Blog for marketers and marketing teams

The number of marketing tools (IT tools or marketing technology) for marketers and marketing teams has exploded in recent years. Read in this article which tools exist and how they relate to office software such as Microsoft365.

The communication plan is one of the cornerstones of a professional marketing policy. Marketers who work without a communication plan are condemned to work ad hoc within a multitude of tasks with deadlines. In other words: hopping from task to task is not the most ideal way to conduct a communication or marketing policy. The communication plan draws the lines (vision) for the future, divides the umbrella concept of ‘communication’ into different projects, gives peace of mind and puts all noses in the same direction.

Do you want to make the communication strategy visible to colleagues, management, stakeholders or customers? Then a written communication plan in Word or Powerpoint will not be enough for you. What you need is a 2-dimensional visualization of projects, channels and moments within a certain timeline. This is what most communication plans in Excel look like: a horizontal the timeline at the top (first dimension) and vertically on the left the projects, channels and moments.

Meeting discussions, comments on printed documents, replies to emails … marketers don’t just communicate with the market but also with each other. The way in which the internal communication within a marketing team proceeds is therefore a particularly difficult issue that leads to quite a few … discussions. However, communication about marketing planning issues also extends beyond the team. How do you communicate with freelancers, with key stakeholders, with management and, in the case of marketing agencies, with customers? In this article I review the most common techniques for streamlining the communication within and around marketing teams.

A communication plan answers the question “What do we communicate to put a project, campaign, product, event, brand, company … on the market?” It shows at a glance which mix of techniques you use to reach and convince the target group(s). The communication plan is therefore an indispensable document in a marketing context. But how do you approach this when different parties are involved in the planning process?

Lately, we’ve had a lot of marketing teams at retailers knocking on our door to bring order to their planning chaos. In a multichannel world with a multitude of campaigns, they want to work as closely as possible with their marketing colleagues and external marketing agencies. They quickly clash with the limitations of spreadsheets and generic planning tools that do not provide an integrated view of different channels and campaigns.

Last year, a journalist from Retail Detail asked me about my vision on the marketing trends for 2018. At that time, I answered wholeheartedly: “omnichannel planning will be the most important challenge”. And, as it turns out in practice: the customer is completely ready for it. He or she thinks, acts, lives omnichannel. They want the same message and experience on every channel where they experience your brand message or communication.

Marketers can no longer underestimate the role of content marketing. Content marketing means that a company translates its knowledge into relevant information for the target group via posts, blogs, videos, white papers, webinars etc.

Email marketing is undoubtedly an important part of your marketing approach. But on what day and at what time should you send out emails?

When determining your content planning, you will want to take into account what is going on among your target groups: the ‘top topicals’. Nice idea, but where do you start?

What shouldn’t be missing from your communication plan for 2019? What are the trends in marketing and communication? Analysis of dozens of communication plans shows 6 trends.

Marketers are often being confronted with the challenge to set up a communication plan. It has to be written in function of the next year, because you’re new at your job, to create order in the current planning chaos, to get your team to work towards the same goals, or to streamline a new marketing project.

A marketing manager must be able to look ahead, as well as look back and keep an eye on the details. On the one hand, they have to see the overall picture, but on the other hand, they have to make sure that everything proceeds without a hitch and make adjustments if necessary.

Planning, executing and following-up on communication has never been easier thanks to the new weekly calendar.

Social media teams or marketeers usually limit themselves, in practice, to conducting social media campaigns. Sounds logical. Still: this does not correspond closely enough to the world that your customers live in, who think and act in full omnichannel mode today. But how do you build a bridge between social media marketing and omnichannel marketing? How do you seamlessly integrate a social media campaign into an omnichannel campaign? And how do you make social media marketeers think outside the box and draw up integrated plans and schedules with colleagues that manage other complementary channels? In this article I will give you some answers, tips and advice on how to transform social media campaigns into omnichannel campaigns.

Jelle Sybesma works as an omnichannel consultant for the Dutch retailer HEMA. We will be speaking to him about such subjects as the role played by omnichannel in retail campaigns, the impact of the customer journey on omnichannel campaigns and the position of the customer card in an omnichannel strategy.

The last few months we have been working on the campaign calendar and are pleased that we can give a taste of it. More of that sweetness is coming soon. The campaign calendar has become more flexible, quicker, more useful and more insightful than ever.

Up till now, it was only possible to use statuses in the context of projects. But it also comes in handy to add a status to your tasks and campaigns. That’s why we’ve added it.