How Cross-Channel Marketing Strategies Boost Business Growth
Growth is typically a goal for any business, and according to GoCardless, most businesses should aim for about 15-25% growth each year, though this can vary depending on various factors.
There are various strategies you can implement to expand your business. An approach that's becoming increasingly popular is cross-channel marketing. When done right, it can be one of the best ways to get your brand in front of a much wider audience.
In this guide, we'll take a look at the key benefits of cross-channel marketing strategies for businesses that are trying to grow. Let's dive in.
Cross-Channel Marketing vs Multi-Channel Marketing
One of the first things to note is that people often confuse cross-channel marketing with multi-channel marketing, though they're not quite the same.
Multi-channel marketing involves reaching your audience through various channels, but these channels aren't connected. They typically maintain brand consistency but don't share any information between them. As such, the content presented to customers might not match where they are in their journey.
Cross-channel marketing also uses various channels, but they do share information with each other. This means that what a customer sees on a given channel will depend on their previous engagement with your business.
Multi-channel marketing can be great for reaching out, but it doesn't cater to specific users. Cross-channel marketing tactics help put the right information in front of customers at the right time.
Benefits of Cross-Channel Marketing
Cross-channel marketing can be one of the best business growth strategies if implemented correctly. It offers a range of benefits that could be vital to your business.
Increased Brand Awareness
Through cross-channel marketing, you can reach a wide range of users across various marketing channels such as:
- Web
- Social media
- Apps
- Brick-and-mortar
For example, you could create an email campaign that offers a discount to users who visit your physical store. Connecting different channels will help more users remember your brand in the long term.
Unified Customer Data
Data has become incredibly powerful in today's digital world, so you should use it to help drive better results. Having one data center that informs all of your channels can be incredibly useful.
A single server will store all customer information, keeping everything in sync. Any time a customer interacts with your brand, the information will come from here to ensure everything they see is up-to-date and relevant.
Greater Customer Loyalty
It's far more cost-effective to retain existing customers than it is to gain new ones. As such, customer loyalty is incredibly important.
Cross-channel marketing creates a more immersive experience for users. Ensuring the content they see always relates to the right point in their journey will encourage them to take the next step, leading to stronger bonds with your brand.
Increased Engagement
Cross-channel marketing can be one of the most effective marketing techniques for breaking silos and unifying brand messaging. Users will be more likely to engage when marketing content is more relevant to them.
With that in mind, you should be careful to not oversell or overpromise your audience. In most cases, the best approach is to use technology and social media interactions to communicate personalized messages. A common example could be to use marketing communications on LinkedIn to encourage users to visit a landing page that asks them to sign up for your newsletter.
Better Customer Insights
One of the biggest benefits of cross-channel marketing is that it helps you collect more accurate data in a central location. The result of this is better insights into the wants, needs, and behaviors of your customers.
The better your data, the easier it will be to create marketing content that will drive good results. It will also be far easier to deliver personalized experiences through a marketing automation platform.
Giving your marketing teams access to more insightful data makes their job easier. They'll be able to work more efficiently, and this can increase business revenue in the long run.
Higher Conversion Rates
Ultimately, your goal is to convert leads into paying customers, and cross-channel marketing can be great for this. Cross-channel marketing strategies are very effective at guiding customers through the sales funnel from any point of their journey.
Keeping things consistent throughout the journey can make a sizable difference. It provides a seamless experience so customers can move from interest to purchase smoothly and without interruption. As a result, more users will complete this journey and become customers.
The Right Number of Channels in Cross-Channel Marketing
You might have already decided that you want to implement cross-channel marketing, but before you do, you need to develop a plan. A crucial part of this is how many channels will your business use. You can consider a range of factors to help you decide this.
Budget
Your marketing budget will determine what you can spend on a cross-channel marketing campaign. With that said, this doesn't mean that companies with huge marketing budgets should be using as many channels as possible or that those with smaller budgets should limit themselves.
It's more about how you'll allocate your budget to different channels. A general rule of thumb is to use about 2-5% of your revenue on marketing, but this can vary for different businesses.
Larger businesses will typically be able to commit a larger portion of their revenue to marketing. Knowing how to develop a marketing budget can be very helpful here.
Audience
Look at your audience and determine what channels they use. You want to make sure you're developing a cross-channel marketing campaign that focuses on the channels with which your audience is most likely to engage.
Goals
You should have specific business goals. Take these into account when working on your cross-channel marketing strategy. For example, if you want to increase your online reach, social media should be a key channel.
Achieving Efficient Business Growth
Implementing cross-channel marketing can be a great way to help your business grow. Make sure you plan things out so that you can get the best results from your budget while keeping things efficient.
If you want to implement direct mail and digital ads effectively, Taradel can help. Our marketing tools and expert guidance have already allowed us to help a range of clients from small startups to global enterprises. Start planning your campaign today!