Directwest’s Media Advisors work with small businesses across the province of Saskatchewan to help them assess their marketing plan and assist in building their advertising strategy. Multichannel marketing is something that we often recommend.
What is multichannel marketing?
In not so many words, multichannel marketing is creating the same marketing strategy and advertising strategy and putting it across multiple different channels.
Multichannel marketing can include a combination of both digital and traditional forms of media. For example:
- Social Media content
- Social Media Ads
- Direct mail
- Display advertising
- Search advertising
What are the benefits?
- Increased frequency and touch points
- Wider variety of an audience
- Potential to “out do” your competition
- Provides an integrated strategy
Not every person is on every social media channel or subscribes to all forms of media or even wants to receive information in the same way. That’s why you want to have multichannel approach. This approach will help increase your network of viewers, for users who do have multiple platforms there is increased frequency for brand recognition and additional touch points. Not all users want to receive content the same, that’s why you need to be in all the places that they are. Plus, if our competition does not use all the channels that your audience is using that can give you competitive advantage. Now, who doesn’t want that?
What do you need to be successful?
- You need to understand your audience
- Budget or people
- Creative to use on the platforms
Your first step should always be understanding your audience. This is so important. Who is your audience? Are they male or female? What are the percentages between the two? Where are they located? What age range of people buy or use your product or service? What are their interests? Are you trying to grow your network? Who else would you like to target? What do they do for work? What are their potential hobbies?
If you’re building your own marketing or advertising strategy or working with an agency, they are going to ask you these things.
If you’re not wanting to do this work yourself, you’re going to need budget or people. Meaning, you either need to have a budget set aside to pay an agency or marketing firm or you’re going to need to use the “said budget” to pay a yearly salary for new staff member to complete the work for you.
As mentioned, a multichannel approach is using the same marketing and advertising strategies across multiple platforms. For example, maybe you just worked with a photographer who took photos and video content for your website. You can use that content and place it across your other channels. You could use that photo to develop a post about a product or service on Facebook, and then use the image on Instagram.
“Multi-channel marketing and selling increases revenue by 38%, 120%, and 190% with each additional channel.”
– Shopify
One thing to note is you don’t want to create brand fatigue. That means you don’t want your frequency to be blasting all the time, nor do you want your text to be verbatim on all channels. You want to talk about the same topic or have the same look and feel but be mindful you want the content to be targeted to users of the platform. As an example, Twitter has primarily a male usage along with an older age range where Instagram and Facebook have higher female usages. You may want to adjust the tone of the message on the different platforms. Another thing to consider is not all platforms have the same image sizes, so you need to develop your content to fit the space that you will be using it in.
What do you need to think about before you start?
- What is your overall marketing strategy?
- What are your goals?
- What are your objectives?
- Who is your target audience and how do they like to receive information?
- Messaging
- You want to have consistent messaging – but don’t copy it verbatim. Think of the users who use the platform.
- Don’t do everything at once
- If you’re going to attempt this on your own. Start small. Do that one thing well before moving on to something else
- How are you going to measure success?
- This so important, it allows you to learn and continue to make changes and adapt your strategy. If your goal is to increase brand awareness, how will you measure that? Are you tracking website traffic or something else?
Directwest offers a handy Marketing Playbook that can help get you started and don’t hesitate to give your Directwest Media Advisor a call if you ever want to chat about your marketing. They can walk you through the entire process. If you don’t have a Directwest Media Advisor, give us a call or send us an email and we’ll set you up with one.
Happy marketing!
Jenna Gaube is a Marketing Manager with the Revenue Growth Team at Directwest
