The 3C Model For Online Marketing Campaigns
Often, we as marketers are guilty of building campaigns based on past ideas that were a success, or a basic assumption of a target audience. We do this without fully understanding the target audience, taking a deep dive into their world and immersing ourselves in their culture. It’s often been said that ‘content is king’. As much I agree that content is a cornerstone of online marketing and that creative sells, it must be stated that content means absolutely nothing if it’s served to the wrong audience. That’s where context rules supreme.
I want to introduce you to the 3C Model (devised by Flume) that could be the key to great campaigns; Context, Content, Channel in order to Convert. This model assumes that an overarching digital strategy exists and that a core brand identity and business goals exist.
SMO
Before we pick up on the 3C Model we need to mention the ‘Single Minded Objective’ — what we refer to as the SMO. Any great digital agency should be asking the following; what is the one thing that they’re trying to achieve with a campaign? The clearer that answer is, the easier it is to generate content and align channels. Things become a little more difficult when we don’t really know what we’re trying to achieve. This is also where agencies push their clients for compelling Unique Selling Proposition— to delve into know what makes a client different; what makes them relevant to the target audience they’re trying to reach.
Context
Context is the foundation of any marketing campaign. It has to be. We (brands and agencies) have to immerse ourselves in our target audience’s world. It’s critical that we understand things like cultural nuances, their history, aspirations, social constructs, paradigms, environments and trends. Only then can we understand what would motivate them to interact with, and ultimately convert to, our brand. Context allows us to use insights to make smarter decisions when creating content and placing the content across appropriate online channels. There are many ways to gather these insights. What we like to do is use a mixture of Big Data, Online Data, Offline data and face-to-face discussions. This usually gives us a balanced view on what matters to the audience.
Content
Content and channel are interlinked, in that channel informs content and that content can inform channel. The more we know about our audience, the higher the quality of our content which ultimately resonates and motivates. We also need to ask the right questions based on the context and SMO. What type of content will achieve the conversion? Educational, entertaining, persuasive or inspirational? Does it fit the channel and vice versa? What type of design will be most appropriate to achieve the SMO based on the target audience insights and the channels they’re using to consume information?
Channel
Channel is the conduit that gets your content consumed by the people that you want it to. Often, however, there’s a lot of wastage because we’re ‘spraying and praying’. This is where context should guide our efforts. Paid media; what time, where, how often, in what sequence? Earned media; which influencers and consumption patterns? Embassies; Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, which will resonate? Owned; Landing pages, CTAs, Mobile/Desktop? Your channel can be your message, your message can be your channel. Online we have a plethora of channels available, we just need to make sense of them and use them tactically.
At the intersection of Context, Content and Channel we’ll discover the golden thread that plugs the holes. When we’ve created content that hits the mark and placed it on channels that deliver that message into the palms of our target audience then we’ll start seeing higher conversion rates. This is where we measure what we’ve done. After all, if we can’t measure then we can’t refine.
