Piece Together the DTC Marketing Puzzle

Communicate effectively to consumers across multi-platforms.

By Elaine Mann

Multi-platform marketing to consumers is much like fitting together the pieces of an intricate jigsaw puzzle. Each platform piece has common edges but the entire puzzle must lock together to create a smooth surface revealing the overall marketing picture to the buyer. In today’s world, information is gathered and disseminated at Internet speed. Marketing a single product requires an approach from multiple angles. Consumers get information from print, television, billboards (both static and electronic), the Internet, and digital out-of-home broadcast networks—sometimes almost simultaneously. So how can you piece together the puzzle of multi-platform marketing to most effectively distribute your marketing message?

If you’re like most jigsaw builders, you begin by defining the outside edges of the puzzle and then filling in the middle. As you add to the puzzle piece by piece, it becomes more substantial. The branding of your message is the smooth outside edge that defines the overall shape of your multi-platform marketing puzzle. Pick one recurring idea or theme to brand your marketing campaign that can be easily identified whether the viewer is seeing one of your static or active advertisements. That could be a slogan, a central figure, or a logo associated with that brand. Branding your campaign is the all-important defining edge to your multi-platform marketing puzzle.

Once you have the brand logo, slogan, or theme in place, you now must reach the audience with your message. The three important pieces for drawing in your audience are engagement, education, and entertainment. To most effectively reach your target audience, all three puzzle pieces must fit into place.

First, you must engage your audience. If you don’t grab their attention, they’re never going to notice your product. Engaging the viewer or reader may be the most difficult piece of the puzzle to fit. Your audience is made up of busy people with even busier lives. They’re distracted. They’re multi-tasking. Getting even a few seconds of their undivided attention is asking a lot. And you’re only going to have a few seconds to gain their attention. Use that precious time wisely. You can do that by ensuring that your engagement puzzle piece has two significant notches on it—relevance and retention.

To engage viewers, you need to establish relevance by addressing their emotional needs. Discover what it is that your audience is dealing with on a daily basis. Then use that information to make an emotional connection. If they’re parents of school-age children, for instance, that may be never-ending colds and allergies. Or it may be gearing up for school athletics. Or searching for inexpensive ways to feed their family nutritious meals on a restricted budget. Regardless of what that emotional need is, engage your viewers by choosing a message that demonstrates relevance for your product in their lives. Make your product the answer to what they’ve been searching for.

But how will you know what your particular audience is searching for? Three simple words—know your audience. Getting out among the general masses will tell you more about your audience than anything else you can do. Talk to the users of your products. Let them tell you the need it fulfills for them. You can use a blography, you can review the literature that your audience currently reads, or you can chat up friends who use similar products. The people on the “front lines” are the best resource for finding out what makes your audience tick. Make your sales pitch, your brand, and most important, your message fit their need. Connecting with your audience will help to establish a need for your product and show them your product’s relevance as the answer to their need.

But how can you convince your audience that they need your product? Shoppers are more savvy than they were in the past. There was a time when you could simply tell a consumer that they had to have your product to “keep up with the Joneses.” Those days are over. There are too many competing brands out there. And, with the current economy, your audience wants to feel they’re getting the most bang for their buck. Today’s buyers are computer literate and will conduct their own online research before making a buying decision for themselves or, most especially, for their family. But in all honesty, they don’t have time to do research. Do the research for them! Find your edge, find your niche, establish your brand—make that vital connection to your audience.

Then use that connection to drive your message home. Your research has shown you why your audience needs your particular product. Now you’ll need to identify the levels of your multi-platform marketing campaign that will best reach your buyers at or near their point-of-purchase. You may not be able to distinguish which piece of the marketing campaign drove the buyer to purchase your product. And it may not be just one part of the campaign. This is why consistency of your message across the platforms is so important. Repeat the driving factor for purchase that your research has revealed, over and over again, throughout the various phases of your multi-platform marketing campaign. Repetition of your product brand along with the targeted message will develop retention in your buyer’s mind. Click, the engagement piece has just filled in part of the picture in your overall multi-platform marketing puzzle.

Now that you have their attention, use this advantage to educate them. You have them engaged, but you have only a few seconds to demonstrate the intensity of their need for your product. Use your research. Show them why nine out of ten users choose your product—not just the fact that most people choose your product, but the reason why. Perhaps your audience could have done the same research that you have—participated in blogs, talked to their friends, or read up on the product. But you come through like the knight in shining armor for giving them back a few minutes of that most precious commodity—their time. In doing the research for them, you can show them why they should use your product versus your competitor’s.

Not that you should smear your competitors. Very simply, you must have a niche, something that makes your product attain market share, in order to compete with the other brands that serve the same audience. Use your competitive advantages to make that connection with your buying audience. Tell them why they will benefit from your product versus all the other brands on the market. Use your research to discover your niche, and then educate your audience in a way that drives home the message. If you know and serve your audience, they’ll recognize their “need” for your particular product and return to your brand time after time.

Finally, your best bet to engage and educate is by entertaining. After all, no one wants to feel like they’re back in school. With the channel-surfing and ad-skimming capabilities of TiVos and DVRs, entertainment is an absolutely vital puzzle piece. We know we have to engage and educate our audience. What can we do to entertain them at the same time?

Entertainment is that all-important last piece of the puzzle you can’t wait to drop in. You look forward to reaching that point, knowing the puzzle is about to be complete. Entertainment affects viewer retention first and foremost. We’re all on brain overload. Information-driven as we are, the outside stimuli are almost never-ending. Providing a bit of relief through entertainment will enhance the engagement level and if done right, assure retention.

Viewers will remember an ad, no matter where they see it, when it not only engages and educates them but provides just a moment of entertainment. The entertainment value should be congruent with your message. There are many types of entertainment—shock, horror, and comedy, among others. Gear the entertainment value to your viewer’s level. For instance, don’t use small children to advertise liquor. Don’t use images of roadkill to advertise flea collars. And don’t fill your ad with cheerful actors to show the devastating effects of a disease. Use the entertainment value of your message to enhance the audience’s need for your product. Show playfully cute puppies to advertise your flea collar. Play on your audience’s sympathy for a product that cures an illness or disease. Find the entertainment value in your brand, and then use that message over and over again throughout your static and live commercials. Place that entertainment piece in your multi-platform jigsaw, and your puzzle will be complete.

Successful advertising across multi-platforms demands three interlocking puzzle pieces—engagement, education, and entertainment—to complete the overall picture of the branded message for your audience. In only a few seconds, you have to engage your buyers’ attention at a time that they’re probably distracted by family, jobs, and an endless to-do list. Once you’ve captured their attention, educate them to the advantages of your product so they don’t have to take the time to educate themselves. And finally, entertain them so they retain your message as they head out to the grocery, pharmacy, or major retail store. Shoppers don’t want to feel like they’re being sold to. Use your multi-platform marketing puzzle pieces to offer an engaging, informative, entertaining message that highlights your brand as the answer to complete the buyer’s overall purchasing puzzle.

Elaine Mann is Director of Corporate Communications for CARE Media Television Networks, a digital out-of-home broadcast corporation delivering advertiser-supported healthcare education to viewers across the U.S. through KidCARE Pediatric, Women’s HealthCARE OB/GYN, and PetCARE Veterinary Networks. To reach her, or for further information about CARE Media, please visit caremediatv.com.