A CMO’s View: How Wix.com’s #ItsThatEasy Super Bowl Campaign Makes Multichannel Marketing Look…Easy

CMO Omer Shai shares the vision that drove his brand's first ever Super Bowl appearance and the multichannel strategy behind it.

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Wix.com it's that easy
This year’s list of Super Bowl advertisers included first-timer Wix.com, an Israel-based website building platform that boasts more than 60 million users worldwide.

The brand took full-advantage of its Super Bowl appearance, putting in motion a comprehensive multichannel marketing campaign that went well beyond the 30-second television ad that ran during the game.

“We felt it was the right time for the company, brand and product,” says Wix.com CMO Omer Shai who joined Wix.com in 2008.

[pullquote]Part of our vision was a Super Bowl campaign, not spot.[/pullquote]

In addition to its Super Bowl spot, Wix.com’s #ItsThatEasy campaign included 26 pre-game teaser ads, along with content spread across sixteen different social accounts.

From his office in Tel Aviv, Shai told me over a Skype call how the brand had been planning this year’s Super Bowl campaign since first quarter of 2014, “Part of our vision was a Super Bowl campaign – not spot.”

As the first Isreal-owned Internet company to become a Super Bowl advertiser, Shai believes it was a great opportunity to show the brand’s strengths. It also turned out to be a phenomenal display of its CMO’s ability to implement a truly multichannel marketing program.

Leading all of Wix.com’s branding, marketing, advertising and user acquisition efforts, Shai plays a critical part in the company’s unique development structure, where each member of management serves as an advisor to teams developing core products.

In today’s CMO spotlight interview, Shai shares his thoughts on what it takes to build a multichannel marketing strategy and how his vision shaped the brand’s #ItsThatEasy Super Bowl campaign.

How Wix.com CMO Omer Shai Makes Multichannel Marketing Look #ThatEasy

Get To Know:

Omer Shai

CMO @ Wix.com

Takeaways:

  • Appreciate the unique attributes of each platform and tailor your content for these different channels. Great content isn’t just about the quality of what you produce, but also about the fit for a given medium.
  • It’s so easy to forget your goals by getting caught up in what everyone else is doing. Focus your efforts on the specific targets that are going to help you improve and grow your business, and design strategies that maximize the likelihood of achieving these goals.
  • Taking risks is great, but timing them properly is even more important. We have been thinking about a Super Bowl ad for years and have been so excited to tackle this challenge, but we were patient enough to wait until the time was right for us to be able to maximize the opportunity.

Amy Gesenhues: How do you define multichannel marketing?

Omer Shai: For us, multichannel marketing is about developing a holistic approach that increases brand awareness and drives performance.

To maximize your marketing efforts, work across multiple channels that support each other and strengthen your message, while leveraging their core attributes and reaching a broader audience.

As an internet company we touch on all aspects of online marketing from search and display advertising, content marketing, social media, SEO, email marketing etc. We also run TV and radio advertising campaigns, a wide variety of offline activities and more.

Adapting the creative and messaging to the different channels is critical, and while they may differ from one channel to the next, they must all support the core brand vision.

Amy Gesenhues: What is Wix.com’s “core vision”?

Omer Shai: At our core, everything we do at Wix is about helping people tap into the power of the internet to turn their aspirations into realities.

We are committed to making sure that entrepreneurs around the world, regardless of their particular field, are given the tools necessary to build, grow and manage their ventures. It’s about creating tools that are visually stunning and powerful, while at the same time ensuring that it’s easy to use and maximize.

Amy Gesenhues: What lengths do you go to fully incorporate multichannel marketing practices?

Omer Shai: We live in a hyper-dynamic reality where new channels and marketing opportunities constantly present themselves, and what was the ideal combination yesterday may have already run its course today.

That’s why I think the best strategy is to always research, test and analyze in order to continue to expand your reach. And that’s exactly what we’ve been doing. When creating our campaigns, we start by identifying the specific goals we’re trying to achieve.

With that focus in mind it’s easier to assess which channels are the best match to help deliver on our goals. That said, nothing is written in stone; as campaigns progress we constantly change the mix between channels based on the results we’re seeing. Being flexible is key.

Amy Gesenhues: Are there any channels that have been more beneficial than others for Wix.com?

Omer Shai: The benefits of any channel are going to ebb and flow, and learning to identify trends ahead of time plays a huge role in maximizing marketing efforts.

The key is to really live within the data. Multichannel marketing demands that you accept that not every platform will drive the same type of result.

The goal isn’t to just be everywhere for the sake of checking a box – we’re constantly looking to create a balanced approach that allows us to create a complete marketing strategy that maximizes ROI.

Amy Gesenhues: What steps does Wix.com take to integrate its online and offline marketing efforts?

Omer Shai: It’s not enough to buy ad space online or offline – you have to find more than the message you’d like to convey, but also, the right ways to start and maintain a conversation.

We go beyond a simplistic “create a website” today type of message and offer both offline and online opportunities that bring added value to our target audience. For us, it is not enough simply to bring users to Wix.com to create a website, we want to continue to help them grow online.

To this end, we developed rich content across social channels, blogs and offline events that train users to leverage the web through our platform, as well as other online networks.

Amy Gesenhues: How did your multichannel marketing strategy play out during this year’s Super Bowl campaign?

Omer Shai: I think the Super Bowl campaign is a perfect example of our approach. For Wix, the ad that we aired during the Super Bowl was part of a much wider campaign.

The goal was to show just how easy it really is to build a website with Wix, and the best way to do that was to lead by example.

We wanted to leverage the web the same way a real small business owner would, so we built a complete web and social media presence for each of the fictional businesses introduced in our campaign.

wix.com minisite

This enabled us to communicate with the fans for weeks before the ad aired, and we were able to secure a high level of engagement through a gradual release of video teasers, photos, contests and more.

The Super Bowl allowed us to reach 120 million people – a staggering number – but we weren’t content with that. Our online efforts allowed us to push our content, and more than double that number – a result that proves the value of going multichannel.

Amy Gesenhues: Can you share any of your ROI from the Super Bowl campaign?

Omer Shai: A campaign of this magnitude takes time to completely manifest its results but we couldn’t be happier with our preliminary stats.

Views, engagement with our content, and the press coverage we were able to secure all exceeded our expectations and helped us further our goal of turning Wix.com into a household name.

Amy Gesenhues: Did the Super Bowl offer any particular insights on your multichannel marketing approach that you will carry into future efforts?

Omer Shai: Going in, we knew that we’d be fighting for viewers’ attention with some of the world’s top brands and that they’d bring their A-game. For us, it was all about developing a multi-layered campaign that will utilize every possible channel in order to really maximize engagement and exposure.

We ran an almost month-long campaign which supported the Super Bowl spot with exclusive content created for our digital channels. In addition to the TV ad we used social media, paid search, YouTube campaigns, email marketing, SEO and display to ensure that our message that #ItsThatEasy to create an online presence with Wix is conveyed through each content item or activity.

While we used the same methodology we use in all our marketing efforts, because of its massive scale and very dynamic nature, the Super Bowl campaign really helped us perfect our flow, connect the different departments and act on real-time opportunities.

Amy Gesenhues: What steps would you recommend for brands that are just beginning to build a multichannel marketing strategy?

Omer Shai: There isn’t a textbook answer here – it all goes back to researching, testing and analyzing.

Choose your main channels based on the goals you’re trying to achieve and on where you have the biggest chance of reaching your target audience.

Optimize constantly to effectively drive your audience towards the result you’re trying to achieve and be flexible and ready to quickly shift efforts from one channel mix to another based on performance.


Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily MarTech. Staff authors are listed here.


About the author

Amy Gesenhues
Contributor
Amy Gesenhues was a senior editor for Third Door Media, covering the latest news and updates for Marketing Land, Search Engine Land and MarTech Today. From 2009 to 2012, she was an award-winning syndicated columnist for a number of daily newspapers from New York to Texas. With more than ten years of marketing management experience, she has contributed to a variety of traditional and online publications, including MarketingProfs, SoftwareCEO, and Sales and Marketing Management Magazine. Read more of Amy's articles.

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