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The iPhone changed the way we interact with technology, making it such an integral part of our lives. Before Apple introduced the smartphone people only used their cell phones to make calls to people far away but with new features rolling out with each upgrade now we can work from our phones, stay connected with people on thousands of digital platforms, entertain and educate ourselves on the internet, organize and plan out our lives, and even shop for anything we could possibly need, all from a 6 in screen.
We’ve gotten to a point where every time we open our phone we’re overwhelmed by the amount of information at our fingertips. If I asked you to remember all the brands you saw ads for this morning checking your Instagram, Facebook, Gmail, you’d probably say you don’t remember seeing anything. But realistically you’ve seen at least half a dozen brand mentions if you’re reading this before noon. For brands to break through the noise and reach consumers in a memorable and meaningful way they have to take an omnichannel approach.
Cross-channel marketing is when you target consumers using an array of approaches and avenues. It’s important to note you should diversify your marketing on a macro and micro level, meaning don’t invest all of your budget in paid social media ads no matter how well those ads are performing. This consolidates risk whereas investing in paid ads on socials, commercials, brand experiences, and a diverse affiliate program gives you numerous opportunities to make a profit and means that any risks that didn’t pay off won’t be as detrimental to your ROI.
On a micro-scale, it means investing in a diversified portfolio within the marketing medium you’re operating in. For an affiliate program this would mean choosing to work with affiliates in a variety of classifications which could be anything from content, influencers, shopping & loyalty programs, to PPC. Taking this approach can drastically enhance your reach and boost conversions by increasing the frequency of targeting each user across different platforms and at different stages of the purchase decision. If you need any more convincing, here’s a few of the top reasons cross-channel targeting is the only effective way to reach new audiences in the 21st century.
Penetrate new audiences with increased receptivity
The biggest benefit of an omni-channel approach is being able to expand your reach. Instead of reaching 10K like minded people with one commercial, you could reach 1M people across various social media platforms, email campaigns, and with an expansive affiliate program for the same cost of producing that commercial.
Understanding your target audience’s relationship with different social medias is vital in order to select platforms that can reach and encourage engagement from your ideal users. Using a mix of paid advertising supplemented with your brand’s own social media presence will amplify your message and help foster genuine connections with users.
Putting together a strong email marketing list of qualified leads provides a community for you to nurture your relationships with past customers and people who’ve indicated a level of interest in your brand by entering their email in an opt-in form on your website. Email campaigns are easy to template and personalize by including details like their name and promotions on products that they were looking at. There are hundreds of softwares available to help you manage your email campaigns.
Building out a diversified portfolio of affiliates will let you get the best of everything and avoid the potential pitfalls of each. For example, content affiliates are great for building brand awareness and gaining visibility and traffic but aren’t great for driving conversions. Loyalty affiliates on the other hand are great at driving conversions but you’re operating at a lower profit margin because you’re incentivizing the consumer with a discounted product. PPC campaigns will get you results quickly, but you pay for clicks and not conversions. A highly profitable affiliate program requires a strategic and artistic blend of publisher classifications curated to a brand’s specific goals and KPIs.
Enhanced the audience’s sense of trust and your brand’s credibility
Your amplified voice through multiple channels, and by having third-party partners vouch for you as well, strengthens your brand’s reputation. Today’s consumers have learned to distrust big corporations, and in many cases rightfully so. The mystique of advertising doesn’t exist in the 21st century. It’s harder to tell half truths, or blatantly make up a product benefit, without it going viral and the internet turning against you. Because of this, consumers are more likely to trust an affiliate who’s speaking on behalf of your brand and products, recommending them.
Maintain consistent branding across all marketing channels and communications to create a cohesive and recognizable identity and make sure these key branding elements are accessible to any affiliate or company who will be creating content for your brand so it promotes the same message. Consistency builds trust and helps your audience identify and connect with your brand.
Encourage your audience to create and share content and repost their UGC. Customers love to see real users hyping up a product because 1. they don’t see it as incentivized or as a paid for promotion unlike they might with an influencer and 2. they can picture themselves using the product. Whether you’re able to get users to write testimonials, reviews, or post you on social media, any of these actions adds to the social proof surrounding your brand and boosts your credibility.
Reach out directly to your audience
With modern technology and the incredible amount of data that is inherent with digital marketing, we’re able to take advantage of consumer data letting us target the same users on multiple platforms and get real close and personal with them. The more targeted and personalized the outreach, the stronger your audience’s receptivity.
Segment your audience based on their demographic information, their interests and their purchasing habits to find the groups of like minded individuals within your overall target. Use their personal interests to customize their message to promote relevant products, promotions, and brand news.
Invest in a software that places tracking pixels and cookies on your website and social media so you can retarget missed opportunities. Remind them of the pair of shoes they left in their cart or of that cute top they saved from your feed on Instagram, give them an incentive to bring them back to the product, and watch the additional sales roll in.
Pull all your strategies together to see the full effect. A cross-channel approach wouldn’t be cross-channel if your marketing strategies didn’t interact and drive the performance of other channels. For example maybe you’re running a contest on your brand’s Instagram, some sort of giveaway. Try reaching out to your email list and having your affiliate partners promote the giveaway to encourage more entries.
Prepare your analytics infrastructure
Cross-channel marketing allows for better performance tracking and optimization because of the plethora of data you have access to using multiple digital platforms but it’s probably best practice to invest in either an agency or an analytics software to aggregate the performance data and make sense of it in a way that you can incorporate into future campaigns and strategy.
First use attribution modeling to figure out where conversions are actually taking place and which channels are your most effective. The one thing is this can get a little muddled when you’re targeting the same user across multiple platforms. They might see your brand for the first time in a paid Instagram ad and not even notice till they see one of their favorite TikTokers make a video about you. Then they might check out your website, enter their email to get 15% off, add the product to their cart, and leave. It might not be till a week later when your retargeting email hits them and reminds them of the product that they actually made the purchase even though attribution modeling would say your email remarketing campaign drove the sale.
Try using different versions of your marketing collateral (aka A/B testing) and make tweaks on everything from the messaging to the visuals to the partners promoting to learn how to optimize your campaigns by figuring out what works with your target audience. Not every campaign has to be something never seen before and completely nuanced. Actually, familiarity also sells and usually with more stable growth than something novel. So using this strategy to fine tune your reliable marketing message and branding will help you front load reliable content that is proven to perform well.
Cross-channel marketing is a powerful strategy for a brand’s success in the e-commerce era. Leveraging an omni-channel approach marketers can reach new audiences and retarget interested customers, enhance trust and credibility, deliver targeted messaging, and optimize campaign performance. By integrating multiple marketing channels, such as social media, email marketing, content marketing, and paid advertising, your marketing team can create a holistic and effective approach to engage your audience at different touchpoints and drive conversions. Embrace cross-channel marketing as a core branding strategy and watch your success multiply across the digital landscape.
