Connecting with your customers and potential customers has always been a bit of a challenge, particularly if you don’t know where to find them. It’s true – not all consumers are created equal. In fact, very rarely are you going to find your customers to be identical in their needs, wants and expectations of you and your business or organization. You have to find them where they are, engage them and drive them to take an action with your business. That’s challenging. Unless you’re using multichannel marketing.

Multichannel marketing is the use of multiple promotional channels for the purpose of marketing to a particular audience. It includes traditional marketing methods like direct mail, flyers and handouts as well as digital marketing methods like social media, paid search ads and email marketing. But why advertise on multiple channels?

First and foremost, just as all of your customers are not created equal, you’re not going to find all of them in the same place (unless you’re lucky and they are all in your store at the same time). You need to reach them where they are – on Facebook or Instagram, in their email inbox or on your website or landing page, for example. Second, by using multiple channels, you can reach your audience more thoroughly, engage them multiple times through an integrated marketing effort and drive them towards making a purchase or taking a desired action.

However, there are more benefits to multichannel marketing than that. Here are just some more ways that your business or organization can benefit from using it:

1. Reach your audience on the channels where they are
2. Increase customer engagement and interaction frequency
3. Improve audience perception and brand experience
4. Better targeting, more relevant media for your audience
5. Increase in sales
6. Cost effective, saving you money
7. Better data collection and analytics

1. Reach your audience on the channels where they are

Probably the biggest benefit of multichannel marketing is the ability to reach your audience on the channels where they are. For instance, if you know you have a younger demographic for a customer base, you’re more likely to reach them on social media channels like Facebook and Instagram than via email and some forms of traditional marketing. Likewise if you have an older demographic (though the age group growing fastest right now on Facebook is the 65 years and older group), you’re more likely to reach them using traditional marketing (and probably Facebook too). And, because you’ve met them on their chosen channel, they are more likely to interact with your business or organization. It’s important to know who your customers are – what do they want? Where and how do they shop? What do they expect from the businesses they patronize and organizations they support? These questions should be answered and they will most likely tell you what channels you can connect with which segment of your audience.

2. IncreaseD customer engagement & interaction frequency

As a side benefit of being able to reach your audience on their respective marketing channels, you’ll see an increase in engagement and interaction frequency with your customers and potential customers. This only seems logical since the more content that you put out on a marketing channel, the greater the likelihood that your audience is going to engage with it, and their frequency of engaging will increase also. The important thing to remember here is that in order to get the engagement from your audience, you need to be patient and play the long game. Content marketing is a bit of a long game – that is, it could be some time before you see the ROI on your efforts. But, by being consistent with your posts and content and frequently reaching out to your target audience(s), you’ll soon get the engagement you’re looking for.

3. ImproveD audience perception & brand experience

Another side benefit to connecting with your audience on multiple channels is how they will start to perceive your brand and their experience with your business or organization. Often, the only exposure a consumer has to a brand or product is through a single marketing channel: an ad online, a radio advertisement or a flyer. However, using multichannel marketing, you can be sure that your potential customers know all about your products and services because you’re using multiple marketing channels to connect with them, increasing your brand awareness and improving their perception of your business or organization. Typically, it takes 7 “touches” to turn a consumer into a customer – that is, they need to see, experience and understand a product or service multiple times – 7 on average – to be persuaded enough to make a purchase. Using multichannel marketing, you can very quickly (and efficiently) generate those “touches” and convert consumers into customers more quickly.

It shouldn’t all be about conversions though – sometimes, it takes people connecting with a brand because of their mission or vision that truly makes a difference. Perhaps, for example, your social posts are unique (and funny) enough to be shared.  Perhaps your mission is communicated well enough that a follower feels compelled to share it with their network. Whatever it is, make sure your brand and how people experience it, gets communicated frequently to your audience.

4. Better targeting, more relevant media for your audience

Everyone should know who their ideal customers are and create personas for them to better enable their business to target them in their marketing. With multichannel marketing, you can not only market to your target audience, but you can advertise specifically to a particular persona. As stated above, you’re unlikely to have an audience with identical needs, wants and expectations. Using multiple marketing channels, you can reach each audience individually with a particular message that will resonate with them and drive them toward taking action. The more specific the targeting, the better and more relevant your content is going to be for that segment of your audience. It’s not considered unusual to have multiple landing pages where consumers can take action that are specific to a segment of an audience. Ultimately, they should all drive individual members of an audience to perform some desired action, however, how they get there doesn’t have to be the same.

5. Increase in sales

The benefit everyone has been waiting for – the increase in sales. In fact, using a multichannel marketing strategy can increase your revenue 15-35%! Why? Multichannel Marketing presents more opportunities for consumers to make purchases or take actions – far more than single channels users. Additionally, multichannel customers spend as much as 4 times more than single channel customers. Customers acquired through multichannel marketing campaigns have generated additional benefits of lower cost per acquisition and better ROI as well. A multichannel strategy can also help with customer retention and satisfaction to keep their interest in your business or organization and encourage them to return, which in these uncertain times is imperative.

6. Cost effective, saving you money

Along with increasing sales, multichannel marketing is more cost effective, thus saving you money, which is a huge benefit for small businesses and nonprofits. How could something that reaches more people, more frequently be cost effective? Well, for the most part, using social media networks like Facebook and Instagram are free – until you get into paid advertising. Even then, you can set your budget and a lot of the demographics surrounding your audience so that you only reach the people that are important to you. Second, by utilizing some of the free or inexpensive options available, you’re able to reach more people faster and thus you don’t have to advertise the same campaign longer. For instance, you’re advertising a sale, you may not need to advertise as heavily and for as long using a single channel than using multiple channels. For nonprofits who are running a fundraising campaign, it can be extremely helpful to have multiple channels going with multiple ways that people can donate: online, by mail or even an in person event. Whether it’s advertising a sale or fundraising for a nonprofit, multichannel marketing can help keep your costs low and money in your pocket.

7. Better data collection and analytics

Something that may not seem like a huge benefit when it comes to a multichannel marketing campaign is the data that is collected and the analytics that can be used to determine how your audience responded to your marketing efforts. How do you use collected data? Well, for instance, if you ran a campaign for a specific promotion and collected information about people who were interested in your promotion, you could then create a segment of your email list and add them to it and retarget them using display ads, in the event that they did not make a purchase or sign up for your promotion. Retargeting a segment of your audience that has shown interest in your promotion on another channel is just one way to use multichannel marketing. Segmenting your audience list is one of the best ways to reach your audience with relevant and appropriate marketing. It helps you understand and know your audience better and enables you to reach them through the channels they respond to. In short, multichannel marketing has better opportunity for meaningful data collection and actionable insights.

These are just a few of the many benefits of multichannel marketing. Much the same way that all businesses and organizations are not the same, the benefits derived from a multichannel marketing strategy will likely be different. And, that’s ok. However, if you’re not getting any benefit from using a multichannel marketing strategy, you might want to take advantage of a multichannel marketing program, like  DPi Campaign Pro.

DPi Campaign Pro is an affordable, integrated digital multichannel marketing program that allows you to choose the channels you want to reach your audience on. Ranging from email marketing, retargeting and scheduled social media posts to dedicated landing pages and marketing automation, DPi Campaign Pro is the best multichannel marketing solution for small businesses and nonprofits. Learn more by clicking the image below.