It is now accepted wisdom that planning a marketing campaign across all media, in an integrated way and from a customer’s perspective is the right thing to do. But making the transition from a media-led to a media neutral approach is not as straight forward as it might sound.

The Status Quo

Not long a go almost all marketing departments employed the services of a range of agencies depending on their total budgets: a PR agency, an Advertising agency, a Design agency, a DM agency and when needed someone to work on events and other tactical promotions. Each were given their own brief and each worked in their own silo. The result - inconsistent, overlapping and inefficient communications, usually creating confusion rather than creating brands.

But, to be fair, this scenario wasn’t created by the fact that the agencies were specialists but more by the fact that the clients themselves structured their own marketing teams around activities and “media”. They had Advertising Managers, Direct Marketing Managers and PR Managers – all orchestrated by the Marketing Communications Manager or even the Marketing Director.

For many businesses this is still the case and it is still common to find a range of agencies managed in isolation from each other. This makes media-neutrality at best challenging and at worst impossible. So how do you go about making media-neutral a reality?

The Internal Challenge

As with any improvement the first step is to recognise what is wrong with the status quo. For most businesses the answers will lie in the internal structures and practices. There are three key elements to consider: budgets, people, and measurement of success.

Budgets tend to drive planning (which is obviously the wrong way round). It is a process that can wrongly dictate who is employed and what role they take and even what activity they are able to do within their responsibilities. The problem is maintained through evolutionary budgeting. This makes a change in strategy difficult and politically sensitive. So a different approach to budgeting is needed.

People are often a significant element of total marketing costs, and yet whilst lying within the Marketing budget they are a fixed cost rather being seen as part of the cost of the activity itself. Over recent years “headcount freezes” have become more common and this simply encourages departments to try and hold on to what they have, living in fear of having this resource taken away from them.

Changing people’s role is also a challenge. Changing the way the team work can highlight skills gaps and can also threaten status possibly creating contractual issues. So it has to be handled carefully, but restructuring the department is essential to facilitate a change in strategy of this magnitude.

The third area measurement is relatively straight forward to change practically but if the business is used to tracking and monitoring marketing success by media it requires a new measurement regime to go media-neutral and it will result in a period where metrics lose their value as you make the switch.

The Benefits of Media-neutrality

Before looking at how best to make the switch it’s worth reminding ourselves of the benefits. Most of us have witnessed changes in our markets over recent years including increased competition, commoditisation in many sectors, convergence in others – all focusing our attention on the importance of being customer-focused. To gain maximum value from our customers we need to realign all areas of our business to enable us to better meet the needs of the different customer groups.

Media-neutral planning is merely marketing’s way of making this change by using the right media, with the right message at the right time to communicate with each customer segment. It delivers greater relevance, increased efficiencies and improved effectiveness and ROI.

Making the change

It starts with a change of strategy but this often requires a change in mindset. Rather than thinking “each quarter we need to sell X,000 of these and Y,000 of those” you now need to plan around the customer segments – “to generate £X,000’s from this group and £Y,000’s from that group”. Simple.

The reality is that it’s not. It requires a company wide change. Sales needs to be realigned, support needs to be reviewed and customers services will also need to change. It can be done by marketing alone but when the board look to review marketing performance you’ll find that others glaze over as the Sales director is thinking “that’s all very well, but how does it help me sell more widgets”.

So stage one is to construct a business wide strategy that aligns the entire business with the needs of each customer group. The simple fact is that you can’t have a media-neutral plan that promotes products, as media is consumed by consumers and buyers who in turn buy a range of products.

Once the strategy is agreed you can then consider the budgets or should I say reconsider. All marketing expenditure can then be planned around the value, or preferably the potential value of each customer and prospect segment. So rather starting with an Advertising line and an Event’s line begin with Group A (High Value customers) and subdivide into Acquisition and Retention and then divide it further into the objectives – awareness, lead generation etc.

Having worked through each group you may well then be able to group objectives that are common for example Brand building or research. By planning your total spend in this way, prior to identifying “headcount” costs you are also beginning to reallocate people.

Ideally people should take on responsibility for one or more customer groups and should manage all activity focused on that group. Yes it will mean that your DM Manager now has to commission advertising and other media they are not familiar with, but others in the team still have that experience and they need to work together in a matrix during the transition stage.

Measurement now becomes easy, and because people are measured by what they achieve with their customer group, against targets that fall out of the strategy, you are much more likely to find that the marketing activity is much more effective.

External Resources

You are now faced with a decision regarding agency partners. Do you move from specialists to using integrated agencies or do you stick with specialists? The argument against specialists is that you will now have each member of your team briefing and managing each agency partner in turn. Whilst the argument against integrated is that they tend to be Jack of all trades and that quality suffers as a result.

My view is that integrated agencies have evolved quicker than clients. They are more focused on the total demands of communicating with customer groups rather than trying to make their particular area of expertise the solution no matter what the problem.

Whichever route you take, if you are using a range of agencies it’s important to firstly nominate a lead agency and secondly to clearly define the roles and responsibilities. Who is best to take the lead? Well that will depend on your situation as well as on the competencies that exist in each agency.

Managing Media-neutrality

Communication is everything. Regular all agency and department meetings are essential. It’s important that everyone knows what everyone else is doing and that there is genuine desire to work as a team. If you get it right you’ll also find that the combined strategic and creative force becomes greater than the sum of it’s parts and that the agencies get to a point where they begin to manage themselves.

The customer is king

If you haven’t already made the switch then this may all sound too daunting. Equally if you have started to employ media-neutral planning techniques but based around what you’re selling rather than who you’re selling to then taking the final step to planning around customer groups may feel too difficult to contemplate. The reality is, in today’s markets (for most of us) the customer is king. Unless you plan your strategy around them, allocate your budgets according to their value and realign your team to focus on them you’ll only achieve a fraction of what you could achieve.