When using an MCM strategy, the biggest returns you’re likely to see are in terms of efficiency and customer interaction, while the most obvious benefits remain an increase in your customer base and the ability to target a wider swathe of prospects. If you’re looking to expand your marketing efforts to include a multi-channel engagement strategy, here are a few essentials to help you on your way,
1. Ensure that your brand message retains its integrity across every channel that you employ. With an increase in the number of channels dispensing entertainment and information, maintaining a cohesive branding strategy can be quite a challenging task. The trick is to keep your target audience in mind and craft a brand experience where each stand-alone element comes together to create a unified sense of appeal that drives conversions; a sort of the whole is greater than the sum of its parts methodology, so to speak.
2. It is equally important to ensure that you identify the communication channels that are frequented by your target market. This may include traditional mass media like the television and print vs. newer technologies like QR codes and mobile internet.
3. Launching an effective campaign requires effective timing. To gain a better sense of when to market your wares, invest in some quality market research that outlines the size, demographics and buying patterns of your prospect market. Analyzing the data should give you a clearer idea of when and how to actualize your campaign messages.
4. The data that’s on offer during the course of your campaign can be immensely valuable, so ensure that you have the tools and mechanisms in place to capture as much of it as possible. Send out surveys and include an order form that requires customers to fill in important data.
5. All the information collated across different channels absolutely must pass through a central customer data base. This will allow you to organize all your captured data which can be used to define targeting parameters later. Also, while analyzing data, do not analyze individual data in channel-specific silos. Instead, try to adopt an integrated approach that allows you to combine data from different channels in order to better understand buying trends across the length and breadth of your entire consumer base.
6. If you’re looking to drive sales through a specific avenue, ensure that you’re staff is heading in the right direction by creating a flexible incentive structure for each channel.
7. Keep sales staff who deal with offline customers well aware of your online marketing initiatives. A well-publicized online offer can severely backfire if your real-world personnel are clueless about why customers are demanding a specific discount. Plus, it makes your organization look ineffective and incompetent.
8. Create effective interaction models for each channel. Ideally, customers should be able to interact with you via every channel that you make yourself available on. And by interaction, I mean:
- Receive product information and deals
- Make and book purchases
- Contact customer service
- Leave feedback
- Return products
9. By monitoring customer behavior at the individual level, you can feel out preference trends and isolate specific customer groups that exclusively use specific channels. This sort of analysis will help you gear your promotions and deals to specific user groups and will aid in formulating a more personalized brand engagement experience.
Well, there you go! A nonet of the most effective multi-channel schemes and strategies, to help you set new business horizons and streamline overall efficiency. Leave a comment and let me know is this article helped you out in anyway.
