Strengthen Your Brand with Business-to-Partner Collaborative Campaign Management

I really love automobiles. I especially identify with car companies that have a young, design-oriented positioning.   But when I search for a new car, I don’t just pay attention to styling and performance.  I want a car company to keep me happy at every turn – from their advertising and brand image, to my first step into the showroom, to my visits for service, to their introduction of new models.

A car company’s attention to all these touchpoints helps generate customer loyalty, and it certainly is a factor in securing mine.  Such loyalty does not happen by chance -- it’s the result of a well-coordinated effort to sustain the brand and continually delight customers.

Keeping it Consistent

In an increasingly competitive marketplace, where customers are well aware of their many options, a strong customer experience is every bit as important as a strong product. That experience – which ultimately defines the brand -- extends far beyond explicit “loyalty” programs to every customer interaction. 

Given the many channels through which customers interact with a given brand, that experience must be as consistent as it is strong across every touch point. When the experience is inconsistent, customers become confused and unsure about the brand promise. When I am a customer of a great car company, I can easily interact with many of that company’s channels (such as the dealer and the website) in a given week. I expect the company to anticipate these interactions and provide a constant experience throughout.

The same consistency is needed across every phase of a marketing campaign -- whether it builds the overall brand or promotes a specific product. In addition to the internal sales and marketing teams of the enterprise that owns the brand, a campaign may involve outside partners who have a close relationship with customers. They know the customers best.  Empowering such stakeholders to initiate and execute campaigns at the periphery leverages local market insights.  It thus allows creation of highly relevant messages that further strengthen the brand and loyalty.

Every campaign, whatever its purpose or cast of characters, should have uniform elements and align with the overall brand. For the launch of a new automobile, my experience should be consistent whether by e-mail, television ad, glossy brochure, Web site, social media, or discussion with my local dealership. The campaign must speak to me as part of its best target market. It must be localizable by the partners with whom I am most likely to interact -- without sacrificing the overall message.

Changing the game

Fortunately, there are new software solutions to facilitate collaborative marketing campaigns that create such a consistent experience. These technologies can help an enterprise centrally define its target markets, develop offers that are attractive to various segments, set appropriate time frames, design the right campaigns, route leads, and measure the effectiveness of those campaigns. They can make it easier for partners to individualize campaigns by localizing the price or specific offer, adding their own logos, or making other customizations.

New technology can also help a brand owner create dashboards covering the numerous collaborative campaigns – perhaps with hundreds of partners -- in which they are participating.  This visibility and data-based feedback helps the brand owner refine the campaigns to make them even more effective.

Collaborative campaign processes vary by industry.  Thus, there are solutions to help travel brokers tailor their offers to specific countries or help independent insurance brokers adapt their products for local market variations. There are solutions to help high tech companies create specific loyalty programs for their resellers. By developing tighter bonds between the brand owner and partners, companies can develop new models that reinforce the brand, trump the competition, and prevent a slide toward commoditization.

On the other hand, an interesting example is the utilities industry, where products are highly commoditized.  With deregulation, it’s now just a price war.

To address this, a utility could use analytics software to determine market interest in attaching additional services for energy efficiency or system maintenance. This product/service bundling becomes an important differentiator, changing the game away from core commodity products, while significantly boosting sales.  It would require partnering with outside consultants and creating a collaborative marketing campaign that communicates well to customers and creates value for the utility.

Local Insights, Global Consistency

Collaborative campaigns that seek a constant customer experience cannot assure loyalty. But a lack of collaboration and consistency can easily send the most loyal customers to your competitors. The key is to standardize processes sufficiently to ensure consistent messages, while allowing enough flexibility for adding value through localized knowledge.

Great car companies know how to strike this balance between global campaign consistency and adaptation to local needs.  And by designing new processes enabled by collaborative campaign solutions – and considering new business models that were not possible before -- you can take the lead in your industry as well.