Do you know that 89% of customers of businesses with strong cross-channel marketing tend to return for shopping more?
Today's customer is completely different from what they used to be a few years back. They are more demanding. To win their loyalty, marketers have to target platforms where customers are most interacting. In other words, cross-channel marketing is exactly what your brand needs to convert customers of today's era.
But what is cross-channel marketing? How is it any good for your business? Why should you ever consider using it? If you have such questions in mind, we got exactly the answers you need. Let's explore cross-channel marketing in detail and why your company needs it. Here we go!
What is Cross-channel Marketing?
Cross-channel marketing refers to a digital marketing technique that offers an integrated experience across multiple earned, owned, and paid digital media. It combines multiple marketing channels to create an extensive omnichannel customer journey. With this marketing technique, businesses tend to achieve greater sales and goals - better and more efficiently.
When it comes to the implementation of this marketing strategy, it might come across as a little intimidating. In cross-channel marketing, you need to manage multiple social channels, while creating target campaigns. In the beginning, it might come as an overwhelming task. But eventually, as you get hold of it, the marketing technique will appear less overwhelming. Besides, you can always take the help of advanced technologies such as CRM to make things easier for you.
Why Should You Consider Using Cross-Channel Marketing?
Now that you know what cross-channel marketing is, do you want to invest in it? Yes, you should! Here are some solid points or benefits of cross-channel marketing to convince you how beneficial it is:
Improves Customer Experience
According to experts, a cross-channel campaign improves marketing efficiency by 15-20%. Furthermore, a study done on 46k people proved that 73% of customers shop from more than just one channel. Being a marketer, your presence should be where your customers are. With cross-channel marketing, you can target potential customers across multiple marketing channels.
When you are present on multiple channels, understanding customer behavior becomes easier. With this knowledge, you can customize marketing strategies to serve customers better. In other words, you can improve customer journey efficiency using cross-channel marketing. Improved customer journey further results in customer loyalty, which is the hardest to achieve.
Helps You Go Ahead of Your Competition
Every business aims to get ahead of its competition. However, it's not everyone's cup of tea to do so. What better way to beat your competition than by acquiring their absence on certain channels? With cross-channel marketing, you can target customers on multiple channels. This allows you to expand your marketing reach, improving your lead nurturing capabilities.
Moreover, when you target multiple channels, you go one step ahead of your competitors. While they focus on one or two channels, you are targeting multiple channels and gaining double exploration. Moreover, in today's competitive market, it's not ideal to just rely on one marketing channel. The more channels you can target, the better it is for your brand. By trying CRM use in cross-channel marketing, you can target more channels in a better way.
Create Personalized Connect With Customers
When you market on multiple channels, your brand gets additional visibility. This allows you to retain the attention of your potential customers, increasing the chances of them shopping from you. Let's understand this with an example. Consider Apple. The brand has got multiple brick & mortar stores, TV commercials, a clean website, a unified platform, and digital ads.
This way they have targeted their customers on all major channels, and we all know how successful they are today. Being present on multiple channels also allows you to create personalized connections with customers. These connections will help you maintain sales in the long run as they will tend to choose you over competitors.
Increase Customer Engagement
As said above, today's customer is different from what they used to be. They don't want one-sized-fill-for-all and cookie-cutter online experiences. They want to shop from brands that understand them and reflect that understanding in their content. In other words, the brand content customers engage most with are the ones that align with their budget, product affinities, and interests.
Cross-channel marketing allows you to create an engaging brand presence on various channels. From SMS to social ads to emails, you can deliver interactive content that is trailed to customer interest. This brings in lots of engagements and improves the overall lead nurturing and conversion rate.
Brands Using Cross-Channel Marketing
If done the right way, cross-channel marketing can offer a better customer understanding and insights into customer behavior. Segmenting that data can further help in making effective decisions for future campaigns. Here are three popular brands that have succeeded in cross-channel marketing:
Starbucks
Did you know that Starbucks has a dedicated smartphone application? If you don't, you know now. Using the app, Starbucks has combined online and offline experiences. Their application offers rewards for each purchase made through it. Also, it provides personalized recommendations based on customers' habits. Not just that, customers also get timely notifications about promotions and sales at Starbucks, encouraging more foot traffic.
This integrated experience has helped Starbucks provide a smooth customer experience. The AI used in their app provides them with customer insights that not just help them understand customer behavior but also anticipate it. Moreover, Starbucks also offers personalized deals for every social media interaction customers make. This allows them to maintain consistent customer engagement on multiple platforms.
Mercedes Benz
Recently, Mercedes Benz created a campaign strategy using offline and digital methods. The campaign was created to market their newly launched CLA product. You'll be surprised to hear that it was their best product launch in the last 20 years. So now you might wonder what made their launch so successful.
To launch their product, they did a Super Bowl ad with Kate Upton and Usher. They created one microsite for their product, hired marketing experts to capture touch points, purchased Facebook ads, and trended #clatakethewheel on social media, which drive them huge engagement. Moreover, they also took the help of influencer marketing by collaborating with popular YouTube and Instagram personalities.
Their multi-channel marketing helps them achieve more than 85 Million organic impressions and around 2 Million likes. Moreover, their sales went up 14% compared to the previous year. They experienced such great results, all because of cross-channel marketing. If they can, so can you. Besides, before you get into the implementation part, explore some tips for cross-channel marketing first. Doing this will help you in the long run.
Final Words
Cross-channel marketing is one of the best ways to grow your brand on the internet. When your brand is present where your customers are, they are more likely to interact with you and your content. This will give you high engagement and an increase in conversion rate.
This marketing tactic is a new way of targeting an audience and influencing their shopping experience. If done right, you can experience immense long-term benefits from it. So what are you waiting for now? Try this marketing and let us know what results you receive, in the comment section below.