10 Ways Cross-Channel Marketing Is Not Rocket Science

Choose the right channels, put content first, and learn about your customers, advises Adobe’s latest white paper on how to navigate the new path to purchase.

The traditional linear marketing funnel is outdated, with consumers taking a far more complex path to purchase as they switch between channels and devices, finding alternatives and better deals along the way. They are not only dictating how, where, and when we engage with them, but also expect us to anticipate their each and every move, and respond appropriately.

In a world where your brand is only as strong as the experiences you deliver to engage your customers, a cross-channel approach to your marketing can help you devise consistent marketing campaigns that offer real value to your customers and your business.

Choose The Right Channels To Tell Your Story

Just because a channel exists doesn’t mean you have to use it. Start with the ones that work for both you and your customers. If you are worried about not using some of the channels that are available to you, put yourself in your customers’ shoes and think about their customer journey. Where are they going to get help around a specific problem, make a purchasing decision, get after-sales service, or share their experience with your business? It’s far better to successfully integrate a small amount of channels to deliver a coherent experience, than try to use every channel under the sun, and regularly miss the mark.

Content Is King

Your content not only needs to convey your brand story, but also deliver a relevant personalised experience across the whole of the customer journey. This will require you to create content at scale. Although this may seem daunting, you can lighten the load by recycling your content assets. Can you turn you report or white paper into an infographic that can be used across different social channels? Or can you use video content created for your website or YouTube page as part of a native advertising campaign? This approach will also help you improve integration as well as deliver a seamless customer experience.

Leverage Your Customer Intelligence

The more you know about your customers, the more personalised and relevant the cross-channel experience becomes. Although customer data may be split across a number of silos within your business, you should look to pull the data together to produce a single customer view. Start by combining basic CRM data with whatever analytical and behavioural data you have available to you. This will allow you to deliver a far more sophisticated customer offering than the “one-size-fits-all” approach, which is redolent of many multi-channel campaigns. You can then look to add in other data from both across the business and from third parties to get an even better understanding of your customer and their needs. Ultimately, it’s about turning your big data into smart data.

Get Everyone Singing From The Same Hymn Sheet

Ensuring that your business is telling the same story across each and every touch point will require you to co-ordinate people from across different parts of your organisation, as well as any agency partners who are responsible for the delivery of your campaigns. One solution is to develop a virtual team that can help break down the different silos and deliver an integrated and seamless approach to your marketing activity. This allows your project-specific task force’s role to focus on building the customer relationship, rather than responding to usual internal challenges.

Drive Cross-Channel Business Success

John Wanamaker famously said, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don’t know which half.” Attribution modelling has come a long way in the last few years, even with the dramatic increase in touch points, helping you understand which channels are delivering success. However, success is about more than just ROI, a successful cross-channel strategy can also help you reduce marketing costs. Equally, the investment in technology to deliver these cross-channel experiences can result in significant paybacks. A recent Forrester report in association with Adobe showed how one retailer had delivered incremental revenues of almost $26 million, while boosting ROI by 338%.

In a world where your competitive advantage will be based on your customer experience, effective cross-channel marketing is the key to both marketing and business success.

You can find out more about how to create cross-channel campaigns with confidence by downloading Adobe’s latest white paper “Ten Ways Cross-Channel Marketing Is Not Rocket Science.” (Adobe is CMO.com’s parent company.)