Creating A Compelling Story With Multi-Channel Marketing

Multi-channel marketing is the technique of reaching out to customers through several channels. Multi-channel marketing, also known as cross-channel marketing. Allows clients to complete desired conversions on whatever medium they are most comfortable with. Multi-channel marketing gives users an option, allowing them to make their own decisions.

In today’s current marketing period, a company can use a variety of methods to reach out to potential clients. These are some of the channels available:

Retail storefronts,
PPC and other online advertising,
Website (including content marketing/blogging),
Direct mail,
Email marketing,
Mail-order catalogs,
Mobile marketing,

What Is the Importance of Multi-Channel Marketing?

With the wide range of marketing channels available, your potential clients could be everywhere, and you need to be there to meet them. Designing multi-channel marketing campaigns will continue to be critical for attracting top-tier clients as the number of available marketing channels expands (and it will).

Multi-channel customers spend three to four times more than single-channel customers, according to research. Don’t allow those important users to fall between the cracks.

Bringing Different Channels Together

While multi-channel marketing is theoretically defined as merely marketing across several channels. The best success is achieved through the development of a unified cross-channel marketing strategy. This integrated strategy to marketing across several media leads potential customers along the sales funnel and encourages them to participate.

Although 72 percent of consumers favor an integrated marketing approach, some organizations are still afraid to engage in cross-channel marketing. The idea is to prevent a silo attitude, with all of your channel initiatives working together.

Which channels complement each other well?

Some channels complement one other better than others. Earlier this year, MediaPost published a survey that looked at the most common media pairings among Americans aged 18 to 64. The following were the most common multi-channel marketing combinations:

Computer / Mobile
TV / Mobile
Computer / TV
Radio / Mobile
Computer / Radio

During the day (9 a.m. – 5 p.m.), the most popular combination was Computer / Mobile, while in the evening (5 p.m. – 11 p.m.), TV / Mobile took the lead.

The research graph below isn’t very well done — it’s tough to comprehend – the top orange line represents Computer / Mobile, which peaks during the day and then gives way to the blue line, which represents TV / Mobile at night. It’s worth noting that weekend evenings are the quietest time for the Computer/Mobile coupling.

As we can see, a consumer’s life is filled with a lot of multi-device activity. The easiest approach to take advantage of these developments is to use multi-channel marketing.

Multi-Channel Marketing’s Advantages

Pay Closer Attention: You’ll receive more clients and brand recognition if you have your foot in so many doors. Investing in one channel can boost interest in your company across the board; for example, we discovered that advertising on YouTube can boost normal Google searches for your brand name by 420 percent!

Customers are free to use their preferred medium: Giving customers a choice in how they communicate with your company allows them to use the medium that they are most comfortable with, boosting the likelihood of completed conversions.
More TouchPoints: The more touchpoints you have in your marketing funnel, the more data you can collect. This information can aid in the development of a better knowledge of where your promotions are most effective and the measurement of your success.
Your Brand Remains Consistent: Because you’re in charge of your company’s reputation in all areas, multi-channel marketing allows you to keep your brand consistent across mediums.

Multi-Channel Marketing Challenges

While providing clients with many means and channels through which to communicate with your company is a huge benefit, there are certain disadvantages:

Your Company May Prefer a Specific Channel: Your company may prefer a specific medium, but with multi-channel marketing, you lose control of funneling visitors to that medium. A competent salesman, for example, can usually get more sales over the phone than a website can by encouraging cross-sales. Many people prefer to place their orders online, but will phone sales result in higher conversions?
More Moving Parts to Manage: Trying to harness your plethora of mediums can feel overwhelming with so many channels and so little time. Multi-channel marketing success also entails managing cross-promotions and utilizing integrated marketing to ensure that diverse channels function in concert. That isn’t a simple process to coordinate!
Increased Time & Expense: Because there’s so much more to manage with multi-channel marketing, you’ll probably need to commit more time to it, and you might even need to hire more people.

How to Be a Multi-Channel Marketing Success?

Your Channels Shouldn’t Be Segregated: Using integrated marketing, where diverse channels complement each other, you can coordinate cross-promotional efforts.
Create Control Groups: To see if your multichannel marketing efforts are effective, create control groups that don’t get the multichannel promotion. This will allow you to better assess the effectiveness of your marketing.
Generate a Large Number of TouchPoints: As previously said, one of the benefits of multichannel marketing is the opportunity to create a large number of touchpoints, which subsequently provide more data that can be used to influence future marketing efforts. Social media, polls, email newsletters, and mail-in items are all examples of touchpoints.
Recognize Your Target Market: What marketing channels will be most effective for your company? What is the most common place where your target audience spends the majority of their time? This knowledge should have a significant impact on your multichannel marketing strategy.