10 Tips to Help You Get Started With An Effective Multi-Channel Marketing Campaign
For several decades, marketers have been trying to develop different marketing channels to approach their target audience. The old marketing forms, like radio broadcasting, telemarketing, etc., still exist but as a part of broader strategies that consist of digital channels.
Today, several companies indulge in multi-channel marketing comprising several inbound and outbound channels. Indirect or inbound marketing platforms, such as social media, websites, etc., help companies spread brand awareness and improve their reputation. On the contrary, outbound channels like direct mail, physical stores, etc., help them connect with prospects proactively.
Multi-channel marketing is a mix of direct, indirect, offline, and online channels—allowing customers to choose how they want to engage with a brand. The concept is making a presence on all popular platforms to help prospects reach you and vice versa.
In this blog, let’s discuss what is a multi-channel marketing strategy and how to make it result-driving and effective.
What Does Multi-Channel Marketing Mean?
Multi-channel marketing is the mixture of multiple channels to promote a company’s products and services. It helps businesses create a brand image of themselves and boost recognition.
Instead of running a one-and-done campaign and waiting for results, marketers can now conduct recurring, simultaneous campaigns to get more responses. Such integrated marketing strategies also help them always have leads in their pipeline.
For example, several world-renowned brands, like HSBC and Vodafone have adopted a multi-channel approach to boost conversions. Gone are the days when they used to promote their offerings on a single channel only. Now, they use a blend of several marketing methods to reinstate messages and increase impact.
Thus, they are able to tap the potential of every marketing form and get the most out of it. Also, it helps businesses leave behind their competition by levelling up their marketing game.
Also Read: Integrated Direct Mail Campaign
Why Multi-Channel Marketing Is Important?
With increasing social media and other digital platforms, customers have more choices and opinions. They decide how to buy, where to buy, where to obtain the information, etc. For instance, before purchasing from a brand, they might read its social media reviews, go through some blog posts, and talk to a salesperson in-store. Imagine not advertising on a platform where your prospects are actively looking for brands to buy from. In this situation, you may lose several customers to your competitors.
Hence, conducting a multi-channel marketing campaign enables you to present your brand in front of prospects in multiple ways and convince them to select you.
Benefits of Multi-Channel Marketing System
Below, we have mentioned some prime benefits of multi-channel marketing to help you understand if it is worth the investment and make a wise decision:
Expanded Reach and Visibility
The more channels you use for marketing, the more attention you get from your potential customers. Hence, a multi-channel approach helps you grab attention and persuade people to respond to your offers.
Also, it allows you to reach as many prospects as possible, so you have more leads to work with.
More Touchpoints
Multi-channel marketing helps you collect more customer data and use it for understanding your buyer persona in-depth. This information is also helpful in personalising marketing plans and measuring campaign success.
Connect With People On Their Preferred Channel
People interact daily on several offline and online channels that influence their buying decisions. Instead of wanting your prospects to find you and learn about your products and services, you can meet them on their preferred platforms. Adopting a multi-channel approach helps you do that, increasing your chances of conversions.
Maintain Consistency
Even though multi-channel marketing calls for marketers to use several channels, they should ensure consistency. Without consistency, their marketing plans are likely to distort and fail.
For example: if you combine TV and direct mail advertising, it is better to promote the same offer at both places. Otherwise, your audience may get confused and not reply. They might also not remember your brand because of varied messaging. Thus, try using the same headlines, offers, and graphics on all channels to increase brand recall among your target audience.
Competitive Advantage
Using various channels to communicate with existing and potential customers gives you the edge over your competitors. By being present everywhere, you are stealing competitors’ opportunities to win over your customers. Thus, a multi-channel campaign helps you convert new leads and retain customers.
Also Read: PostGrid for Customer Success TeamsChallenges Faced by Multi-Channel Marketers
Like any other marketing method, multi-channel marketing also has its own pros and cons. Above, we discussed the advantages of this marketing strategy; let us also talk about the challenges that multi-channel marketers usually face.
Personalisation and Targeting
With millions of people being active on different platforms, companies need to zero in on their prospects. They can employ several demographic and psychographic factors to find their customer look-alikes and channel their strategies accordingly.
Businesses can also use other factors, like purchasing history, buying habits, interests, etc., to figure out whom to target. Once they get a viable audience, they can personalise their offers to amplify their marketing plans and convince prospects to respond right away.
Highly-Coordinated Campaigns
Using hybrid channels and multi-channel marketing is not as simple as it may appear. It requires tons of effort, time, and resources. Also, it takes intensive planning and coordination to put together such campaigns.
Therefore, businesses need to develop and modify their touchpoints constantly in a way that their prospects find trustworthy and helpful. They must ensure that they use the correct channels and attend to every respondent systematically.
Response Attribution
In a multi-channel marketing strategy, it can be hard to determine the origin of a response. But, it is crucial to know which channels generated the maximum and minimum responses to learn what works best for you. Thus, response attribution is a big challenge that marketers face, especially while using more than two or three channels.
Keeping Up With the Latest Trends
We often see new social media trends dictating your prospects’ preferences. It is safe to say that customer choices change frequently, and companies need to keep up with them.
Until a few years back, marketers were getting started with Facebook and email marketing. Today, they are constantly trying to understand new social media platforms, like LinkedIn, Instagram, etc. Hence, multi-channel marketing pushes companies to upgrade themselves regularly and keep up with the latest trends and channels.
10 Tips to Help You Get Started With Multi-Channel Marketing
Now that you know what is multi-channel strategy, we have also compiled some tips and tricks to help you get started:
Let Your Marketing Strategies Evolve
Having a lot of customer data does not guarantee your campaign success. Try to update your data frequently, build new models, and evolve your marketing plans. It will help you adapt to new things and develop strategies around your prospect’s needs and preferences.
Focus On Customer Experiences
Several marketers often distinguish multi-channel marketing from omnichannel marketing. The reason could be that a multi-channel approach is focused on using multiple channels, whereas omnichannel marketing prioritises customer experiences.
As a multi-channel marketer, try integrating your customer view and tracing customers’ journeys throughout your marketing campaigns. It helps you understand their requirements and take the necessary steps to push them ahead of the sales funnel.
Some customers may respond to your offers using more than one channel. Hence, it is your job to stay on top of such details and deal with every respondent smartly.
Align Your Marketing and Sales Teams
For your multi-channel marketing campaign to work, it is crucial to eliminate organisational silos. Silo working means not sharing information with other departments of the same company, leading to a business’s stunted growth. Hence, companies must break down such barriers and facilitate the flow of information that benefits everyone.
In multi-channel marketing, marketers need to hear and accept feedback from several teams, including sales, marketing, and customer service. This way, they can align their efforts, combine all helpful information, and bring in more conversions.
Know Your Target Prospects
The most significant aspect of any marketing campaign is its target audience. Before planning and executing a multi-channel campaign, list your marketing objectives and define your target audience. You can start by answering the following questions:
- Are there common characteristics among your existing customers?
- Where do they reside? Are they customer-dense localities that you can target?
- Are your prospects already looking for a product or service that you offer?
- What are the buying habits and likes of your prospects?
- Should you use generic marketing or targeted marketing to reach your audience?
- On which channel can you find the maximum customer look-alikes?
These questions can help you outline what you should and should not do. For example, imagine most of your customers reside in a specific neighbourhood. In this case, it is more profitable to include a Royal Mail Door-to-Door campaign as part of your multi-channel marketing strategy.
Also Read: Door-to-Door Mail DeliveryDevelop Individual Strategies for Every Channel
If you are using more than one marketing form, you need to know the rules and algorithms of every channel. Even though your messaging should be consistent, there are some tweaks you need to make on every platform.
For example, Instagram needs marketers to create more visual images, whereas they need to draft written articles for LinkedIn. It is how you can do well on every channel and see positive results.
Create Compelling Artwork and Copy
Multi-channel marketing is not only visible everywhere; you also need to create meaningful, persuasive, and worthy content. Therefore, you need a compelling copy to discuss your offerings and push people to get onboard. Make sure your copy comprises a catchy headline, message, offer, and CTA. Here’s an example of a marketing postcard copy:
Hi Mr. Andrew, are you looking for a home loan with zero processing fees? Look no further!
HVSB Bank makes loan processing effortless, less time-consuming, and advantageous. Our zero processing fees and quick applications help us serve millions of customers in the UK. And we look forward to serving you with the same zest!
Interested in knowing more? Just scan the QR code below to learn everything about us and schedule an appointment with one of our talented, helpful customer representatives!
P.S.: Also, look into our insurance plans offering appealing features, like low premium rates, lightning-fast claim responses, etc.
The above copy is personalised and responsive. On the one hand, it creates curiosity about your products or services. And on the other hand, it helps people move ahead in the marketing funnel by completing the CTA. Combining such messages with eye-catching graphics can help your multi-channel marketing campaign succeed and increase your engagement levels.
Look Into Retargeting
Targeting a new audience every time may give your brand more exposure, but it can slow down your conversions. Retargeting specific audiences over and over again can help you see more engagement. It is because prospects don’t usually reply the first time they hear from a brand. They need some time to know and trust your brand. Hence, it is more productive to create a multi-channel campaign to retarget hot leads.
Select the Right Marketing Channels
The marketing forms you choose can either make or break your multi-channel campaign. Hence, select carefully and ensure that you have the right mix.
You have several options, like:
- PPC and SEO
- Content marketing
- Social media
- Direct mail
- Mobile advertising
- Brick-and-mortar stores
- Hand-outs, etc.
There is no hard and fast rule about how you must combine these channels or use them. Hence, ensure that you consider your goals and target audience before making any decision. Suppose you want to target older citizens. In this case, newspaper advertising, hand-outs, and direct mail may be the ideal combination. However, targeting millennials may need you to combine online and offline channels in the correct proportions.
Test Your Multi-Channel Marketing Plans
Designing a robust multi-channel marketing strategy is not a one-time task. Also, you may not get the desired results the first time itself. Hence, try employing A/B testing to see which of your plans works best. In fact, you can test every aspect of your campaign, from timing to offers.
Testing your plans beforehand helps you understand them more deeply and make the necessary modifications. Don’t forget to create a smooth tracking mechanism to help you measure your campaign results.
Use Marketing Automation
As said earlier, multi-channel marketing requires a lot of time and effort. Hence, it is advisable to switch to automation to streamline your activities and get everything done effortlessly.
For instance, PostGrid’s direct mail API can help you automate your mailing tasks and improve efficiency. It also enables you to save costs and drive higher responses.
Multi-Channel Marketing Campaign Examples
After knowing what is a multi-channel strategy and how to boost results, you must also be aware of some commonly-used examples that you can use. Here, we have listed some for your reference:
- Direct mail and email marketing: Marketers use this combination to reinstate their offers and follow up on prospects. For example, most companies first send direct mail items to their potential customers and drop a follow-up email within two or three days. It helps them re-engage their audience and increases the possibility of getting a response.
- TV advertising, social media, and direct mail: This mix may be among the most effective ones as it focuses on all popular channels. Your prospects are more likely to complete the CTA when they see it via these platforms.
- Social media and email marketing: Modern marketers opt for this multi-channel marketing combination, as it is purely digital and easy to launch. However, it lacks a personal touch and cannot assure long-term, genuine results. To fix this issue, you can combine this mix with an offline channel, like newspaper advertising, postcard marketing, etc.
How Can PostGrid Help You Conduct a Successful Multi-Channel Marketing Campaign?
As said above, PostGrid’s direct mail services help marketers automate their offline mailing activities. You can integrate our API into your CRM and combine direct mail with any channel. For example, PostGrid can be integrated into popular platforms like Hubspot, Zapier, Salesforce, etc.
Apart from the API integrations, PostGrid also offers many more features, including:
- Pre-built templates: Our HTML and PDF templates help you design your marketing collateral within minutes. You can also customise these templates according to your needs and re-use them if needed.
- Mailing list compilation: We understand that compiling a segmented mailing list is not easy. Thus, PostGrid helps you build a custom, targeted mailing list from scratch before every campaign—guaranteeing positive results.
- Per-piece tracking: PostGrid helps you see the delivery status of every sent item, helping you plan other multi-channel marketing tasks accordingly.
- Address verification: You no longer need to deal with lost mail, delivery delays, and returns. PostGrid’s address verification API allows you to standardise and validate all mailing addresses to ensure that your campaign is executed smoothly.
- Bulk mailing: With PostGrid, you can mail your marketing collateral on-demand and in bulk. Our API can handle millions of requests in one go, making it simple to mail in any number.
Therefore, PostGrid helps you improve your offline marketing activities and combine them into a broad multi-channel marketing strategy without any issues.
Wrapping Up
We hope this blog helps you know what is multi-channel marketing give an example. Using a multi-channel approach, marketers can fulfil their objectives and drive conversions. Also, they can strengthen company-customer relationships and boost brand reputation. Undoubtedly, it enables businesses to beat the ever-growing competition and increase sales levels.
However, it may be complicated to conduct a multi-channel campaign, making it essential to use automation. Try choosing marketing automation platforms that assist you throughout the campaign and help you improve your ROI, like PostGrid.
Sign up now to know more about launching an effective mailing campaign as part of your multi-channel approach with PostGrid!
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