The Power of Multi-Channel Marketing

Today’s businesses are presented with a variety of tools and channels that will help market their brand in the most effective way possible. However with so many options to consider, choosing the right platform for your brand can be quite a challenge. As a matter of fact, companies tend to do “trial and error” when it comes to assessing which marketing channel helps in meeting their goals. And we both know that this process consumes a lot of time and resources.

Did you know that you can use these multitudes of marketing channels to your advantage? Through a multi-channel marketing approach, businesses can promote brand awareness using all of the marketing channels at their disposal.

What is Multi-Channel Marketing?

In a nutshell, multi-channel marketing employs a variety of marketing platforms to resonate your company’s message and market your brand. Some of these channels include email, social media, SEO, SEM, content marketing, websites, print ad, and word-of-mouth, among others.

The ultimate goal of multi-channel marketing is to connect to the right audience. Since an average consumer uses at least four devices to access the Internet, it is a must for a business to keep in touch with the customer using a multi-channel approach. When done right, multi-channel marketing can do wonders for your brand. Some of these are as follows:

Benefits of Multi-Channel Marketing

1. Reach more people across different channels

Customers nowadays utilise different channels and media when connecting to the Internet. If your business only uses one channel to get its message across, then you are hitting a small fraction of your target market’s online interactions.

They are also said to be more responsive when reached using different channels. By identifying their preferred channel, you can drastically increase the response rates, and ultimately, boost your campaign.

Multi-channel marketing also allows businesses to repeat their advertisements to the audience with a variety. Studies show that our brain are wired to overlook most marketing pitches, echoing your message over and over again across multiple channels will grab your customer’s attention.

2. Mimics your customer’s behavior

Multi-channel marketing uniquely tailors your marketing efforts to the right audience at the most desirable place and time. Since this approach mimics your customers’ behavior, it lets you hit your target audience at exactly when and where they can be reached.

For instance, a report from Omni Channel Retail shows that 67% of millennials shop while in bed, 32% of parents shop while in the bathroom, and 21% of men shop while in the car. Since no single marketing channel will work for each market, multi-channel marketing can respond to all these scenarios and still market your brand effectively.

3. Highlights your sales funnel

An online purchase tool from Google illustrates that the customer’s journey before making a purchase is fragmented. In fact, their journey starts with social media, which plays an early role into goading them to patronize your brand. This is followed by their interactions with ads, organic searches, referrals, and emails.

As you can see, a customer shifts from one platform to another prior to making a purchase. Through multi-channel marketing, businesses can implement an approach that focuses on the holistic way your market behaves, and matches it with marketing activities that involve all these channels.

4. Presents a mobile-first perspective

Mobile use among your audience is one of the factors why the customer’s purchasing journey is fragmented. A statistic from StatCounter shows that consumers prefer using mobile phones and tablets rather than desktops when making Internet searches. Since more online queries are being done through mobile phones; hence, the surge in mobile conversion rates, businesses should quickly adapt to this trend.

But, how? One way is to improve your mobile page speed. Studies show that 74% of your visitors will switch to other websites if your page does not load within five seconds. This perspective is changed by multi-channel marketing. If you’re going to look back at the customer’s purchasing journey, mobile use influences when and where your customers make a purchase. This is what multi-channel marketing will focus on.

 5. Unifies your message

We’ve already established that people respond to different channels before starting their purchasing decision. Multi-channel marketing helps in unifying your brand message. This ensures that your customer will have a user experience that is consonant to all platforms, stimuli, and devices.

One common pitfall among businesses is that they tend to implement a blanket approach that highlights a message that is intended for all its audiences. Since it lacks a personal touch, visitors are thwarted to show an interest to your brand or see the benefits of using your products or services. Bottom line: Businesses need to properly align their message with the multiple platforms they are using.

6. Wins over banner blindness

According to Infolinks, 86% of online users are banner blind. To simply put, most people will avoid an ad banner or anything that looks like an advertisement when browsing the Internet. That’s something you should be concerned about, especially if you depend mostly on ad banners in increasing brand awareness. The proliferation of ad blocking technologies and systems further exacerbate this problem.

This is where multi-channel marketing comes into play. This approach presents a wide opportunity to reach more customers and achieve growth without relying that much with banner adverts. You can either bolster your marketing efforts using these various platforms, or completely overcome banner blindness by ditching this strategy.

7. Targets specific prospects rather than spray-and-pray

Spray-and-pray is when you implement unique strategies in different channels, and then pray that it will work. An example of which is traditional marketing. Instead of falling in this trap, multi-channel marketing will help focus your efforts on specific people ahead of time, and then work on those accounts until you converted your leads into sales.

For example, Funnelholic was able to triple its lead reply rates by merging outbound sales and your conventional marketing channels. Multi-channel marketing empowers businesses to focus on a specific audience and perform better account-based marketing strategies.

Choosing the Right Marketing Channel

In any marketing campaign, one thing’s for sure: There’s no one-size-fits-all strategy. That said, there are three questions that will help you decide which marketing platform(s) to go for.

1. Who is your target market?

When trying to visualise who your target customers will be, it is important to identify their profiles in succession. The following questions may help you in distinguishing the profile of your target market:

• What age bracket do they fall under?
• What is their relationship status?
• Do they have children?
• What is the nature of their work?
• What are their spending habits?

You have to take note that the more defined the sketch of your market is, the higher is the likelihood of matching them with the perfect marketing channel. In doing so, businesses can create buyer personas. Moreover, since your customer profile will serve as the foundation for the remaining two questions, it is a must that you work on it thoroughly and properly.

2. Where can you find your customers?

This does not refer to the actual geographic location of your market, but to your customer’s online “scene.” By putting yourself in the shoes of your customers and using the right technology, you can pinpoint where your target market or people like them convene or “hang out.”

Based on the buyer persona you created, which shows your customer’s preferences and online behavior, you can search like-minded communities using multiple platforms.

3. What’s the perfect marketing channel to reach them?

As mentioned earlier, different people respond to various stimuli. You can opt for online marketing, such as SEO, content marketing, and social media marketing, and/or the traditional media like newspaper and print ad. It all boils down to the message you want to convey and the goals you want to achieve.

For instance, Facebook Ads offer quite a few options when selecting your objective. Say you’re in a hospitality business, you can engage your target customers with a free accommodation or drinks for new customers. Now that you’ve specified your objective, you can now identify the profile of your target market.

BONUS: The multi-channel customer service

Your company can only maximise the benefits of multi-channel marketing if you have a structured multi-channel customer service to address the concerns and queries of the customers. Having said that, your customer service experience should be consistent across all channels. In addition, your market should not switch to a different platform just so they can reach you.

In doing a multi-channel customer service, businesses can opt to use email, live chat, help desk, and social media.

How We Can Help You

As a full-service digital marketing agency, Visual Marketing Australia can effectively set up a multi-channel marketing strategy for your business. To get to know more about our digital marketing solutions, contact us today for a FREE no obligation consultation.