Cross or multi-channel marketing is a simple, yet effective strategy used by businesses, brands, and companies worldwide. Its main goal is to increase exposure by utilizing more than one platform for campaigning. Although word-of-mouth may be the most traditional form of marketing, nowadays society is inundated with a variety of channels to use for advertise, such as social media, e-mail, T.V., print ads, and more.
Taking advantage of all these resources may be a bit daunting for the everyday marketer, as more work is involved to get multi-channel campaigns up and running. However, there are lots of benefits associated with their implementation, and this approach will even be advantageous to your brand down the road.
Let’s take a look at just a few of the pros to marketing across multiple channels.
Ensures your reach extends further than just one audience
With cross-platform marketing, you’re automatically guaranteed to extend your reach further. The everyday customer is interacting with the television, social media, and the internet at the same time most days. However, some potential customers that have television may not be active users of applications like Instagram, and vice versa.
This is why it’s important to ensure your brand is accounting for differences in audience demographics and planning accordingly. For example, the world’s leading poker platform, PokerStars, rebranded with a multi-channel marketing campaign and a fresh TV advert which was released for the public across key territories. The brand showed awareness of their target audience, understanding the followers that make up their community, and their 60 second ad fully represented that.
Likewise with gaming giant Nintendo. A great example of multi-channel marketing came with the release of their highly anticipated Switch device, which promised to deliver one of the best hand-held gaming experiences of all time. The company released a variety of T.V. ads and also conquered social media, a strategy that got a great response from fans.
It all goes to show that an increase in visibility equals an increase in customer engagement and loyalty.
Different platforms are best for different functions
The truth is you wouldn’t go to Instagram for the same reasons you go to Facebook. Just as you wouldn’t post on your Linkedin page in the same way you publish on your Twitter page. With such a variety of platforms, each one has been specifically designed to serve different purposes and functions. This is definitely something to keep in mind when designing a marketing plan across multiple platforms.
It’s also important to consider each site’s viewership data before choosing to launch there. The main goal is to release eye-catching content in the right environment. For example, television may be a great outlet for longer, more cinematic commercials, whereas Facebook is wonderful for fast ads that reach a younger audience of gen-x scrollers who may have shorter attention spans. Even the dullest brand can come alive if its given the correct platform to tell its story on.
Caption: When your marketing pool is larger, so is the data collected from consumer action
Allows your brand to obtain significant data on buyer behavior
Because cross-channel marketing is often done in the digital realm, data is stored on each movement that takes place between customer and client, or vice versa. This information can then be evaluated for further research and to predict future outcomes concerning buyer behavior. Digital marketing also means you can reach people all around the world, so your data pool may even become international and cross-cultural.
When you begin to advertise across a variety of channels, it can be hard to keep up with every customer and launch location. This is where a customer data platform (CDP) can help you organize and examine analytics. In this way, you’ll always have a bank of information on each campaign and its results, no matter how many channels you choose to launch on.
