In today’s modern era where information is expected to be readily available, it’s more important than ever to understand consumers and how they interact across different platforms in order to effectively reach them with relevant ads and achieve your company’s ROI goals. That’s where multi-channel marketing, the practice of interacting with customers using a combination of indirect and direct communication channels, comes in. It allows you to build customer intimacy, create detailed single customer views, and deliver personalized communications consistently. In fact, statistics show that multi-channel customers spend three to four times more than single-channel customers do.¹

What does it take to do multi-channel marketing right?

Target the right people

The key to a successful multi-channel marketing strategy is knowing exactly who you’re going to target in order to choose the right channels to reach them. It’s not enough to know your consumers are companies who need technology services, for example. You need to create customer personas that provide detailed insight into the type of person you’re trying to attract to determine the right channels to reach them.

Establish a multi-channel marketing platform

Taking an integrated approach using a range of tools increases your chances of reaching your audience for a lot less spend. In a multi-channel campaign, consider combining digital channels with traditional ones.

Your list could include channels such as:

• email
• social media
• text messaging
• websites and blogs
• webinars
• online advertising, e.g. Pay-per-Click

as well as traditional channels such as tradeshows and print.

The secret to using all these channels together effectively to generate qualified leads is to take an integrated approach that uses each medium to its fullest potential and supports your presence on the others. For example, you can convert material from a webinar into a white paper for your website.

Create consistent customer experiences across all channels

Now that you know who you're targeting and which channels they might use, it's time to create content. To be worthwhile, your content has to add value, be present on the right channels, hook the user, and leave a lasting impression. To put across a cohesive brand image make sure your content is consistent when it comes to the message, tone and approach by creating core messaging and standard copy points to work from.

Marketing Automation

We know that managing several marketing campaigns across multiple channels can be very labour intensive and time-consuming. But it doesn’t need to be. Consider integrating a marketing automation software to streamline your multi-channel marketing process. Not only will this enable you to deliver highly personalized, integrated and relevant communications across all your channels, but also help you nurture qualified leads and get easy access to things like campaign management and advanced analytics.

Measure success

Simply creating a multi-channel marketing campaign is not enough – you need to constantly monitor your results. It's imperative to know which channels were most effective, which need more work and which ones are just wasted effort and can be completely taken out of the equation.

Once you start collecting data for each channel, you need to analyze it and compare it to your overall marketing goals. This will help you learn what is and isn’t working for your personas; in effect helping you form unified user profiles which you can use to deliver personalized content consistently. Continuously testing different messaging, incentives, and other content will also help to focus on what the unified profiles respond to best.

A multi-channel strategy can be overwhelming and time consuming but will significantly improve ROI and generate qualified leads for your business. If you’re struggling with your marketing strategy and want to talk to the B2B marketing experts, please contact us today. 

Sources:

1. Invesp