The JASON Framework

ABSTRACT

The holidays are a time to celebrate as loved ones and family gather together – and they are a time to shop. Each holiday shopping season brings new challenges, and this year’s recession and supply chain issues are already impacting inventory, pricing, and shipping timelines. As the holidays approach and supply chain issues continue, the shopping season might not deviate much from years past, with many consumer trends remaining steady. The JASON Framework is designed as a high-level overview that integrates strategic and tactical marketing concepts on a timeline that begins 180-days prior to the end of the year (July through December). We suggest applying this guide to your annual digital marketing audit in preparation for the holiday shopping season. 

INTRODUCTION

Holiday marketing is the process of applying intensified marketing measures via multiple channels to capture the attention of customers to (1) provide them with valuable offers, (2) significantly increase the revenue for the organization, and (3) improve the organization’s condition. The holiday marketing season presents brands and retailers with an important opportunity to generate revenue and this year will likely be no exception. Here comes the 2022 holiday shopping season—and in place of the traditional autumn efforts to forecast whether it will be an up year or a down one, retailers believe that it will be an unprecedented one. Fortunately, they have access to unprecedented capabilities.

The JASON Framework for holiday marketing campaigns is a high-level overview that integrates strategic and tactical marketing concepts on a timeline that begins 180-days prior to the end of the year (July through December). The framework incorporates touchpoints in two funnel categories, (1) Lead Generation (LeadGen), and (2) Nurturing. The LeadGen category contains three elements, (1) Paid Ads, (2) Influencers, and (3) Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Additionally, the Nurture category contains three elements, (1) Email Marketing, (2) Website Engagement, and (3) Social Media Marketing. 

LeadGen is the marketing process of stimulating and capturing interest in a product or service for the purpose of developing a sales pipeline, allowing organizations to nurture targets until they’re ready to buy. Lead generation can be useful for any type or size of business, and for both B2C and B2B spaces. Nurturing is the process of developing and reinforcing relationships with buyers at every stage of the sales funnel. A successful lead nurturing program focuses marketing and communication efforts on listening to the needs of prospects and providing the information and answers they need to build trust, increase brand awareness, and maintain a connection until prospects are ready to make a purchase.

PAID

Paid marketing is a digital marketing strategy in which a business, brand, or organization pays to target its customers on social media, in search engines, and in other digital channels. Targeting can be made based on keywords searched by customers, customer interest, and interactions with the business, brand, or organization. Examples in digital marketing include, yet are not limited to pay-per-click, social media ads, influencer marketing, banner ads, retargeting, and geofencing. 

Objectives should be measurable, and your team should outline how you will measure success. Your goal might be to increase brand awareness, yet your objectives should include how you will measure its success. Measurable objectives for paid ads include, yet are not limited to cost-per-click, click-through-rate, and cost-per-conversion.

If you’re responsible for paid advertising and execution, consider audience uniqueness in conjunction with overall platform size. Clicksuasion recommends the following.

• No. 1: Master — and maintain — best-in-class audience targeting. There are many techniques for effective audience targeting. These include custom audiences, look-alike models, geo-based targeting, interest-based audiences, and a cornucopia of advanced analytics and testing techniques. Successful targeting maximizes reach into the desired audience through ad effectiveness and economic efficiency. Make the most of individual platform targeting capabilities, and strive for limited, pragmatic data interoperability.
  
• No. 2: Actively manage paid social media spend. While Facebook and Google dominate, the market for paid social media remains dynamic and uncertain. Changes in consumer behaviors, privacy laws, and antitrust actions fuel the uncertainty. Mitigate risk by reviewing paid social media investments quarterly and anticipating regular changes to the portfolio. Develop a strategy for testing the benefit of new platforms, perhaps by using geography-based techniques designed to measure incrementality.
• No. 3: Prepare for ongoing disruption to paid social ad targeting and measurement. Apple and Google have announced critical changes to the use of browser cookies and device identifier data for advertising. Paid social ad targeting and attribution data availability are degrading and hitting paid social performance campaign tactics especially hard.
• No. 4: Create content that resonates with brand-engaged users. Brand-engaged users are people who use a given social media platform at least once a week — and say they like seeing content from and follow brands on that platform. This group doubled from 10 % of all social media users in January 2019 to 20 % in April 2021 and is principally (76 %) composed of Gen Z and Millennials. Target these users on the platforms where they’re most abundant by building social content that aligns with their preferences.
• No. 5: Tap into streaming TV advertising to complement paid social media. Adults ages 18 to 43 spend more time on streaming TV than broadcast, cable, and satellite. To guide media investments into over-the-top TV, connected TV, and YouTube, stay on top of a market that is fragmented, immature, and challenged by the popularity of ad-free services.

INFLUENCER

Influencer marketing is a type of social media marketing that involves mentions and endorsements of brands and/or products by individuals who exert influence on a particular audience due to their perceived expertise, trustworthiness, or popularity. Measurable objectives for influencer marketing includes, yet are not limited to referral traffic, audience growth, and cost-per-engagement. 

One size does not fit all when it comes to influencers. There are five categories of influencers: (1) media influencers, (2) celebrities, (3) industry influencers, (4) customers, and (5) employees. Understanding the types of influencers helps guide selection and resource needs. For example, celebrity chefs might be the right influencer type if the brand needs to shore up credibility or drive awareness in a broad market. But a food blogger (media type) might be a better fit to create content for the holiday baking segment. Once the type of influencer is narrowed, use reach, relevance, and resonance as filters for assessing strategy and the fit of individual influencers.

Influence isn’t characterized by any one factor. It’s composed of reach, relevance, and resonance.

• Reach is the ability to amplify a message to a large audience or a desirable niche audience.
• Relevance is the strength of the connection between the influencer and the brand, industry, or topic.
• Resonance is the ability of the influencer to not only be heard, yet also to drive desired audience behavior.

Use these three factors as a lens through which to identify and compare influencers for your program and its specific needs and goals. These factors can also be used to reinvigorate and breathe new life into existing influencer marketing efforts.

SEO

SEO is the use of techniques to improve qualified traffic to web pages. SEO analyzes the nature and intent of searches to deliver highly relevant search results and an enhanced user experience. Measurable objectives for SEO include, yet are not limited to search visibility, organic traffic, and organic click-through rates. 

When planning SEO strategies, marketers should incorporate best practices that can boost relevancy in Google’s search algorithm. Namely, copy investments on content-heavy pages (e.g., blogs) and product-centric pages (e.g., category pages) alike should reflect the ways that consumers search within a given category. Leaders in SEO expand content to cover topics higher up the funnel, tapping into high-volume queries to attract more consumers. This effectively serves as a lead generation, while giving brands more latitude in visibility versus competitors. Marketers should also synchronize front and back-end SEO efforts, incorporating high-volume and trending keywords to site taxonomy and structure so all aspects of crawlable text contribute to search optimization efforts.

Brands should consider.

• Cast a wider net by developing site content that mimics consumer search habits in topics and titling, and expand keyword research to broader lifestyle topics.
• Introduce content outside of content hubs by seeding product pages with high-volume keywords and also by creatively inserting text in category pages in the form of page footers to improve relevance in search algorithms.
• Embed high-growth and priority keywords — not only in visible text like filters and navigation, yet also in back-end site architecture like taxonomy and page codes.

EMAIL

Email marketing is the use of email to promote products or services while developing relationships with potential customers or clients. Measurable objectives for email marketing includes, yet are not limited to search list growth rate, email conversion rate, and subscriber acquisition cost.

Email marketing is a fundamental touchpoint, but it’s rated by digital marketing leaders as one of the least effective channels in driving conversion. Many marketers lost their grip on email personalization amid the customer churn and rapidly changing habits of the pandemic. Struggling brands often sought quantity over quality and sent generic product email blasts, while leaders continued to activate their customer data and drive segmentation, yielding high engagement. Facing cross-industry challenges, digital marketing leaders can’t afford to silo comparisons within a small set of close competitors. Relevant insights include:

• Retail is the top-performing industry overall, while financial services is the leader in open rates. Brands from these industries comprise nine of the top 10 brands out of nearly 1,200.
• Top-performing brands and industries in the benchmark are committed to scaling targeted campaigns. Financial services, for example, sends emails to just 4.7 % of subscribers on average — representing the most customized messaging of any analyzed industry — and has the highest weighted average open rate at 27.1 %. Brands with acute segmentation create virtuous cycles of customer data collection to continually improve performance.
• Leading brands thread personalization into their email content strategies, synchronizing longer subject lines with more narrow targeting. Longer, more detailed subject lines with more than 70 characters perform as competitively as those with 11 to 20 characters due to more sophisticated audience segmentation.

WEBSITE

Website marketing is the strategic promotion of a website to drive relevant traffic to the brand’s desired landing page. Measurable objectives for website strategies include, yet are not limited to traffic by source, average session duration, and dwell time. 

Customers quickly get annoyed, distracted and baffled by sites that try to serve everyone with every need. Instead, brands should decide which customers the website will prioritize and what it needs to do for them. Customer personas and customer journeys could help with this initiative. Understand which key customer groups interact with the website and for what purpose. Use this information to plan the needed structure, content and features for the redesign. When website teams ground redesigns in customer insight, they can more easily defend against objections or pressures that dilute the focus and alter the scope.

User research and testing is key throughout the website planning and development process, and even after the site has gone live, to drive continuous improvement. The methodologies you use will depend upon the insights you are trying to uncover. For example, A/B and multivariate testing works to identify which versions of a customer experience perform the best. Heat maps reveal the parts of the site that attract the most focus. Card sorting invites customers to categorize topics according to how they think about them. This method lets marketers use customers’ way of thinking to determine website structure.

SOCIAL

Social media marketing is the process of creating tailored content for each social media channel to drive engagement and promote a brand. Measurable objectives for social strategies include, yet are not limited to cost per thousand impressions, applause rate, and amplification rate. 

Social marketing is critical to achieving marketing objectives: building awareness, driving conversion, generating demand, and creating customer advocacy. Yet, many marketing leaders lack a coherent strategy that defines why they are leveraging social and what they hope to achieve. Here are three steps to crafting a social media strategy.

• Step 1: Determine a clear view of your target audience. Your target audience is likely active on social media. However, that doesn’t mean your content will be relevant to them as they use each platform differently. To inform your planning, begin by segmenting your audiences on the basis of demographics. It may turn out that it is beneficial to focus on certain audiences with social media — or with any given platform.
• Step 2: Locate your customers on social media. Research which channels and information sources your target audience uses most often and where they are actively engaged in conversations. Customer personas, journey maps, and even your sales teams are good sources for initial insight alongside online research. Consider conducting searches on social networks for mentions of your brand, industry, and competitors. Armed with this research, you can begin to align your audience to the networks they use to focus your social initiatives.
• Step 3: Craft a content strategy. Social marketers who depend wholly on organic content (essentially, free advertising) struggle to find measurable success. Paid advertising is a must to consistently drive reach and engagement on social media, especially if you know how to capture your audience’s attention with content. Social media is a conversational medium — it’s important to serve up a dialogue that will create value for everyone involved. Here are some high-level principles to keep in mind:
  • Take advantage of the instant feedback on your content and messaging that social media permits.
  • Assess your brand’s ability to respond to consumer needs in real-time.
  • Use performance data to iterate and optimize your content.
  • Curate your content (and the format) based on customer expectations of the network they’re using. Social requires a lot of content.
  • Build a robust pipeline, and incorporate influencer and user-generated content into the mix.
  • Aim to teach, not sell.