What is Multichannel Marketing? 

Multichannel marketing is an effective strategy that uses more than one channel or platform to communicate with customers. It’s a powerful technique that many marketers use to promote or distribute their products through channels like social media, websites, emails, direct mail, network messages, and Google ads.

This strategy allows businesses to meet their potential customers where they are, crediting better ROI and customer retention rate.

The reason to use multiple marketing channels in sync is to let customers choose how they wish to interact with your brand. For instance, running an online store along with a Facebook shop enables customers to obtain your service or product in a way they see fit.

 Let’s explore more about multichannel marketing to help you get creative with your marketing campaign.

How Important is multichannel marketing?

According to resources, more than 54% of marketers across the world employ 4-5 channels in their marketing strategy. With a growth rate of 22.3%, this miracle of a strategy is here to stay and not phasing out any time soon.

But what makes this strategy so effective? Let’s have a look at a few proven benefits of multichannel marketing

Convenient outreach:

Consumers these days demand convenience in their customer journey. According to a study, more than 73% of consumers choose to interact with a brand after going through two or more channels.

If you choose to promote your product or service on multiple channels, it will automatically increase your outreach and provide your customers with a convenient shopping experience.

Increased engagement:

Customer engagement is key for any business, and multi-channel marketing can greatly impact it. When you make your brand known on multiple channels, you basically enable your customers to reach you in their own preferred way.

This naturally makes your targeted customers engage with your brand and establish a lasting relationship.

Better customer retention and sales:

Good customer retention can greatly impact your business’s performance and make you grow faster as a brand. A study suggests that it is possible to increase overall profit by 60-95% if your business has a good customer retention rate.

 Multi-channel marketing does not only help you acquire customers but retain them through constant engagement. On top of that, you can even maximize cross-sales and decrease customer churn rates if you have a solid multi-marketing strategy at play.

Effective marketing:

When marketers choose to run campaigns across different media channels, there is a significant lift in brand awareness and brand recall. For instance, brands that market their products or services on both television and social media have a higher chance of reaching more customers and reinforcing their message.

A study found that marketing campaigns carried out on both social media and television experienced better brand awareness compared to campaigns that relied on a single marketing channel.

What are the challenges of multichannel marketing?

 While multichannel is one of the most effective marketing tools to upscale a business, it can go wrong often if you are unaware of the challenges.

So, before you launch a full-fledged multichannel marketing campaign, overcome these few challenges that might hinder your scaling operation.

Non-unique content:

When you market your brand on different channels, it often happens that your message becomes repetitive and boring. And it’s a pain for marketers to come up with unique and distinctive content for different digital marketing channels–especially if you work with more than two.

 Creating targeted messages based on consumer psychology and demography is a tough nut to crack. And top of that, marketers need to come up with unique content for each channel that looks appealing to the consumers and draws the right emotion out of them.

Lack of Understanding:

Keeping up with the innovations in the marketing field is not everyone’s cup of tea. You need to know marketing trends on different platforms, learn how each channel functions, and understand how customers reach out on various channels to effectively run multi-marketing campaigns.

Statistics suggest that only 30% of marketers are confident in their multi-marketing strategy, which is a red flag.

So, overcoming this barrier is highly important if you wish to run a successful marketing campaign across multiple channels.

Marketing Attribution:

One of the biggest challenges for brands, when they enter multichannel marketing, is handling marketing Attribution. It’s nearly impossible to know which touchpoint on which platform triggered a specific response from customers.

 This is often overwhelming for marketers because they are unable to know if their efforts are going in vain or yielding profitable results.

Multichannel marketing examples for inspiration:

Starbucks:

If you need to learn how to retain loyal customers, research Starbucks’ marketing campaigns. The Starbucks Reward system is designed specifically to make customers visit again and again and eventually gain their loyalty.

So, how does the reward system work? When customers purchase from the shop, they are rewarded with stars that unlock tiers. Unlocking tiers eventually lead you to get a Starbucks gold card.

With this card, customers can get free drinks, extra refills, coupons, special discounts, and whatnot. The best thing is customers can access this card and reload it on any touchpoint of the store including their app and website.

Starbucks is basically meeting customers on their phones and enabling them with choices.

Grammarly:

If you spend time on the internet, you may have seen Youtube and Facebook adverts for Grammarly. It’s inspiring how consistent their messaging and branding are. If you click on their YouTube ad, it will lead you to an educational video on how Grammarly works. While the written content redirects you to Grammarly’s official website where you can learn more about the application.

One of the most interesting things about their marketing campaign is that their message is consistent across different channels. Their color theme, tone, and ad details are similar on both Youtube Videos and Google ads.

 Make Design by Don W your marketing partner!

Need help running a successful multi-marketing campaign? Partner with us to establish a high-performing strategy that is in alliance with your marketing goals. We have the expertise, skills, and a wide talent pool to provide you with the best of the best when it comes to effective marketing. Contact us now!