Ever since Apple launched the first iPhone back in 2007, the way that brands engage with their audiences has radically changed. Whereas before the smartphone revolution, consumers could only access brands from a computer or a physical store, today they can reach them from anywhere. This accessibility shift has made it critical for brands to tailor their content to a variety of online platforms, ensuring they are always reachable to prospects.
The ability to “be” in multiple places at once poses a huge opportunity to marketers. Effectively leveraging each platform through a multi-channel marketing strategy could have you crushing the competition. However, failure to do so could result in losing customers to competitors that have a stronger foothold on any one particular platform.
In a tech-first world, online platforms now dominate brand-to-consumer communications. Based on publicly available data, we could select the following channels as being the most important:
3.5B
People use social media every day
500M
Daily active stories on Instagram
91%
Of social media users are on mobile
Multi-channel marketing enables brands to connect with their audiences on multiple platforms; and in a variety of ways. This is because the culture, audience and functionality available on each platform varies greatly from one another. For example, brands using LinkedIn know that the culture on this platform is considerably formal when compared to other social platforms. These per-platform differences do not mean that a brand cannot use multiple platforms. Rather, it means that it should use them differently.
Let’s apply this example to a restaurant:
In a nutshell, multi-channel marketing involves leveraging different platforms according to their unique characteristics, retaining existing customers and bringing in new ones from different platforms.
Like any other marketing strategy, multi-channel marketing has evolved over time. It has evolved into what we refer to as omni-channel marketing. This means that although each channel is different, they should still be integrated.
Omni-channel marketing strategies deliver a seamless, consistent brand experience on each channel – meaning that consumers will become accustomed to a standard of quality across all touch points with the brand. Providing this seamless experience is key in building trust with your audience. Inconsistencies on any single channel could result in the disorientation and confusion of consumers.
Marketing your brand across multiple platforms will enable you to gather data from a wide variety of sources. Pulling this data together, one can then break it down and analyse it, developing rich insights on the brand’s customer acquisiton and retention.
Using this data, you can adjust your budget spend according to the most cost-effective channels – i.e. those bringing you the best return on investment.
So, as you can see, multi-channel marketing will also help you scale down the long term costs of your marketing, hauling in a greater degree of efficiency through intelligent, data-driven decision making.
In a marketing world that is more complex than ever before, brands must fully understand how to create a multi-channel marketing strategy that suits their budget, audiences and objectives. Effectively implementing such a strategy, driven by data, could be a game-changer for many businesses … taking you to heights you never thought possible.
If you’re interested in learning more about multi-channel marketing, send us a message by clicking here or sending an email to [email protected].
If you’d like to see a practical, real-life example of multi-channel marketing at its best, read our case study on the work we carried out for B&M Supplies – Malta’s largest tile and bathroom showroom.
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