Attention spans: They just aren't what they used to be. It's hardly our fault—nowadays, there are more distractions than ever before, all vying for our time and interest. We've got our smartphones, tablets and Internet-connected TVs, bringing us on-demand Candy Crush and e-books and a thousand TV series to binge watch. We've got our Facebook feeds and our Pinterest boards and our LinkedIn groups. And then there are the old standbys: the text messaging, the Web surfing, the viral news stories mom emails us en masse.
This media environment presents a new, always-evolving challenge for marketers. It's no longer enough to pick one channel and bank on reaching your audience—do that, and you risk your message getting lost in the online ether. You need multiple channels, as many touch points as possible to get your marketing communications seen and remembered.
Still, there's more to multi-channel marketing than bombarding your target audience with emails, videos and direct mail—you need a focused, well-planned effort. Here's how to do it.
1. Do the prep work
Going into any marketing campaign without a clear grasp of the target audience is a bad idea, but it can be disastrous for a multi-channel campaign. If even one channel is off target or ineffective, it can sink the whole effort, leaving your client with little to show for in ROI. Before you launch a campaign, research everything from the target audience to your client's prior marketing efforts.
"Any marketing campaign has to begin with a good analysis of what has been done in the past," explained Jillian Flesh, process improvement manager, The Flesh Company, St. Louis. "What worked? What didn't? Why? What was the ROI, even if it was a negative ROI? Distributors need to use a good interview process to gather this information and customer expectations, before considering offering any solutions," she continued. "They also need to develop a good process for identifying prospects based on their successes and failures."
2. Build a foundation
Not all clients will want or require the same combination of channels, but it helps to have a foundation to use as a starting point. Paul Edwards, CDC, president of Fenton, Missouri-based FormStore Incorporated, laid out the components of a typical multi-channel campaign. "[Most effective is] a four-to-six month campaign combining multiple touches using direct mail, email, pURLs, microsites, landing pages, trigger emails and auto email response to end-customers and mailing-customer sales teams," he said. Any media is fair game to include in your multi-channel marketing efforts, so tweak your approach as necessary based on your client's needs and the information obtained in your research efforts.
3. Utilize new media
To effectively reach a target audience, you've got to know where to look. That means using the channels that audience frequents most, even if those channels aren't necessarily the traditional ones. If your audience uses Twitter, find a way to reach them there. If they're big smartphone users, make mobile a priority. "Five to 10 years ago we would be focused on magazine ads and trade shows. Our websites were OK, but not much more than images of products, company propaganda and a phone number," said Flesh. "Today, our marketing requires using medias that are accessed by our clients. Websites must be mobile-friendly. Email marketing must contain value, not sales offerings."
4. Go social
Social media is a subset of the new media discussed above, but it warrants special attention for two reasons. One, it's perhaps the most widely used form of new media, and two, the sheer number of social media sites can make marketing on them complicated. "Not all social media works for all businesses," Flesh explained. "We have found LinkedIn to be a reasonably good media, where, on the other hand, Facebook is more suited for internal marketing purposes." While each site requires a different approach, depending on the audience and your client's marketing goals, Flesh noted one way to increase social media marketing engagement overall. "We often layer social with video or whitepaper downloads," she said.
5. Get into video
According to Cisco's VNI Global IP Traffic and Service Adoption Forecasts study, video will make up 79 percent of all Internet traffic by 2018. Even now, video is a huge draw online, so don't wait until 2018—find ways to incorporate it into your current multi-channel efforts. "YouTube is a tremendously underutilized tool we plan on making more use of in the future," said Flesh. "It has essentially become a search engine. The question is now, 'How do new customers find me?'"
6. Add incentives
Reaching the right audience and having them open emails, click links and watch videos is one thing. Getting that audience to actually respond to your marketing communications is another. For that, you need a strong call to action, something that incentivizes engagement. Edwards offered a few examples. "Responses can be enhanced by adding some type of offer, which could be any number of things—a discount coupon, a free consultation, or an ad specialty/promo product," he said.
7. Don't forget print
Digital media should be a major part of your multi-channel marketing, but it shouldn't be the only part. Epsilon's 2013 Channel Preference Study found that 73 percent of U.S. consumers prefer direct mail for brand communications, while a 2012 Direct Marketing Association study revealed that direct mail's 3.4 percent response rate was far better than email's 0.12 percent. In other words, keep making print media a central part of your multi-channel campaigns. "The industry has been focused on digital marketing for some time now, but it's important not to forget the emotional connection that people have to printed pieces they can hold in their hands," noted Flesh. "A combination approach gives you a longer and more impactful marketing reach."
8. Listen to your client
Building an effective multi-channel campaign requires a certain amount of give-and-take with your clients. Pay attention to their needs, and encourage suggestions and feedback. "The distributor should be a consultant to help the end-client understand their true goal," Flesh advised. "They, as a client-distributor team, should determine what message and medias will be most effective in reaching that goal. It's also very important to understand any budget restraints that may be present. An augmented reality program can sound great but the back-end cost of video imagery can much higher than the cost of the print ad."