Multi-Channel Marketing Campaigns. Why to Use Them and How to Do It Properly?
Is multi-channel marketing part of your business strategy? You need to be aware that, regardless of your industry and target market, your clients are certainly users of several communication channels such as email, social media, print, and so on. Then, why would you limit your marketing campaigns to one channel only? The secret is to approach your leads and prospects in all their favourite channels and to speed up their user journey until they buy from you. We at Brandanizer are here to help you learn how to do it in a proper way.
What is multi-channel marketing?
Let’s start from the beginning. In the past, marketers were only able to perform and measure the results from a single activity or a campaign in a single communication channel. Later on, they realized that numerous transactions and touchpoints happen in parallel with users’ returns to that given channel. And this is where the concept for multi-channel marketing started to shape.
Multi-channel marketing aims to leverage the marketing communication across different channels to present a unified message for users online and sometimes – offline. Also, proper planning and performance will let you measure your results in a meaningful way by combining separate data such as whitepaper downloads and a number of users who read your latest SMS message, for example. In other words, multi-channel marketing is here to help you see the big picture instead of partial results of low value for your business.
Why is multi-channel marketing helpful for your business?
If you as a marketer or, your brand’s marketing studio, plan for multi-channel campaigns, then you will be able to design the overall unified customer experience and message that people would get across all channels. Moreover, this will help you get meaningful data and outline dependencies in user behavior and the number of interactions with your brand (touchpoints) that they need before making a purchase decision. Do you see now where this is going to?
- Personalized experience. Yes, you can tailor your communication, messages and number of touchpoints according to every user’s preferences, demographics and behavior.
- Great visibility. Which channel works better for every stage of the buying cycle? Only a multi-channel campaign can give you a true answer eliminating the guesswork and the waste of time and budget.
- Aligned communication. Make people who have viewed your video ad guess your brand when they see you on a billboard, on a banner, on TV or when they receive an email from you. If they do, then you are doing alright.
Top channels for multi-channel marketing campaigns
As mentioned, multi-channel campaigns may combine various digital and offline channels, but the most frequently used ones are:
- Email – this is where most campaigns usually begin. Email as part of multi-channel campaigns stands out with its good ROI and broad application – for bringing awareness, engaging, triggering action and so on.
- Social media – you can always leverage social media to keep your brand on top of users’ minds, engage them, retarget them, and make them loyal. Insights from people’s interaction with your brand on social media, clicks on posts and ads, comments, etc. in the context of your campaign can give you excellent feedback and help you strengthen your performance.
- Push notifications – this is a growing trend in the world of digital marketing. We are facing an increasing number of mobile, web and in-app push notifications that aim at reminding us about certain products and services or triggering action by us as users. A good idea when using push notifications for your brand is to gamify the process or to offer exclusive deals to people who have opted in.
- SMS – did you know that 9 out of 10 people read their text messages up to 3 minutes after receiving them? For marketers this is a good sign that SMS are expected to bring better results from marketing campaigns, especially when designed to trigger reaction or to offer good deals to recipients.
Multi-channel marketing in action
Now, let’s take a look at some good examples of using multi-channel marketing activities in a proper way.
1. Onboarding customers. Activating their journey.
This stage begins when a customer is having their initial touchpoints with your brand. They might be visiting a physical or an online store for the first time when you can stimulate them to subscribe to your newsletter or opt-in for receiving marketing communication by your business. After confirming their will to receive additional offers or discounts it is your turn to add value for them via e-mail or by sending push-notifications via Viber chat, for example. Here the idea is to make people acquainted with your brand and to get used to receiving regular updates on your deals.
2. Get the most out of the nurturing stage.
Here you already know a lot about your customers’ preferences and behaviour. What you can do is to send them a personalized deals, hot offers, limited-time promotions and many more. After someone clicks and shows their interest you might retarget them on social media, Google Display Network, via email, etc.
3. Reactivate and increase loyalty.
Multi-channel marketing is highly effective after a user completes their purchase, but you want to keep engaging them and making them loyal to your brand. Reactivating also refers to users who abandon their shopping carts or are still indecisive to make a purchase on your website. What you’d better do in this scenario is to reach them via e-mail, on social media or with SMS giving them a discount code or presenting additional benefits from using your product or service.
In a nutshell, multi-channel marketing aims at bringing incomparable efficiency from marketing campaigns and at driving the best possible results from your branding efforts at every stage of the customer journey. Interested to see how we can boost the key metrics for your brand with multi-channel marketing? Get in touch with us straight away and tell us more about your business.
