There are a lot of buzzwords and jargon in the marketing industry, and while on this blog we try to avoid them, explaining them is even better. In the enVisioning Success podcast episode, Integrative Marketing Campaigns: Cohesive Multi-Channel Approaches, co-host Julia and Laura go through the “$50 sentence” of that title to explore multi-faceted marketing and branding, including their successes and failures. In this article, we will look at why this is an effective marketing strategy for almost any company and how the failures that hold it back are almost always due to a lack of expertise and evolution.

Breaking Down Multi-Channel Marketing

Mutli-channel marketing is one of those concepts that’s easy to explain but hard to execute. The idea is that you do marketing on various “channels” in a coordinated manner to reach the most customers possible and the widest amount of lead generation options. These channels can be everything from various social media platforms to specific pages on your website, in-store, and digital and physical advertising. Often broken down into marketing plans by third-party agencies, an example of a campaign might include:

• Targeted posting on multiple social media platforms
• Running several Google Ads campaigns on specific services and products
• Overhauling the website to provide a better user experience
• Coordinating a PR campaign for articles in local newspapers
• New branding and marketing collateral for in-store marketing

Common Failure Points for Multi-Channel Marketing

While multi-channel marketing can be configured in countless ways to match the client’s needs and realities of their situation and industry, the ways this marketing approach can fail have much in common. The four most common failure points for multi-channel marketing include:

1. Stretching Too Wide a Net

You don’t have to be on every social media platform for multi-channel marketing to work, and some will simply be money and time sinks for your business. Pick the social media platforms where you want to fight your battles after looking at where your ideal client lives online.

2. Copy-Pasting Content for Multiple Platforms

If posting to too many channels is the first issue, the second issue is posting the same content to each channel. Every platform, from social media to review listings, has frequent users of different demographics and different expectations of content. Cookie-cutter approaches flop.

3. No Coordination of Marketing Components

Multi-channel marketing works best when everyone is on the same page. This is the importance of a marketing department: having everyone under the same umbrella, complete with meetings, reviews, and data-driven decision-making. This leads us to our last point of failure…

4. Not Optimizing Marketing with Analytics

It’s almost impossible to track the actual ROI without dedicated reporting supported by people who can read the analytical tea leaves. This means everything from tracking which channels are bringing in traffic to avoiding fixation on the wrong metrics on what matters for your marketing.

About the enVisioning Success Podcast

This article is based on topics discussed in enVisioning Success, our weekly podcast hosted by Vision CEO Laura DiBenedetto and COO Julia Becker Collins. In it, they discuss all things business and marketing, from lead generation to leadership. Find us on PodBean to download from your platform of choice, or subscribe to our mailing list to get new episodes and other news delivered directly to your inbox.

Pulling off a successful multi-channel marketing campaign takes a lot of time and expertise, two resources most businesses lack. It’s time to start investing in better marketing through a marketing partnership with Vision Advertising. Contact us today to learn more about our services and how we can help you implement comprehensive marketing strategies that bring in more leads and allow you to step back from marketing to focus on your business.