and opportunity generated by marketers becomes the veritable gas moving the business forward. The quality of the prospects and opportunities, however, are closely tied to how well your campaigns are orchestrated. Better executed marketing campaigns equal better prospects for the overall business, and that’s a …
We’re in the home stretch! In this final installment of our series on building and using a marketing calendar framework, we’ll tackle the application of marketing metrics to strategy. This is a key tool in your calendar’s arsenal: metrics give your team the ability to track the effectiveness of your campaigns, and help you develop a complete picture of your organization’s …
Are people more likely to purchase products when brands or businesses target them with ads across numerous channels? The answer is a resounding “yes!” according to a survey of 1,800 U.S. shoppers conducted by Fluent. According to the report, 62% of consumers who engage with a retailer on 10 or more channels make a purchase at least once a week. Meanwhile, 42% …
Lights, camera… budget-buster? Many Marketers forgo video marketing for fear it will be prohibitively expensive. But it doesn’t have to be. The truth is video is perfectly doable for any size business in any field—with any budget. And in this age of short attention spans, the advantages of video marketing are undeniable. Why? Because… Videos are fun and easy to consume. Videos …
You’ve worked closely with your team to prepare a great marketing campaign and you’re ready to launch. Your messaging is on target, and you have great graphics designed to really get you noticed. Just one question: what will your campaign look like when it reaches your brick and mortar locations? Will your in-store marketing have the same impact or better than …
(Last updated: December 2022) In my previous post, I mentioned the complexity around developing an omni-channel retail marketing plan and outlined a methodology based on my experience at CrossCap. Today, I would like to focus on Strategic Planning which is the first step within the planning phase of implementing an omni-channel marketing plan. During the strategic planning phase, the marketing strategy …
The retail marketing world is chock full of complications: multi-channel customers, showrooming, distributed teams, multiple legacy software systems, discontinuity, mobile, and the list goes on and on. Here at CrossCap, we’re in the fortunate position to witness (and often be a contributor to) the biggest and brightest retail marketing organizations as they adapt and expand to an ever-changing market. By …
The following post is PART III of a five part series on how to become a retail marketing superhero. We’ve leveraged the collective experiences from our most successful clients, some of the top retailers in the world, to help you the retail marketer achieve ultimate success in your career and for the business. This series will cover everything the retail …
There are a surprising number of retail organizations that don’t have a centralized marketing calendar, and getting the cross organizational buy in to purchase one is only half the battle. where can i buy cuban cigars online As you know, the marketing calendar is the holy grail of effective omni-channel visibility and management. Unfortunately, it has been relegated to complex …
Unless your marketing team consists of one person, it’s time to put down the Excel marketing calendar. Excel Marketing Calendar Template If you are a retailer with a large marketing team, you are probably guilty of having several Excel marketing calendar templates floating around on your shared drives. Those of you with Excel ninjas on staff will likely have …
One of the most popular posts on our blog is the ‘3 strategies for measuring sales lift’, and we’ve received numerous requests for a follow up on the topic. So, with this post we’d like to take this further and discuss how retailer marketers should actually analyze the overall performance of a promotion. (If you would like the sales lift …
Bricks and mortar, e-commerce or a combination of the two; pricing models High – Low, Mid – Low or EDLP, it’s come that time of year again when you face the blank marketing calendar for the next fiscal year. Once again the marketing budget, whether it is $2 billion or $200,000 is flat or slashed and every division wants more …
I keep seeing new guides on how retailer marketers should tackle social media or mobile, on a near daily basis. It’s great that there’s boatload of content on these channels, but what about something more traditional like circulars? There’s a good chance that not every retailer out there has an iron clad process for planning and executing a circular. So …
So, how is the busy retail marketer going to manage customer messaging in a world where coordination of message among multiple channels is the key to success. Well, first of all there must be an interactive marketing calendar template where each internal marketing team and agency partner can actively participate in building that message. The days when emails and Microsoft Office …
The good news is that every retailer we work with agrees that lift is an important metric for determining retail promotional success. The bad news is that there’s more than one way for retailers to calculate lift. That being said, the concept of lift can mean a lift in sales, margin or unit volumes, but for simplicity’s sake, we’ll …