In today’s competitive business landscape, reaching customers through multiple channels has become an important aspect of any successful marketing strategy. Companies have reported that an effective multichannel marketing strategy can help retain up to 89% of their customers.
A multichannel marketing strategy allows businesses to connect with customers through various touchpoints such as social media, email, and Connected TV (CTV). By leveraging various channels, companies can effectively communicate with their target audience while creating a seamless customer experience across platforms to increase customer retention and revenue.
We’ve made a guide for you to follow to ensure that you create a successful multichannel marketing strategy. From identifying your target audience and objectives, safeguarding your brand’s value, to optimizing and elevating your strategy. With our help, you’re guaranteed a powerful marketing strategy that’ll connect you with customers no matter the platform.
What is a multichannel marketing strategy?
With 66.66% of consumers using more than one shopping channel, it’s clear that brands need to be present on multiple platforms to reach a wider number of customers. By playing to the best features and target demographic of each software, you’re sure to maximize your product’s impact and your brand’s presence. Basically, with multichannel marketing, you get to be where your target audience is and make your company more accessible to them.
While combining different types of marketing tools guarantees maximum impact, it’s important that you build a strong foundation to ensure a consistent branding delivery to every customer to enhance their experience.
Take the tech giant, Apple, for example.
Apple makes use of various third-party companies such as Amazon, Target, and Best Buy and they’re also present in social media channels like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter but, no matter the platform, customers will always have the same experience with the brand. This is because Apple has very specific branding guidelines to ensure a consistent presentation of their company across all channels.
Apple’s branding guarantees that you’ll have the best product in the palm of your hands simply because it’s Apple.
How do I build a multichannel marketing strategy?
Now that you know what multichannel marketing is and what it can do for your business, it’s time for us to dive into creating a strategy that’s right for you.
Before we start, it’s important that you know that multichannel marketing strategies will need you to constantly revise your plan according to the data you receive. If you want your product to stay on top, you’ll need to be dedicated and detail-oriented to keep it there. Let’s get started!
1. Define your objectives
Just like how a ship needs a compass for directions, a business also needs a plan. Understanding why you’re doing this, what your goals are, and who you’re trying to reach is key to creating a successful strategy. You’ll want to develop a multichannel marketing strategy that can maximize your customer’s engagements, allow you to achieve your objectives, and enhance your client’s experience. This is why you must understand who your target audience is from the very beginning.
Setting your target audience is essential to the planning process and it will shape all your marketing efforts. You’ll want to take your time and get to know them first, so you know what appeals to them and what they need.
But how will you know if you’ve gotten your target market down to a tee? If you can confidently answer the following questions below, then you’re all set to create a strategy for your audience:
- Do you have a persona in mind for this audience?
- What are your target audience’s pain points?
- Who is your target audience?
- Where is your target audience from?
- What do they do for a living?
- Is your target audience married or not?
- Does your target audience have kids?
- How old is your target audience?
- Why will your product be beneficial for this group?
Go in-depth with your questions because this research will be the foundation of your strategy. If you’ve got the time and resources, talk to your ideal audience, and learn about their stories. Create a connection with them by getting to know them and putting them at the center of your efforts. That way, you can be more purposeful with your content.
2. Determine your channels
Now that you’ve got your target audience down, it’s time to find out the channels that they use the most.
While it’s good to stay accessible to your market, understanding where you can find them the most allows you to have a focus channel. Having a focus channel helps you minimize your efforts while maximizing results – especially when you’re paying to be there.
For example, if you’re targeting Gen Z women, it may be best to set your sights on populating your TikTok with catchy short-form videos that talk about your product in a fun manner.
Another sample would be if you’re using CTV ads for your products, if you’ve partnered with a streaming service like Hulu, you’ll want to strategically pick your shows to make the ads relevant to the viewers. So, you can first check the demographic of viewers of that show and see if they’re who you want to reach.
Of course, consumer’s behaviors will change over time and they may not use the same platforms, watch the same shows, and respond to the same content. So, you’ll need to constantly adapt your strategy to continuously make it relevant to your target.
3. Develop your brand voice
The key part in developing consistency for your multichannel marketing strategy is creating a solid branding. If we’re emulating Apple, you’ll want to make sure that you get the specifics of your branding down from logo display, color, to voice.
It’s time to put all your efforts into developing your own brand. By creating strict branding guidelines, you’re assured of a consistent presentation across all your channels. Another would be your brand’s voice; you may employ different writers over time, but the brand’s voice must stay the same.
Whenever you create content, you need to make sure that it’s aligned with your company’s message, values, and voice. Use different copywriting techniques to deliver engaging content that may change its tone according to the platform used, but never its voice.
4. Create your content plan
By now, you should have a solid branding strategy that’s geared toward your target market. Now that you have your essentials down, you can finally start creating a content plan for your channels.
While you may have a focus channel, it’s important that you still post on your other channels to cater to some clients who may not be present on your focus channel. Some brands choose to cross-post their content to maximize its use across all platforms, while others create specific content for certain channels.
When you’re creating your content plan, you’ll want to plot out the following things:
- Which part of the buyer’s journey will you be targeting with your content;
- How often will you post content for that channel;
- When should you create content for that channel;
- If you’ll be cross-posting your content to a different channel;
- And when you’ll be evaluating your content strategy.
As you continue to make content for your clients, you’ll start to have an idea of what’s working for them and what isn’t. So, make sure to leave some room for experimentation, trends, and plan adjustment.
5. Roll out your multichannel marketing plan
Finally! It’s time for you to put your plan into action to see if you’ve made a marketing strategy that can hit the right market.
Quick tip before you roll out your campaign, make sure to install the necessary data analytics tools before you start or check to see if the platform you’re using can provide them. That way, whether you’re marketing on CTV, social media marketing, or SEO, you’ll always have the data you need to understand where it’s performing poorly and how you can pivot the content to be more impactful to your target audience.
6. Monitor and evaluate your strategy
As we’ve said at the start of this blog, building a multichannel marketing strategy is not a deploy-and-forget kind of thing. You’ll need to constantly monitor and evaluate your strategy according to the data you receive on all your channels to see if your efforts are translating to conversions.
It’s also important to have these data readily on-hand to keep your teammates in the loop about the performance of your campaigns. If you’ve installed the proper data analytics tools, then it should be no problem.
7. Augment and redevelop your system
Because you have historical data about your campaign’s performance, you have the knowledge to break down why certain content is performing and why it isn’t to improve your company’s engagement. Assessing your results and redeveloping your system to cater to your findings is a critical part of maintaining your business’ edge and improving customer retention.
Keep working and reworking your plan to develop a system that’ll help you reach your goals efficiently.
Bringing Your Content to Your Market with VlogBox
In the end, the goal for your multichannel marketing strategy is to use various channels to bring a customer down your conversion funnel and to keep them in your company’s ecosystem. Bring your marketing tactics to the next level by including CTV in your arsenal of channels.
VlogBox takes your content to the right market on the right show to maximize its impact. Not only do we provide you with the connections you need to get your ads to your target audience’s screen but, we also give you a system that can help you monitor and maintain your campaigns to keep you at the top of your game.
Elevate your marketing today. Partner with us at VlogBox.