Cross-Channel Marketing: Everything You Need to Know
If you’re in business, no doubt you’ve heard of cross-channel marketing. From big brands down to freelancers, every business needs to expand its reach to connect to its audience.
Now, you might know you need a cross-channel marketing strategy, but understanding exactly what that entails is a challenge.
Let’s start by defining the idea.
What Is Cross-Channel Marketing?
The concept behind cross-channel marketing in the digital world is that you’ll find your audience in multiple places online.
Channel marketing matters because the goal is to create a seamless user experience (UX) through consistency and being available anywhere they are on the internet.
What’s more—it’s not enough just to be there. The brand should strive to connect and engage their audience. These days, no one wants to be marketed to, thanks to social media.
In other words, you need to be easy to find. But that’s only part of it—your content must have something to offer beyond a sales pitch.
Channels in Online Marketing
Knowing your audience is the key to providing useful content. It also helps you understand where they are online.
Cross-channel marketing doesn’t mean casting a wide net to see if you can catch some attention. Instead, it’s a steady build of a cohesive marketing strategy that can be tweaked to fit all the places your audience frequents.
First, find out who they are, what they need, and where they hang out.
Multi-Media Content
Next, think about how context optimization can increase your brand’s value and recognition.
For example, if you sell dog food, you can increase user engagement by encouraging your audience to upload pictures of their pets on Instagram and Facebook.
You might add a picture of an adorable dog to an article you write about caring for your pal and post that on Pinterest.
Similarly, you can extend the channel marketing through YouTube, where you can post a video of dogs who resemble their owners, and do encourage comments.
Follow that up with an email that includes a coupon and a link to a contest for dog owners. Do you see how it all ties into the plan?
Easy Access
Your customers should have access to their shopping basket, coupons, account information, and more, regardless of the platform where they’re connecting with your business.
Extending your marketing campaign cross-channel and integrating account information and other services across platforms provides a seamless UX.
Even better; you can implement a growth marketing strategy and use A/B testing to discover trends. Also, implement loyalty and referral programs to attract new business and reward your existing customers.
The Device Matters
2019 found that 64% of smartphone users worldwide visited retail websites. However, only 46% of buyers made purchases via their phones. In fact, the percentage of mobile purchases is equal to the buys people make on their personal computers.
As these statistics highlight, it’s best to optimize your cross-channel ideas to include the various devices your audience will use to connect.
Develop Your Channel Marketing Strategy
Do you know where to find your customers online? What platforms fit into your cross-channel marketing strategy?
Want to learn more about marketing? Then check out our other blogs.