Multi-channel marketing campaigns

7 min read

As a marketer, it’s your job to be where your customers are. Today, they are everywhere. 

In the modern world, customers have much more control over the buying process than marketers do. This is because customers have more choice than ever before when it comes to deciding how they acquire information and make decisions.

Ultimately, multi-channel campaigning is all about choice. It allows your customer to choose how and when they interact with you at every stage of their journey.

Multi-channel marketing strategies that apply across the customer journey will improve results. This is because multi-channel marketing amplifies both your campaign’s frequency and its reach. As a result, your messaging is more effective. In fact, one particular study claims that multi-channel customers spend two to five times more than single-channel customers.

What is multi-channel marketing?

Multi-channel campaigns involve marketing to prospects and customers across several different channels, including both online and offline options.

While traditional marketing methods involve running a single marketing campaign (such as an email marketing campaign), multi-channel marketing efforts interact with customers using a combination of both direct and indirect communication channels. This includes websites, stores, direct mail, email and social media platforms. All of the marketing activity happens simultaneously, and the individual campaigns are linked together.

Multi-channel marketing combines the principles of inbound and outbound marketing. The goal is to reach customers on the channel of their choice. Successful multi-channel marketers spend time identifying the channels their customers use regularly. They also research how their target customers move from one channel to another. In doing this, they create a harmonious experience across lots of different touchpoints.

Due to this, multi-channel marketing campaigns seek to establish a brand’s presence across all of these touchpoints. But, success isn’t measured by establishing a mere presence on these platforms. Instead, to succeed across the customer journey, marketers must:

• Choose channels that will maximise their brand reach
• Effectively communicate a message that resonates with a target buyer
• Stay consistent within that brand message across channels
• Achieve high levels of engagement with customers
• Ensure the customer experience is excellent

Benefits of multi-channel marketing campaigns

For marketers, multi-channel campaigning provides several advantages.

Firstly, with multi-channel marketing, you can establish exactly where your customers are. As an added bonus, not only can you find out where they spend time online, but you can also identify exactly where your best-performing customers are. Using this information, you can target these buyers relentlessly.

But, as a marketer, you’ll also experience other benefits from multi-channel campaigning, including:

More attention for your brand

With a presence on a greater number of platforms, you’ll receive greater brand recognition. This is partially because investing in one channel can increase interest in your business through other channels. For example, one study found that advertising on YouTube can increase Google searches for your brand name by 420%.

Customers can interact on their favourite medium or platform

By advertising on different mediums and platforms, you give your customers a choice in exactly how they interact with your business. This means that they can use the medium they are most comfortable with.

As well as providing your customers with a clear benefit, this also means that you’re likely to see an increase in completed conversions.

More data for your business to use

When you run campaigns on multiple channels, you have more touchpoints in your marketing funnel. This allows you to collect even more data about your customers that you can use to inform future campaigns.

You can also use this data to develop a better understanding of where your promotions work best and how you can accurately measure the success of your campaigns.

Why multi-channel marketing campaigns are important to the buyer’s journey

Multi-channel marketing campaigns are incredibly useful because you can align your content with a specific buyer’s journey. Remember, each customer’s journey is different. As a result, you need to treat each customer differently.

Due to this, for your multi-channel campaign to be successful, you need to design content specifically for individuals based on their consumer habits. You’ll also need to ensure that you have content that aligns with all buyer journeys.

For example, if a customer abandons their cart, then you can automatically send out an email to them that includes a discount code. Similarly, when a customer makes a purchase with you, then you can send them a thank you email that includes a discount on their next purchase. By doing this, not only are you luring different customers back to your website, but you’re also getting them to engage with your content on a different channel.

In addition to this, never underestimate the role that personalisation can play in this process. After all, treating people like humans is crucial for winning the business of potential customers. So, ensure that your content gives people personalised recommendations that are appropriate for them.

Multi-channel campaign efficiencies

Although providing customers with multiple ways to interact with your business offers you numerous advantages, there are some drawbacks to the process. These include the fact that your business may suit one channel more than it suits others. In addition to this, you’ll also have more moving parts to manage, and you’ll have to devote more time and resources to your marketing efforts.

However, if you actively take steps to make your multi-channel marketing more efficient, you can lessen these concerns and ensure that your campaign is as effective as possible. To do this, you should:

Have clear and defined buyer personas

Having a clearly defined buyer persona (or buyer personas) that outline specific details about your ideal buyer(s) is essential. This is because the information will help you decide which channels you should concentrate your efforts on, and what kind of tone and message will resonate with your ideal buyer.

These personas should be driven by data you have and any market research you conduct. By generating feedback from your current customers, you can also improve your understanding of what they expect from your product and service. By having a 360-degree view of the customer, you’ll be able to generate more marketing opportunities and create a more personalised experience.

When complete, your buyer personas should outline which channels the target customer prefers to use and what advertisements they tend to engage with. They should also include relevant demographic information.

Choose the best channels to target

Although multi-channel campaigning involves targeting customers on multiple platforms, you still need to be selective about which of these are best suited to your campaign.

Of course, if you could campaign on every channel, then you undoubtedly would. However, running an effective multi-channel campaign is costly. With each channel you include in the strategy, you’re investing even more time and money in the campaign. This is because you’ll need to craft a strategy, produce content, and pay for ads or sponsored placement on each channel. You’ll also need to tailor your content for each of your chosen channels so that it appears meaningful and trustworthy.

This is why you need to decide which channels to target. Depending on the goals of your campaign and your buyer personas, you’ll find that some channels make more sense to target than others. When resources permit, you can then experiment with new channels and see whether they provide ROI.

Create singular messages for personas and channels

With multi-channel marketing, it’s vital that you have a cohesive experience across channels. If not, your audience will likely be jarred or confused when they switch from one platform to another.

As a result, you need to ensure that different departments aren’t working in silos. Each team member needs to fully understand the personas you’re targeting and the message you’re trying to convey.

On top of this, the channels you use need to work harmoniously to attract and convert customers. The same customer may move across several of your chosen channels quickly, so you need to have the ability to react in a timely fashion. 

Leverage a multi-channel marketing platform

Delivering campaigns that take advantage of every possible touchpoint during the customer journey requires the right tools.

By enlisting the help of a multi-channel marketing platform, you’ll be able to easily convey one message across multiple channels. This will make it simple to communicate with your customers in exactly the right way at the right time. Plus, these tools can also help you personalise each and every customer experience, automate your campaigns, and analyse the journeys your customers make before they make a purchase with you.

The best multi-channel campaigning tools will help you in a number of ways. For example, our solutions help you with campaign management. This includes helping you design individual campaign routes over several stages and across multiple channels. Plus, our tools can also help you decide who receives what content through which channel, ensuring every customer receives a personalised experience.

On top of this, our multi-channel campaigning tools can also provide attribution modelling. This will help you measure the success of the entire campaign, rather than just focusing on the final steps before purchase.

Added to this, your multi-channel marketing tools should also help you perform customer analytics and also to gain insights from your contact history. By generating data-driven insights, you’ll improve campaign performance. You’ll also generate a true understanding of each customer. This can further help you identify the characteristics of your best customers and profile your current customer base.

To discover more about how our marketing software could help your business, book a one-to-one demo with a member of the team for a time that suits you. Alternatively, test drive Apteco Orbit today and experience the power for yourself!