Multi-Channel Marketing Strategy
Do you still depend on marketing strategies that focus all your efforts on a single marketing channel? If yes, you could be running terribly behind your competition in innovative marketing. Today, almost all major companies have given up on single-channel marketing campaigns. It is because the average customer no longer sticks to a single channel. They constantly switch between communication channels for their social and professional interactions.
Hence, most companies now prefer to use a multi-channel approach to their marketing campaigns. However, many businesses are still unaware or under-informed on what is multi-channel strategy.
If you are one of them, then this article is for you. Also, if you want to know more about multi-channel marketing strategies and how you can successfully implement one, you should keep on reading.
What is a Multi-Channel Marketing Strategy?
A multi-channel marketing strategy involves combining different distribution and promotional channels to attract more customers. It is one of the most effective ways for brands to communicate the value of a product or service they are selling.
Companies can intelligently use the strengths of different marketing channels to appeal to a diverse audience. One of the most attractive advantages of using multiple channels for your marketing strategy is using both online and offline channels.
Some of the major marketing channels used in multi-channel marketing include:
- Social Media
- Display Ads
- Direct Mail
However, multi-channel campaigns are not limited to these channels. Depending on the size of the target audience, customer demographics, and various other factors, you can add or remove the communication channels in your campaigns.
Furthermore, companies can have more than one distribution channel. For example, a business can sell its products on its website and in a brick-and-mortar store. Additionally, a company may also have several retail sellers to sell its products.
What Are The Benefits Of Multi-Channel Marketing Systems?
There are numerous advantages of using a multi-channel marketing strategy for your business. Here is how a multi-channel marketing strategy can help your business succeed.
#1 Expand The Reach Of Your Marketing Campaigns
As you can imagine using a multi-channel marketing campaign can reach a wider audience than using a single channel. When you increase the number of marketing channels, you effectively increase the engagements.
Furthermore, you can reach diverse audiences through different channels. For example, marketing the product on social media can help you target younger audiences. But, if you also want to target older audiences, you can use print media marketing channels such as newspapers, brochures, etc.
#2 Boost Engagement
Multi-channel marketing campaigns often have a wider audience, and this effect leads to higher engagement. With a single-channel marketing campaign such as email marketing, you can only get to a limited number of people. Furthermore, there are always customers who do not even open marketing emails.
The higher number of customer touchpoints means that the customer may respond to at least one of your marketing channels. However, you need to accurately target your multi-channel marketing campaigns to get the desired response.
#3 Use The Preferred Channel Of The Customers To Reach Them
When you use a single channel for marketing your products and services, you limit your campaign’s reach. Your target audience may interact with various channels every day. Some may regularly check their email while others regularly check their social media. Apart from this, there are some who do not check their email or social media for a long time.
The key is to figure out which channels are preferred by your target audience. Once you know that, you can include that channel in your multi-channel marketing campaign. In other words, you can categorize your target audience and meet them where they are.
The categorization of your target audience can be based on past interactions too. For example, let’s say that a prospect showed interest in your product by commenting on one of your social media posts. Here, you can pitch them with direct mail, including a brochure that explains the product’s unique features and even offers them a discount. Such interactions have a higher chance of conversion than others.
#4 Combining Channels Leads To More Effective Campaigns
Combining different channels and tying them together can often make it more effective when it comes to marketing. As you combine various marketing channels, you get the opportunity to create more impactful messages.
It shows the prospects that you are mindful of their customer journey. You can even mix and match different marketing channels to get better results for your campaigns. For example, let’s consider the combination of direct mail and the business website.
As far as marketing channels are concerned, direct mail has one of the best open and response rates you can find. You can use direct mail to pitch an attractive sale on your website and provide a QR code that takes them to your website.
It ensures the best outcome for your business marketing by combining the best aspects of the direct mail and online web store. Direct mail helps you boost your engagement, and the website gives the user a convenient way to make a purchase.
Also Read: Go To Market Strategies
Challenges In Implementing Multi-Channel Marketing Campaigns
As with any advanced marketing method, multi-channel marketing also comes with its fair share of challenges. Listed below are some of the challenges you should expect if you are thinking about implementing a multi-channel marketing campaign.
Efficient Management Take Time And Effort
The minimum investment required for any marketing campaign is time and effort regardless of the channel you use. So, when you add more and more marketing channels into the mix, it becomes increasingly difficult to track and manage your campaign.
In other words, the more channels you integrate into your multi-channel marketing campaign, the more management it requires. One of the ways you can overcome this challenge is to maximize data sharing and cross-communication between departments.
You can also use automated solutions to manage your marketing campaigns effortlessly. For example, PostGrid is a tool you can use to automate your direct mail process fully. Such software solutions save you valuable time and effort.
Lack Of Efficient Marketing Attribution
As the number of marketing channels increases, tracking which specific message or channel triggered a customer response becomes increasingly tricky. And, if you can’t track the response of your marketing campaigns, you can not optimize them either.
The best way to get around this challenge is to adopt an attribution model. Some of the popular attribution models that businesses use are as follows:
- Multi-Touch Attribution (MTA)
- Media Mix Modeling (MMM)
- Unified Marketing Measurement
Difficulties In Leveraging Analytics Data
The success of any marketing campaign is dependent on quality analytics data. When you implement a multi-channel marketing campaign, it is not so easy to access quality analytics data. Businesses often have trouble leveraging customer data, and it is even harder to add it to existing customer profiles.
Marketers implementing a multi-channel marketing campaign usually find its analytics side most challenging for the first time. Some even give up on their multi-channel marketing at this point. The only way around this challenge is to develop the necessary skills and use advanced analytics programs.
Advanced analytic software can help you to simplify the analytics data. However, businesses still need to have the expertise to analyze these data and optimize the campaign effectively.
Difficulties In Staying Updated With New Innovations
Another challenge involved in multi-channel marketing campaigns is keeping up with innovations. As the name suggests, multi-channel marketing depends on multiple channels for marketing. Then, what happens when the marketing channels themselves are entirely new to the marketer?
Today, innovation travels at the speed of light and marketers struggle to keep up with it. Take Smart TVs and watches, for example. These devices that did not exist a decade ago and now are a part of our day-to-day lives.
Whenever an innovation hits the market, it requires a whole new marketing approach, which can be challenging to marketers.
It Is Hard To Maintain Proper Targeting Of Messages
Multi-channel marketing is a process that involves targeting the same audience via different channels. Therefore, businesses must maintain some extent of consistency in their marketing messages. You don’t have to use the exact wording on every marketing channel, but you might want to ensure the targeting is correct.
The multi-channel message should stick with a specific customer demographic and psychographics. You don’t want to show a customer an ad for men’s sunglasses on Facebook and women’s apparel on Instagram.
Additionally, you should consider the customer’s purchase history if there is one to target your multi-channel campaign better.
How To Create A Successful Multi-Marketing Campaign?
As multi-channel campaigns are more complex than single-channel campaigns, you need to consider a few things. Listed below are some steps to help you create a successful multi-channel marketing campaign.
Step 1: Break Down Organizational Silos For Better Communication
Organizational silos may be ideal for breaking up the tasks inside an organization and completing them separately. But, there is a downside to organizational silos: disruption in an organization’s internal communication.
People in a particular department confine themselves, and there is little to no communication with other departments. Although the silos themselves need not be destroyed, the communication gap between them must be eliminated. By doing so, you can create a unified messaging that perfectly aligns with the relevant channels.
Step 2: Make Use of Multi-Channel Marketing Platforms
For creating a successful multi-channel marketing strategy, you need to invest in a good measurement and optimization platform. It enables you to do multiple campaigns across various channels. But more, importantly it does so while updating every relevant department with the latest tracking data.
These platforms provide you with advanced analytics when it comes to the optimization part. You can use this marketing analytics data for identifying and evaluating the customer’s purchase journey. Hence, you can create an optimized multi-channel marketing strategy with the help of such platforms.
Step 3: Understand The Target Audience
Understanding the target audience is crucial for the success of your multi-channel marketing campaigns. For businesses, understanding the audience is more crucial in multi-channel marketing than in single-channel marketing.
Gather extensive data on your target audience through a detailed analysis and market research. It would be best to create an accurate buyer persona for targeting a smaller segment of the target audience. Using methods like AB testing can further help you understand the audience and what they are looking for in a marketing campaign.
Step 4: Try Creating Consistent Messaging Across All Channels
Customers tend to remember brands that are consistent in their messaging compared to those that are not. However, that does not mean you can copy-paste the same message across your marketing platforms.
The key is to use a consistent brand image and tone across your messaging. Targeting also plays a vital part in maintaining consistency in your messaging. Hence, you should make sure that you use the right brand image, tone, and proper targeting in multiple channels.
Conclusion
Many businesses out there are still not aware of what is a multi-channel marketing strategy. It is high time that these businesses understand the benefits of a multi-channel marketing system and use it for their business.
Implementing multi-channel marketing can be challenging for businesses unless they are adequately prepared for it. Luckily there are advanced tools available in the market that can make multi-channel marketing easier for businesses.
For example, you can use an automated direct mail tool like PostGrid to automate your direct mail channel for business communication fully. You can personalize, print, and deliver bulk mail with the click of a button using PostGrid. Furthermore, such tools also offer advanced analytics and tracking features.
Similarly, you can use advanced software solutions to automate your other communication channels. Employing such advanced solutions will help you create a consistent and optimized multi-channel marketing strategy for your business.
