6 Steps to Establish a Successful Multichannel Strategy

A multichannel marketing strategy is a plan that aims to use multiple communication channels to reach out to customers and prospects.

A channel can be an email, SMS, point of sale, event, application, etc... But more importantly, the choice of channel depends on the customer's preference.

The website is also a very important channel. It’s somewhat the centerpiece. Your website must be optimized and well-presented to welcome your prospects and customers. Indeed, all the prospecting efforts you make on other channels should redirect your target audience to your website.

Today, consumers have access to multiple devices (computers, tablets, smartphones, and even voice assistants) and use different channels (online or offline). Therefore, it is imperative for brands to appear on all channels where their customers are present, not only for commercial purposes but also to establish relationships with them and build loyalty.

Like any marketing strategy, a multichannel marketing strategy has essential components that you need to master.

Just being present where your customers are is not enough, it would be too easy. First and foremost, there are certain prerequisites to put in place:

Your message must be clear and must resonate with your target audience. It is therefore important to test different content options to know which ones work best.

To implement a good multichannel strategy, it is important to know the strengths, weaknesses, and also the specificities of each channel.

A multichannel strategy requires creating messages that are consistent with each other, yet personalized to each channel.

Creating a successful multichannel marketing strategy doesn’t happen overnight. There are a few elements to consider before starting:

Before starting, the first thing to do is to define your buyer persona. Indeed, it’s a very powerful and necessary tool to have a clear view of your clientele. Well detailed, it will precisely determine who your ideal customer is, what channels they use, and how they are used to interacting with you.

Being present on all communication channels would be the holy grail. But, it can quickly become costly. Besides the financial aspect, it’s also a time and resource effort.

For this reason, we recommend choosing the most relevant channels based on your buyer persona, your objectives, and also your resources. Start small and expand your strategy gradually.

And above all, experiment! The most efficient channels are not always the ones you think of first.

Once the buyer persona is determined and the target channels are chosen, it’s time to prepare your message.

In multichannel marketing, it is important to have a consistent experience across all channels. However, as in many companies, your experts are probably compartmentalized into different teams: the social media team, the CRM team, etc…

It will then be necessary to ensure that each team, while working independently, maintains consistency in the messages to streamline the customer experience from one platform to another.

We just said that the message must be consistent across all channels. However, each channel has its own rules.

Visual content will work better on Instagram for example, while editorial content will have more impact on Linkedin. The core of the message will be similar, only the form will change.

To make the customer experience more consistent and harmonious, it is possible to use solutions that integrate multiple channels and automate your marketing actions.

A multichannel activation platform such as Actito, for example, will allow you to track how users move across your channels and discover trigger events. You can then launch targeted and personalized campaigns for users to improve sales and conversions.

If multiple channels are included in the equation, it becomes more difficult to measure the effectiveness of your campaigns and know which channel performs best.

For this, you need to choose one of the following attribution models to measure results:

• Linear attribution model: the share of conversion and revenue is attributed equally to all channels in the customer journey.

• Time decay model: the share of the conversion is attributed to the channels whose interactions are the most recent.

• Positional model: the share of the conversion is attributed to all the channels that allowed the conversion based on their position in the prospect's life cycle.

Multichannel Marketing vs. Omnichannel Marketing

Do not confuse multichannel marketing with omnichannel marketing.

Unlike multichannel marketing, which places the product at the center, omnichannel marketing is customer-oriented and puts the customer at the center of the strategy.

In essence, omnichannel erases the boundaries between the different sales and marketing channels, creating a unified and integrated whole. The differences between the channels disappear as a unified customer view and shopping experience emerge.

To simplify, one could say that omnichannel involves selling on all channels, while multichannel involves selling on many channels.

• Personalizing the purchasing process

• Building an emotional and affective bond with customers

• Logistical challenge

A multichannel marketing strategy is a comprehensive strategy that offers a variety of possibilities for prospecting.

By coordinating campaigns across multiple channels, you encourage your customers to make more purchases, you collect more consumer data, and you increase the awareness of your brand online and offline.

So don’t hesitate and start your journey with multichannel marketing.