With the advent of so many online platforms nowadays, the biggest mistake you could possibly make is to focus only on a single channel for your marketing campaigns.
An interplay of several channels for communicating with customers is always a great way to market your products and services. The multi-channel approach to organizing marketing campaigns helps establish your presence in the market and continually ensures brand awareness which is a must for optimal results.
Let’s further discuss the concept of multi-channel marketing, and the tips you can take note when doing this type of approach.
What is Multi-Channel Marketing?
Multi-channel marketing gives marketing professionals opportunities to interact with customers using a good combination of both indirect and direct communication channels.
In this type of marketing, you can use catalogs, email, short messaging services (SMS), magazines, retail stores, and websites in encouraging customers to buy your product or service. Customers can literally be found anywhere. Positioning your product or service in different places using multiple channels ensures brand awareness and wider market reach among customers.
About 50% of the marketers who engage in multi-channel marketing claim that this method leads them to always hit their financial targets.
However, according to the same resource in the link, there are significant barriers in implementing multi-channel marketing that you need to know.
- Lack of time and resources – 23%
- Lack of buy in at board level of investment – 23%
- Lack of investment in tools – 21%
- Lack of understanding to develop multichannel campaigns – 21%
- Difficult to roll out multichannel campaigns – 11%
- Other – 1%
Because of these barriers, only 30% of marketers are confident of their ability to implement the multi-channel marketing strategy and about 67% are only somewhat confident.
Top Marketing Channels
Marketers have a wide array of choices for marketing channels to use. Having an effective marketing campaign entails using the right platform. Knowing the kind of channel that you are going to use is crucial towards making an effective marketing campaign.
Here are the top marketing channels that you can use for establishing an effective marketing campaign that can reach as many people as you want to target.
Your Website
Using your website as a channel for your marketing campaigns is a no-brainer. It is definitely a sustainable method in promoting product and brand awareness.
Many people refer to the website of a company as the primary source of information about the products they are searching for. It is best to prepare your website with campaigns that will provide your web visitors a sense of continuity when switching from mobile to computer browsing.
Google Ads
Google Ads are becoming popular nowadays. There are several techniques you can employ to create ad campaigns that have a high clickthrough rate towards your target page. Although it is a paid marketing channel, Google Ads can be very effective. You can design your ads in a way that allows users to instantly go to your app or website, book a call, or make an order.
The Click-to-Call Extension is what enables you to add a phone number to ads, and then integrate PPC and mobile activity. Furthermore, the PPC Offer Extension is what lets advertisers add a coupon to their PPC ad, then enables users to print out that coupon so they can use it on a brick and mortar store. This is an example of using multi-channel with Google ads. You have merged both physical and online activities.
In case you are wondering how to add call extensions, here are the steps from Google:
- Sign in to your Google Ads account.
- Then, click Ads & extensions in the page menu.
- Next, click Extensions then click the plus icon.
- Choose Call extensions from a list of choices. After choosing, the “Add call extension” view then appears.
- Choose whether you want to add the call extension to your Account, Campaign, or Ad group.
- Select Create new to make a new call extension. You may also choose Use for existing extensions.
- If you want to create a new extension, just enter your phone number.
- If you want to use an existing extension, just select your number from a list of choices.
Radio or Podcast Ads
People nowadays are fond of listening to radio or podcasts, as this enables them to listen depending on whatever their pace and place are.
Enabling podcast or radio ads provide an effective marketing campaign because this promotes creativity and further positioning, as auditory skill is used in this platform. With podcast or radio ads, making marketing campaigns that are easy to remember can effectively strengthen the positioning among the customers.
Doing marketing campaigns via email enables businesses to reach targeted audiences who could be a step closer to buying or buying again. Aside from using email to send out product launch or promotions announcements, you can also use email as your weekly digest.
The customers can get updated with the new products and services in your company. In this way, customer retention is emphasized in this marketing channel. When people access your company website, an email address is asked to the customers, and after this, the upcoming products and services that represent your brand are subscribed by the customers through email.
Social Media
Another no-brainer, using social media for multi-channel marketing can be very helpful. Because people today are getting hooked with social media, you can make use of this to make sure that people are aware of your products and services on different social media platforms.
Many marketing professionals are making use of different social media platforms to conduct marketing campaigns..
Making catchy headlines, engaging content, interesting and attention-seeking strategies make it convenient for marketing professionals to immediately catch the attention of people. In this way, positioning and promotion strategies are a must in considering the type of marketing campaign you are going to conduct on specific target groups.
The key is to be visible everywhere. Marketing via different social media channels can result in brand recall which leads to being top-of-mind among your customers.
Tips for Choosing Your Marketing Channels
Choosing which channel to pair or use together can be tricky.
For you to be guided, here are some of the tips you can exercise in choosing your marketing channel.
Research for the Best Practices on a Particular Channel
You cannot attain success in your marketing campaign if you haven’t done enough research. Identifying your buyer persona, and choosing a particular channel you want to target are some of the things you must effectively study before deploying into the marketing campaign phase.
Remember that a strong foundation in marketing campaigns depends on your data-driven strategies.
Watch Out for the Latest Trends
Considering demographic data and checking the latest statistics are some of the things you must look into, especially when making marketing campaigns.
But you also have to remember that looking at several other types of trends further guide you in making a successful marketing campaign. Following hashtags and viral stories can help you stay informed about what is currently trending.
Create a Content Calendar
Having a content calendar enables you to keep track of your content schedule.
Auditing your marketing content, choosing a certain marketing channel, deciding what phases that you need to emphasize and track, establishing a workflow, starting to craft your marketing posts, and doing the review phase are some of the things you must consider in making a content calendar for your multi-marketing campaign plans.
Monitor the Performance of Your Campaign
Immediate feedback is a must. When monitoring the performance of your campaign, use data analytics software and other relevant tools.
By monitoring the performance of the campaigns you have launched, you will be able to track what went wrong or what went right with a certain campaign. Determining the emotional value and marketing value of your campaign can help you craft better marketing campaigns.
