If there is one tip you must remember in digital marketing, it is that you need to be where your customers are. However, in a world that is increasingly digital and dynamic, this can be a difficult feat to achieve. There is such a large variety of platforms that consumers use to communicate and share content on that many companies do not know where to start…but this is where multi-channel marketing comes into play.Â
When you are working on a digital marketing strategy, you should consider all channels that your audience uses. Consumers expect a consistent experience across all platforms, from your website to your social media page, and multi-channel marketing can help you to achieve this.Â
If you are not entirely sure how to implement multi-channel marketing, below we provide some simple steps to get you started.Â
What Is Multi-Channel Marketing?
Before we explain how to implement multi-channel marketing, we will first explain what it is. In simple terms, multi-channel marketing is a method which combines a variety of offline, online, direct, and indirect marketing channels to communicate with their consumers. These channels often include the following:
- Email newsletters and marketing
- Social media platforms
- Mobile applications and devices
- Prints and posters
- Direct mail campaigns
- Websites and blogs
- Catalogues
This is not an exhaustive list, but this is the general gist of what multi-channel marketing entails. You can use two or three different channels combined, or you could use up to five, but be sure that the channels you choose relate to your business and are suitable for your audience. For example, you could have a poster with a scannable QR code on it which takes consumers to a web page promoting your products or services. Another example is to have a social media post with a link to an email newsletter signup page, where consumers can leave their details.Â
How To Implement Multi-Channel Marketing
Now that you know a little more about multi-channel marketing, you are probably wondering how you can easily implement it for your own campaigns. Below we discuss how to start multi-channel marketing for a successful campaign.Â
Understand Your Customer’s Journey
Before you choose the platforms you will be using in your multi-channel marketing strategy, it is important to understand and map your customer journey. This will help you to understand where your customers are spending most of their time and which platforms are the most influential in their decision making processes. This will help to focus your efforts, rather than you simply posting on and communicating with every channel and hoping for results.Â
Decide On Your Channels
Once you have learnt more about your audience and their preferences, you should move on to deciding on which channels to use. Now, while it is useful to use as many social media platforms as possible, this is not the point of multi-channel marketing. You need to choose the channels that will resonate with your consumers the most, which might mean that LinkedIn is not as suitable as Facebook, or vice versa. Mobile marketing is ideal, but consider whether you audience reads and reacts to text messages.Â
Combine Automation And Monitoring
When working on a multi-channel marketing strategy, you should invest in marketing automation to ease the strain of using more than one channel. However, it is important not to simple “set it and forget itâ€, but rather monitor the reactions to your marketing efforts. For example, look at the analytical tools for your email newsletters and see which ones performed better than others and which content was preferred. Use social listening to see how your audience is reacting to your social media posts, too.Â
Keep Customer Experience Cohesive
One of the major rules or tips that you need to keep in mind for multi-channel marketing is to keep the customer experience cohesive across all channels. This is because most people move between two to three screens per day (from desktop to mobile devices) and your multi-channel marketing campaign should look and feel the same across all devices. Your mobile website should have the same colours and fonts as your desktop site, and your social media posts should maintain your brand messaging.Â
Always Keep Active
After choosing your platforms, analysing the customer journey, and implementing automation, you must remember to continue posting content across the board. You should continue to post on every channel, if you neglect one channel, you might lose out on a significant chunk of your audience’s engagement. Keep the message and customer experience cohesive for all channels, especially for mobile.Â
If you would like to improve your marketing strategy and boost your engagement, speak to the NetMechanic team to find out how we can help you.Â
