Lorelei Garnes
Today digital marketers have many challenges to keep up with consumers and competition. One of the biggest challenges is understanding and utilizing cross-channel marketing and avoiding channel fragmentation. Cross-Channel Marketing is an approach that blends all marketing channels together to create a unified message to the customer.
Most businesses have a Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and/or YouTube account. Because each platform has a specific approach when creating a message, you may be creating a fragmented message and missing your target audience (known as channel fragmentation). Your marketing message should be unified and focused on your target audiences’ wants/needs.
One of the best ways to avoid channel fragmentation is by evaluating your current customers. Identify the interactions (customers’ wants/needs) by their marketing channel, purchase history, loyalty behavior, and the time and money you spent to acquire those customers. Today software can help interpret the results – Stop relying on your gut! Businesses can find and convert more customers by understanding their customers and the channels that brought them.
Then, using your data about location, device type, referral source, demographics, and preferred language, create relevant content and interactions that are important to your customer’s buying habits. Fragmented data will hurt a business’s ability to create a consistent experience/message. Brand consistency and experiences across all channels create a holistic personalized experience for your customer.
Marketers are challenged with finding the commonly grouped customers and identifying the marketing channels they use. Each marketing channel comes with its own set of rules of engagement. There is a risk involved if you invest in the wrong channel because age, location, and activities have not been properly identified. A discovery process can determine your customers’ user preferences, historical patterns, and conversions across all channels.
Avoid drowning in the data and focus on insights. Metrics and data are free– use Google Analytics and create A/B testing to optimize your campaigns. Measure your success and ROI across all channels to tweak your tactics on each channel. Competition should also be evaluated to help you create a brand differentiator.
Today, we are challenged with prioritizing marketing dollars, activities, and data-driven strategies that lead to daily optimization and real-time digital interactions/marketing. By using the right tools, we are up to the challenge!
Lorelei Garnes owns WNC Social Media Buzz, a local digital marketing business. She can be reached at 828 421 2807 for websites, SEO optimization, cross-channel analysis and all your digital marketing needs.