An introduction to marketing orchestration

Marketing Orchestration is an approach that focuses not on delivering standalone campaigns, but on optimizing a set of related cross-channel interactions that, when added together, make up a personalized customer experience. Contrary to what “best practice” dictates, orchestration isn’t a matter of adopting more tactics.

If you’ve ever experienced Mozart’s Don Giovanni, you can appreciate the power of a well-orchestrated performance. Full instrumentation, modulated dynamics and dramatic lyrical structures in this masterwork classic bring the story to life for audiences in a tremendously impactful way.

To achieve a well-orchestrated experience, I suggest marketers explore the elements that composers and conductors use in their performances. Here are five elements of orchestration and an explanation of how they can be applied to marketing experiences.

Score is your brand

Brand represents the core of your marketing activities. In both music and marketing, the score is the guide and unifying force pulling every action into a coherent experience. Digital hasn’t changed the concept of brand, but it has changed brand strategy and activation, primarily through natively-digital brand expression and brand-integrated content.

Digital brand expression moves beyond logos, colors and fonts into UI patterns, motion and animations, transitions, video and interactive content — meaning digital is at the center of design. Integrating brand associations into content is more than editing, it’s crucial. The more your content gets shared, the less control you have over your message or the context its being put in. We call this process Brand Fade, and it can be detrimental to creating a consistent brand story across channels.

Tactics are your instruments

Similar to how the same notes can be played by many different instruments, the same content can be deployed across many channels. Good orchestrators (re: marketers) know the voice of each instrument, choose which instruments to employ and how many to assemble. This can be especially difficult as new channels and tactics continue to emerge, requiring strategic evaluation of each and every addition.

Variety gives you dynamics

Dynamics refers to how volume is applied — good marketing orchestrators don’t amplify everything; they use modulation and variety to retain interest. Amplification can mean different things depending on product or industry, but it generally refers to ensuring your marketing efforts are heard loudly and widely. Enter the cannonball, a.k.a. “the Big Campaign.” For B2B marketers, this is often a key campaign centered around a piece of thought leadership or other valuable content that requires a lot of work and promotion. Although effective, it’s important to build a variety of content, in a wide range of formats, to help fill gaps and retain interest.

Cadence Keeps You On Beat

This is all about timing and allows multiple performers to play together. Top marketers keep the beat by documenting an editorial calendar, which helps plan the what, when and where of content distribution. Calendars also help organize channels, topics, timing, formats and workflow.

Audiences become users

Digital is inherently participatory, a shift from the traditional “audiences” marketers focus on. Digital demands that you offer your users a specific role to play. User participation has a tendency to make marketers nervous or anxious — the dreaded Internet troll is usually the first thing that comes to mind. User participation is more than calls-to-action like “drop a comment below” or “let us know what you think.” These kinds of false “participation” lend themselves to critique. True participation relies on shared goals and purpose; newer models for digital user participation are more structured, guided and let the user truly become part of the brand experience.