The ultimate goal of marketing is to establish a brand that’s instantly recognizable. Cross channel marketing means feeding one campaign with another. Instead of simply spreading your net to include TV, print and social media, you incorporate them into one another. Have a flyer encouraging customers to “Like” your business on Facebook to receive a free coupon. Not only do you create a brand image that is consistent across any medium, you reach your customers in more direct, focused ways. But, if not handled correctly, cross channel marketing can result in inundation that overwhelms and turns off the customer. Below are three tips to help your small business’s cross-channel marketing campaign succeed — and inherent advantages of the system.
Find Your Balance
By providing loyal customers and potential clients with up-to-date information on sales and new products or services, you’re making their lives easier. By flooding their inbox daily, you’re becoming an annoyance. At every step in the process, check for warning signs that you’ve taken a wrong turn. If customers begin unsubscribing to emails at a rapid rate, or opt out of text messages, it’s possible that the information to communication ratio is off. If this issue isn’t addressed, you may lose customers or get a reputation as overly aggressive. To head this problem off, incorporate one new channel at a time — suggest in a weekly email that customers sign up for SMS updates.
Thank the Good Ones
One of the benefits of cross-channel marketing is the ability to more fully track customers’ buying habits. This gives small businesses the unique opportunity to identify (and reward) their most loyal customers. You can reward people who Tweet about you or shop frequently by special offers tailored to their interests. As a result, you’ll improve customer retention and satisfaction. You can reach people who avoid Facebook and smartphones with a simple one-line text. You can hit obsessive email checkers and store passers-by, all as part of a seamlessly diversified marketing strategy that contacts customers the way they’d like to be found.
Save on Funds
It seems counter-intuitive that expanding your marketing strategy can be less expensive. But creating a Facebook campaign is very similar to creating a campaign for other social media outlets. Blog posts can be reproduced in an email blast, and then boiled down to Twitter posts. You’re applying the same amount of effort in the creative department, but spreading it over a wider field. For small businesses working with a limited budget, this is an excellent way to stretch your resources.
No matter how brilliantly designed your campaign may be, cross channel marketing is essentially worthless without the right tracking metrics. Invest in software that keeps track of the different marketing channels. It should allow you to keep track of the individual successes (and failures) of direct-mail marketing, online advertising, social media and text message updates. Then, spend time seeing which of these interacted best. By constantly adapting your system, you’ll work toward a near-perfect method of reaching customers. Be unique, be attentive and be sensitive to buyers’ needs, and it won’t take long to see big results across the field.
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