Multiply Your Revenue with Multichannel and Omni Channel Marketing

Many clients with sales-oriented objectives will come to us and say “I want to drive more sales. We want a Search campaign. Can you help us?”. Our next natural question is “Okay, are you open to any other channels?”. This is usually when we get pauses. Why would you need more channels when Search is proven to drive leads and purchases? If you’ve asked yourself the same question, read on. The reality is (and although Google likes to think they rule the world), Google isn’t the end-all-be-all channel to drive purchases.

What is multichannel marketing?

Multichannel marketing is one of those buzzwords that gets used so much, yet if asked on the spot, many people wouldn’t have a clear answer.

Shopify makes the definition short and simple: “Multichannel marketing is promoting and selling anywhere your customers buy”.

Just a few decades ago, the parameter ‘anywhere your customers buy’ was limited to the brick-and-mortar store. You could reach them outside the store with a small range of advertising channels and the classic word of mouth. Today, ‘anywhere your customers buy’ is a huge range of places and times. In-store, yes, but thanks to this thing called the Internet and smartphones, where people buy is almost literally, anywhere (and any time, too).

OK, so why do you need multichannel marketing?

Salesforce states that it can take 6 to 8 touch points from a brand before a viable lead decides to act. For some of our clients, this can be up to 20 website visits before someone makes a purchase!

It would be a bit of a stretch to think all of those touchpoints are from Google Search. So, if your marketing strategy just entails a Search campaign, you’re limiting yourself only to people who are actively seeking something on Google. What about all the other countless opportunities to reach people? Although another channel may not directly drive that sale, it may be the first of 6 or more interactions needed to drive a new sale. The more channels you add to your plan, the more you can put ‘eggs into different baskets’ so to speak. In other words, leverage more channels to address the different aspects of the sales cycle, from awareness to lead generation to sales. According to Shopify, the revenue growth could be as much as 190% if you add more channels.

Another big benefit of adding more channels is getting more data. At Vovia, we love data. Why? It takes the guesswork out of understanding the results of a campaign. It tells us a story of what people like and don’t like; what drives revenue and what doesn’t. And yes, this does include data for offline campaigns. Data from one channel can fill in the gaps to help us find answers to questions from another. Another channel’s data can also literally become the targeting for another channel – it’s called remarketing (and it works)! Altogether, this data creates an informative visual of the customer journey.

But it’s not that simple

Alright, so more channels it is. What other channels are out there? Which ones are going to work best for my company, products, and objectives? How much should I be spending on each channel? What if I don’t have enough budget? These are key questions we ask at the start of any multichannel marketing plan. It takes a lot of media research and analytics data from your website (from Google Analytics), previous campaigns, and your competitors to come up with the answer. You might already have some other channels that you wouldn’t think would go together, but they should.

We encourage our clients to tell us about their non-paid marketing efforts – your organic social, email marketing, print, website, even your sales team’s strategy – all of this can be linked together with our plan to make, one big cohesive marketing strategy. How these channels work together will be unique to your business and industry. That’s what keeps us on our toes!

Turning multichannel marketing into omni channel marketing

Once you know what your channels are, the next big question is what are you going to say on all of them? Unfortunately, a universal message blanketed on every channel doesn’t usually work. This is where multichannel marketing evolves into omni channel marketing. Your messages on each channel should be catered to the behaviours, perceptions, and questions a user may have at the time they see the ad. Are you using Google Display as an awareness channel? The message should be higher-level, introducing the user to the product and giving them a reason to learn more. Are you using an e-newsletter to cross-sell existing customers? The messaging needs to be directly related to what they are interested in (it will almost literally be different for every customer, which is why email segmentation works). Read about email segmentation here.

The last but not least important factor to a successful omni channel plan is a consistent brand experience and team collaboration. While it’s good to have customized messages for each channel, you also want to make sure the brand is represented consistently. Today’s customers expect a seamless experience across a brand; they do not perceive a brand in silos. At each touchpoint, they’ll think and relate to the previous touchpoint they had. If it isn’t a seamless brand experience, their perception is disjointed, and they may not end up trusting the business or converting. Customers expect their customer journey to be fluid and connected. To make this unified in the customer’s eyes, your teams have to work hard in the back-end. Your teams have to talk to one another and be aligned on common business goals. This includes your sales team, creative team, IT team, media agency, organic social team, and PR team. Collaboration is how you get those 190% revenue growth numbers as you add new channels to the mix.

Perfection takes time

Successfully planning and executing a multi or omni channel plan is not easy or fast. If there was a way to do it, someone would have done it already and made a lot of money. Breaking down the silos is probably one of the hardest parts of transforming into omni channel marketing, but it’s worth it. Then, once their job is done, we have to wait for the data to tell us the rest of the story. To gather enough data to be statistically significant can take weeks or months. From there we can gain insights and provide further direction and testing to build upon your existing strategy. Would you do that for 190% increase in revenue? Yes, we think so!

Need some help to build your next omnichannel marketing plan? Contact us for more details on our planning services.