Multiple choices with multichannel marketing

With today’s businesses being faced with a bewildering number of choices for reaching out to customers, from the myriad of new digital platforms to traditional methods, as well as via third parties, getting professional help to navigate the options is becoming ever more important.

One key to a successful multichannel strategy is remembering that just because you can do something doesn’t mean to you have to do it. Success is about understanding your audience and prioritising budgets and activities to achieve your business objectives.

Unlike your integrated marketing strategy which mainly ‘pushes’ the messages out through methods such as advertising, public relations and direct marketing, multichannel marketing is driven by ‘pulling’ the customers in, giving them access to your organisation and its products under their own steam.

Naturally there is still a requirement for ‘pushed’ marketing messages to plant the seed of customer desire. This is well illustrated by Henry Ford’s quote, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” Demonstrating that before the invention of the motorcar there was no demand for it. However, nurturing the seed of customer desire needs to be a little more sophisticated than simply ‘telling’ customers why they want a product or service; the customer wants to feels in charge of the decision making process.Empowering your customers sits firmly at the core of any multichannel marketing approach.

Clear B2B’s top five tips for multichannel marketing are...

• Never lose sight of the fundamentals – your business objectives and you customer’s behaviour. These are the most important factors in informing your choice of channels, not the lure of new technology.
• Ensure your multichannel approach is ‘integrated’ so that the channels work in harmony rather than being in competition. Overarching messages and the customer experience must be consistent.
• Be brave, don’t follow the pack, and do what’s right for your business.
• Remember that quality can be far more effective than quantity. If you are addressing your customers through more channels than the business can effectively support there is a risk that you will damage your customer following and your business.
• And finally, ‘suck it and see’. It can be a good to trial ideas, but make sure there is clear measurement and assessment in place to check if it works for your customers and business.

Image courtesy of KROMKRATHOG at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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