Multi-channel Marketing is a tendency for e-commerce businesses. According to Gartner research, marketing campaigns that integrate four or more digital channels will outperform single or dual-channel programs by 300%. However, 90% of marketers still struggle to seamlessly connect more than three channels at a time, making consistent messaging and coordination a major challenge.
Nowadays, direct marketing (email marketing, webinars, catalogues) and indirect marketing (inbound marketing) channels should work together as a single ecosystem. Every day people browse the web, check emails, use social networks, and look for relevant information and services/products. Therefore, the foremost thing digital marketers should consider is to make sure that customers are able to see information about their business effortlessly; this determines the success of the business. Multi-Channel Marketing is indeed a one-stop solution for all the marketers out there.
Before you head out, you should make a list of all the different methods available for multi-channel distribution. This will help you pursue a couple of distribution channels on the top of the list and can even help you consider the best mixture of channels for your future campaigns. As you move ahead, you may even find that some methods are synergistic to each other and can be linked together.
1. Multiple sales channels
Using multi-channels allows e-commerce marketers to list their inventory on different channels like eBay, Shopify, Amazon, Facebook, etc. The tracking information and other needs are communicated from sales channels to the ultimate buyer.
Other features like using QR codes for products your customer might search for can also help you out considerably when selling your products. You must be able to use the right promotional tools to enhance the quality of the marketing campaigns for your business. This is the main aspect of multi-channel e-commerce.
2. Planning Ahead
When you want to plan a holiday special and offer great discounts, you should promote them across different direct and indirect channels. Then the execution should be in a disciplined manner. Plan and make sure that your business makes a great impact on people’s minds.
3. Paid Advertisement
You can ramp up sales by customising your product catalogues and advertising your products to potential buyers via AdWords, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, etc. Your product’s nature plays a very important role in the market determining what kind of platform will be suitable for it and whether the platform gives you the opportunity to target your audience based on their behaviour online, interests, or demographics. You can increase sales by listing your products on high-demand blogs and in magazines. Today you can advertise your products on famous sites like Cosmopolitan, GQ, Instagram and many others. Consider building white lists of publishers that are related to your e-commerce business. This will help to reach more customers due to popularity and a positive inclination in the sales growth.
4. Email list
You can easily carry out a market campaign through email marketing. Spreading the word is much easier when you have the required email addresses with you. This is the most powerful tool in marketing campaigns and provides a direct way to reach the customer. This tip can improve your Multi-channel e-commerce progress and can be very useful for your bricks and mortar business. Today, some of the email marketing platforms, like MailChimp, allow you to also run a retargeting campaign on your website, to increase results for your email campaign.
5. Social Media
Being present on social media and being interactive with your clients helps you maintain a strong relationship with them. You can post promotional content, discount offers, and more on social media to attract your consumers to your stores and the website. Social media is the most powerful tool used in all multi-channel e-commerce strategies. It helps to develop a positive brand image for your consumers.
6. Influencer marketing
With the rise of microblogging, social media – influencer marketing becomes a new tool to reach your target audience. There are many marketing platforms that can help you shout out your special offer or product release to millions of customers via industry influencers. You can reach influencers directly or via influencers marketing platforms such as Famebit, Grapevine and others.
7. Content Marketing
Blogs, eBooks, reports, video and interactive commercial content assist customers who are trying to understand more about your e-commerce business. Also, content marketing can help generate new leads and understand prospects’ intent, while also helping you generate coverage within your niche and improve your SEO.
Click the example to see how great Interactive Commercial Content really is! >>>
8. Native Advertising
Native advertising is a type of paid media that doesn’t destroy users experience. It appears to be part of a website’s content, much like a magazine advertorial. According to figures from NewBayMedia, native ads are viewed 53% more than banner ads, the purchase intent is 53% higher, and they generate 82% more brand lift.
In a perfectly built marketing promotion, a multichannel campaign would reach the target audience across all the possible touch points. You can run your campaigns in parallel, or one followed by another to move your customers down the sales funnel. Therefore, it can be fairly concluded that Multi-channel marketing is certainly a big deal for an e-commerce business as it helps them benefit from utilising the virtual space available to them.
