As a business owner, you know that one way to stay ahead of the competition and survive a very competitive commercial world is to multitask in marketing strategy. You want to see your ROI grow. You also want to see an increase in your customer engagement and retention.
Multichannel digital marketing is one way to effectively multitask and chase all these goals without compromising your business operation.
This article explains what multichannel digital marketing is, why it matters, and how to build an effective multichannel digital marketing strategy.
Let’s dive in.
What is Multichannel Digital Marketing?
Multichannel digital marketing is a marketing method that uses a wide variety of distribution and promotional channels in a single marketing campaign to attract and engage with customers.
Some of these online channels are websites, social media, email, display adverts, etc. This method helps to boost any digital marketing goals because it uses these channels to communicate a brand’s value, product, or service.
Why is Multichannel Marketing essential for your business?
Even before the onset of online advertising, most businesses have practised multichannel marketing because of its tested and proven strategies for increasing sales and driving conversion.
Before e-commerce, the famous shoe brand Nike was already tapping into multichannel marketing, but in the traditional way. Nike would display printed ads in their brick-and-mortar stores, newspaper, radio, TV ads, billboards, and even bus wrap advertising to promote their world-famous sports shoes.
Traditional multichannel marketing was already successful in carrying brands’ goals back then. What magnified this achievement is when digital, or online, marketing came in, leverage on the power and reach of the internet to further took marketing to a level where communication and engagement is limitless.
Multichannel digital marketing is the upgraded, level-up version of traditional multichannel marketing that offers many benefits than just improved ROI and conversion rate.
Check out some of these top benefits below:
Increased Brand Awareness
Business owners desire for their brand to be the foremost thing in the minds of customers when considering a purchase.
An excellent multichannel digital marketing strategy sees to it that your brand is carefully placed on platforms where customers can easily see more of it. When your product is visible in different platforms at the same time, such as Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, the more your customers can easily recognize or remember your brand.
Better Customer Targeting
Your customers are found on almost every online marketing channel. They can be tuned in to TV or online using their phones or computers. They can be found on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.
With multichannel marketing, you can be present in all of these channels that your customers are active in. Thanks to the latest digital algorithms, you can customise your marketing to a selected customer demographic to identify on what online channels are your customers are more active.
Higher Customer Engagement
Customers who see your brand often will likely be curious enough to engage or interact with you. The increased customer engagement also allows you to boost your sales leads and the possibility of making a sale.
How to Build an Effective Multichannel Digital Marketing Strategy
Knowing how to create and implement a multichannel digital marketing strategy is essential, whether you own a large company, a small business, or a startup.
Here are some of the few key steps to get you started:
- Identify Your Customer
Before you start your multichannel digital marketing campaign, you need to discover more about who your customers are. You must know their demographics, age, gender, affiliations, income, lifestyle, etc.
Knowing your customer’s persona will help you choose which marketing channels you will target, including the tone and messaging you will use in your campaign. Your customer persona would also give you an idea of how they will behave or react to your marketing strategies, which will later impact your sales and conversion.
- Selecting Your Online Marketing Channels
After you have identified your customers’ profiles, the next thing to do is to choose which online marketing channels they are most active in.
If your target users are active on social media, then establish a presence on those social media platforms. If your customers use the Internet for search, a strong SEO process to boost your Google ranking is the best way to reach them.
But always remember not to settle for one marketing platform; the essence of multichannel marketing is to use many marketing channels. For your active customers on Facebook, you must also target Instagram. You could do a crossover on other visual online platforms, such as YouTube, TikTok, Pinterest, or LinkedIn.
The more channels mean a wider reach, and a higher chance of an increased ROI and conversion rate.
- Create Consistent Messaging
When drafting your brand’s message for your marketing strategy, ensure it is consistent and applicable across all digital channels. Of course, there would be some variation as to the format, size, number of text content allowed, and even the cost of advertising, and so on.
Take, for instance, social media. Instagram ads are limited to 15 – 60 seconds of video running time, while Facebook has a longer video running time. With clickable call-to-action (CTA) links, Instagram has no option to include them in its in-captions and thus would resort to CTAs on their landing pages instead.
Unlike Facebook, Instagram would be the better option if your marketing campaign strategically revolves around creative visuals.
Other options to be considered are pixels, algorithms, automation features, etc.
So, how will you make your branding message work to be compatible with all of your selected online channels?
The key here is to be cohesive and consistent. It is all about the “message” and not just the words. When creating your message, make sure it is the exact “message” (tone and voice included) reflected across all your online platforms. If your chosen platform has a limited amount of text for display, you can experiment and disregard unnecessary words here and there.
But ensure that the theme, tone, voice, style, and promotion remain the same throughout the different channels to maintain consistency.
Track & Monitor Customer Engagement
The next thing you need to do is to figure out how to track and monitor the level of engagement you’re having on each online channel with your customers.
A CRM (customer relationship management) software can do this job for you. CRM software helps your business by collecting, organising, and analysing customer or user information data so that you can plan your strategies around building better relationships with your customers.
The reason your business must track and monitor engagement is because of two words: market smarter.
To market smarter means to efficiently maximise the use of your resources through analysing your customer’s experience and engagement with your brand to achieve optimum business results.
- Retargeting
Retargeting is a method that addresses your online platform’s bounce rate.
Of course, as much as you want to prevent something like this from happening, customers do leave websites for several reasons. But it does not mean that your engagement with them ends right there. That’s where retargeting comes in.
One good thing about multichannel marketing is that you have a presence in many online channels, and a retargeting campaign would further boost this multichannel marketing benefit. So, even if your customer leaves or becomes less active on one online channel, they can still see your brand’s presence and engage with you on a different platform.
Do marketing the right way with the right partner!
Multichannel marketing is a MUST in today’s competitive e-commerce world. Only through utilising multiple online and offline channels will businesses effectively reach and engage with their customers and get ahead – and stay ahead – of their competition.
If you are ready and want to learn more about leveraging multichannel digital marketing for your business, contact New Way Business Development today.
Here at New Way Business Development, we keep things interesting with a customised, professional, and solution-based approach to digital marketing that makes your customers’ journey the best there is.
Drop us a line now, and let’s talk about how we can make multichannel digital marketing work for your business and for your customers!
The best part? Your 1-hour strategy consultation session is on us!