Multichannel Marketing – What Is It, Best Practices And How To Develop A Successful Strategy

Nowadays, customers have unparalleled freedom as they get to decide the brands they buy from and the products they use. As a result, modern-day buyers know what they want and don’t expect anything less than consistently tailored experiences.

That can be a lot for marketers since they have to follow the changing preferences of individual customers. Unfortunately, this means that you, as a marketer, no longer have much control over the buyer journey. 

However, you have several new routes towards better brand awareness to have more customers flowing into the pipeline. These routes include new marketing strategies in the digital realm and social platforms that can deliver on all metrics. 

And multichannel marketing is just one way to manage your brand’s presence across all these marketing platforms. 

This can be your biggest weapon against the ever-changing interests and negligible attention spans of your customers. To top it all off, it is also highly effective in improving customer engagement. And the chances are that your competitors are already savvy to it. This can be determined by how 51% of companies today use at least eight channels to interact with customers.

Let’s dive in and learn more about multichannel marketing. 

What Is Multichannel Marketing?

Multichannel marketing can be defined as a marketing strategy that lets brands communicate with prospective buyers and existing customers. It enables this across many platforms (including online and offline channels) while using different tactics. 

For example, a multichannel marketing strategy would include collateral and campaigns for TV, email, Facebook, Twitter, search ads, etc. 

The days of creating campaigns that used only one marketing tactic and a specific channel are gone now. Instead, marketers today have to be in many places at once, and multichannel marketing helps them do just that. 

Thankfully, that’s great for business. 

Many companies report that multichannel marketing strategies deliver 3 times higher effectiveness than non-integrated campaigns. Consumers who shop on multiple online channels have a 30% higher lifetime value than those who only shop on one platform. These numbers alone make multichannel marketing a rewarding experience for marketers. 

On the other hand, brand awareness, sales, and traffic aren’t the only goals of a multichannel campaign. Many businesses create comprehensive multichannel strategies to help them improve lead quality and deliver personalized experiences. Not only this, it enhances the post-purchase experience of their customers and ensures their loyalty for the long term.

Multichannel vs. Omnichannel Marketing – Are They The Same Thing? 

There isn’t much difference between the two. Both use more than one marketing channel to communicate with prospective and existing buyers. 

However, omnichannel marketing is more customer-centric and aims to create a memorable experience for them. It achieves this by surrounding them with engaging and exciting media. Thus, it keeps the integrity between different channels intact while offering a smooth customer journey.

On the other hand, multichannel marketing works with various channels where customers choose to spend their time. But this strategy doesn’t necessarily create an interchannel combination. It copies the same tactics and info on all media where the target audience is present. 

 

Multichannel Marketing – Best Practices

As you create a multichannel marketing strategy, let market leaders guide you on your journey to greater brand awareness. Keep these best practices in mind: 

Diversify

The whole point of multichannel marketing is to use as many channels as possible to sell your goods and services. Now, one channel, like email, might work great for you. But, the chances are that many of your target customers don’t email. Instead, they hang out on social platforms. So, create multichannel strategies that invite users to interact with you and your content on many online and offline channels. 

Listen

Internet users access hundreds of social platforms and thousands of websites. So how would you know which of these to include in your multichannel strategy? By listening to your customers, requesting their feedback, and acting in real-time to please them. Social listening tools like Mentionlytics can help you learn about platforms where your brand is mentioned the most. Then, use this info to find unique audiences and cater to them.

Value 

There are bigger and possibly better products and services online that can outplay the field easily. So the only way for small businesses and amateur marketers to differentiate themselves is by providing an amazing customer experience. Therefore, marketers need to focus more on delivering value to the customer rather than just selling. But, we are all so focused on selling that we completely ignore customer retention by providing them with unbeatable value. 

Serve

Not every media channel is used for the same purpose. For example, YouTube focuses on videos, Twitter on text and images, while Instagram favors images and short videos. That’s why the communication and the tone should be different according to each media channel. This makes for a targeted multi-channel marketing strategy. Customize your message to the platforms where it’s displayed. The information can stay the same, but the tone and style of communication should vary according to the needs of your target audience. 

How To Implement A Successful Multichannel Campaign

What good is a multichannel campaign if it doesn’t get you the results you are looking for? Hopefully, that’ll not be a problem for you. As long as you follow this quick guide to the effective implementation of multichannel marketing, you will get the desired results.

Set Clear Objectives

Start by establishing your goals for a multichannel campaign. These goals also help determine measurable Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to see whether the campaigns perform as expected.

Next, communicate these goals to all the relevant stakeholders. Make sure that these are completely understood by everyone affected and responsible for achieving the objective. 

Create Buyer Personas

Define your ideal customer to make it easier for you to find them on marketing channels. This should give you a clear picture of your buyer, their needs, or their income group. Moreover, it tells you how to communicate with them, among other factors. 

This stage should take longer than the previous one. This is because you research your current customers to see what your leads would ideally look like. You can also use subscription forms on your website to get demographic info from visitors. Then you can monitor the numbers for every email campaign. 

Develop The Message

Pay serious attention to developing a brief, clear, and focused message that attracts the customer base. Then, modify and observe how the message is delivered across the media channels. This ensures a consistent voice that brings in leads from all channels. 

Additionally, invest time and effort in developing unique approaches for each media channel. This is because one strategy cannot be effective on all platforms. Sure the content should be similar, but you can tailor your communication style and voice to suit your audiences. 

It’s also good to customize your marketing efforts depending on the platform. For example, pay-per-click (PPC) ads are highly effective for Facebook marketing, while Instagram prefers photos and short videos. 

Launch Your Multichannel Campaign

Now is the time to launch the multichannel campaign. However, before going all in, ensure that the strategy is ready and the plan is error-free. Moreover, ensure that the team can cater to the sudden rush of demand and deal with customer data and interactions. You may use marketing automation to manage better and track these initiatives.

Review Campaign Success

Schedule weekly meetings and keep things under observation. This allows you to take the necessary measures to ensure that you achieve your goals. For instance, weekly results can help determine whether to discontinue a product or increase its production. Moreover, it tells whether to eliminate a particular market segment from your lineup.

Again, the Mentionlytics platform helps you assess audience sentiment so that you can observe your multichannel campaign. Also, keep checking the analytics to see how the plan unfolds and see the strategies get results in real-time. 

 

Tweak Your Campaign As You Go Along

When you continuously monitor your marketing campaigns, you know if the strategies work. Not only this, you determine the necessary actions to create a positive impact. A company should always give their campaign time to work. However, make sure to listen to the data and adjust strategies based on performance.

Creating and managing a multichannel marketing campaign involves constant changes and optimization. So, keep readjusting, and in time, what is and is not working will become clear.

Get Started with Your Multichannel Marketing Strategy Today

This is a time when lead generation and customer acquisition are valuable metrics for marketing success. Thus, brands can use the multichannel approach to conquer the complex digital marketing landscape. 

The good news is that there’s help at hand.

Mentionlytics can help you create data-informed buyer personas and listen in on online conversations. Moreover, it aligns your multichannel marketing efforts with powerful insights that deliver results. Request a demo today!