Dimensional Thinking – the Key to Success in Every Marketing Campaign

Marketing is now living in a multi-dimensional world and needs to deliver in many dimensions to achieve the results you want.

Fact: Marketing campaigns have to be multi-dimensional to be successful

So what do we mean by that? Let’s start with a one-dimensional (1D) approach. This would be sending one email, or going to one exhibition, or doing one radio ad… all as standalone activities.

Doing just one of these activities is not very likely to generate the kind of results that you hoped for. However, combining all three will be much more likely to get your prospects’ attention and generate a buzz – and this is multi-dimensional marketing.

Multi-dimensional marketing is really just a fancy way of saying ‘integrated marketing planning’. And with the online marketing world expanding, audiences can be engaged in many new ways, meaning integrated marketing planning is reaching another level. However, this also means your messages have to be heard through much more noise than ever before.

It’s not just about multi-delivery – it’s also about multiple messages and objectives. It’s about using a variety of marketing resources to deliver numerous but always consistent messages. One approach that has been gaining traction recently is The Social Media Cube©.

What is The Social Media Cube?

It’s been created by social media commentator, Jure Klepic, as a visual way of looking at the integration of social media into marketing planning. The dimensions that it defines as important when integrating social media elements into campaigns are:

• Message – highlights the importance of message adaptation so that it’s right for the context in which it will be consumed
• Social – the need to understand the tactics that will get results in the different social media spaces. Too many brands have strategies that are completely unsuitable and inflexible so will not deliver effective results
• Object – this is a two-dimensional element, as it refers both to the object the messages will be delivered in and to a cultural understanding of your audience and the objects in which they choose to define themselves. It’s about on and offline objects so, by extension, on and offline integration
• Timing – this has always been crucial to any campaign’s success – the importance of delivering the right message at the right time is no different in the digital world. Automated lead nurturing with triggered emails has a big part to play in this.

Getting Dimensional

The CMO Survey from August 2012 interviewed over 500 senior marketers in the US and revealed that, although marketing spend in the B2B world has flatlined, what is being spent is more focused on:

• delivering integrated messages on new product and service development;
• customer relationship marketing; and
• brand building.

Spend on traditional offline marketing has fallen by 137%, whilst marketing knowledge is being recognised as the area where businesses need to invest. In order to integrate activities and messages, businesses are allocating more of their marketing budget to:

• Marketing research and intelligence – up 32.3%
• Integrating marketing knowledge – up 24.2%
• Marketing training – up 94.6%

These figures reveal what everyone has long recognised: the focus of traditional marketing has shifted, and to deliver sustainable business success, it is essential to have an effective strategy in place. And to do it right, it needs to be multi-dimensional inbound marketing, integrated every step of the way.

The Author
	Alistair Norman | Marketing Director Alistair is responsible for the strategy, design and implementation of our Inbound and Content Marketing, with a focus on developing B2B and B2C markets.