In this era of highly developed network information, the ways people communicate with each other are becoming more and more diverse, including telephone, email, and social networking.
The biggest challenge for a product or brand now is to stand out from the crowd and attract consumers at the right time. So cross-channel marketing came into being – it allows brands to communicate seamlessly with consumers across multiple touch points.Contents hidden
What is cross-channel marketing?
The significance of cross-channel marketing
How to Develop the Right Cross-Channel Marketing Strategy
What is cross-channel marketing?
When we talk about the concept of cross-channel marketing, many people tend to confuse this concept with multi-channel marketing. There is an essential difference between these two concepts. Multi-channel marketing emphasizes operating multiple platforms at the same time, while cross-channel marketing, also known as cross-channel integrated marketing, emphasizes operating each platform while connecting each platform to achieve seamless data connection.
Usually, we have two ways to contact customers
Online methods include mobile devices, text messages, emails, company websites, social media, and TV ads. Offline methods include exhibitions, customer visits, phone calls, etc. Cross-channel marketing integrates inbound and outbound ports to contact customers in multiple ways.
The significance of cross-channel marketing
Cross-channel marketing means data sharing and circulation between platforms. When all platforms are connected, especially when the channels that match the product/brand are connected, the energy contained in the data is infinite. The more data accumulates, the bigger the snowball will roll, and the more advantageous the position will be.
This will bring us the following benefits
1. Improve participation and brand coverage, save operating costs
Communicating with consumers on a single channel may be successful, but it also means that you rely on a certain type of user behavior, such as checking emails at a certain time every day. In contrast, cross-channel means that you can reach consumers in different ways at different times of the day, which greatly increases the possibility of consumer participation and deepens consumers’ impression of the brand. At the same time, data from different channels is aggregated into one platform, which expands the audience while reducing customer acquisition costs.
Businesses not only improve efficiency but also help increase customer trust and loyalty. The ethical implications of using phone number data cannot be ignored. Providers must demonstrate their commitment to ethical data practices by adopting strict measures to phone number database protect personal information and ensure compliance with legal standards.
Improve positioning accuracy and improve customer acquisition quality
The more data is accumulated, the more obvious the customer’s demographic characteristics, socioeconomic characteristics, and interest and behavioral characteristics will be, the higher the accuracy of positioning digital marketing for franchises complete guide will be, and the higher the quality of the audience obtained by the marketing activities will be. Some common platforms such as Google Analytics, Facebook Audience Insight, Consumer Barometer, Quantcast, etc. can achieve this function. If you don’t know how to use these platforms, you can check out my previous article: 8 free online tools to help you find your target audience
3. Manage sales through feedback
By promoting information through as many channels as possible that are suitable for the nature of the product and brand, the company can maximize the marketing effect and collect feedback from different customer groups. Through customer adb directory feedback, products and services can be adjusted and improved in a timely manner. At the same time, the company can use data to determine which channels are more suitable for certain customer groups and formulate strategies to meet the needs of this customer group.
4. Increase sales
With many channels and high audience precision, the company can attract more potential customers, which means more sales. At the same time, these sales data can be fed back into marketing activities to further guide product marketing activities.
5. Improve customer loyalty
As customers interact with a brand more frequently, the chances of them becoming brand loyalists increase. Cross-channel must ensure that customers receive a comprehensive experience regardless of the environment they are in. This way, customers are highly satisfied and willing to engage in product/brand interactions.
How to Develop the Right Cross-Channel Marketing Strategy
Since cross-channel marketing has so many benefits, how should companies choose marketing channels? Should they choose SEO, SEM and display advertising to attract traffic? Or should they focus on valuable content marketing? Should they focus on building a strong social media operation? Or should they conduct email marketing?
The answer is all of the above
The results of cross-channel marketing are definitely more profitable than single marketing, but it is not as simple as it seems. First, you must make sure you have an overall strategy. A cohesive strategic plan can maximize the advantages of each channel to achieve the same goal.
When determining your strategy, you should first consider what kind of company you are and what your value proposition is. Customers may interact with your product/brand through multiple platforms. If they find that your product promotion is inconsistent, they will misunderstand or feel annoyed. If the product and concept you promote are consistent, they will easily remember your product and brand after frequent exposure on different channels. Next, we need to start choosing channels
That are suitable for our products/brands
SEO: SEO is the key to driving high-quality new traffic. SEO optimization of the website can not only obtain high-quality traffic and users, but also provide a high-quality landing platform for subsequent marketing activities.
SEM: Paid search and display advertising, using websites as carriers. Large traffic and high quality.
Content marketing: SEO and SEM only bring traffic. As for whether customers can stay and convert after staying, it depends on whether customers can find something they think is valuable on the website. This is the value of content marketing.
Remarketing: Retargeting customers after they leave your website to ensure your products are not forgotten.
Social Marketing: Use social platforms to promote products and brands, make the brand more humane and build trust with customers.
Email marketing: Someone once said that “social marketing killed email marketing”. In fact, it is not true. On the contrary, social marketing has promoted email marketing. Social platforms are very suitable for sharing valuable content planned by products and brands, but users of social media usually don’t want to see themselves being sold out. Therefore, email has become a good supplement, and users are more sensitive to direct sales in email marketing.
