Technology has made it possible for people to interact via many more channels than were available decades ago. And that has given rise to, what still can be said a relatively new marketing concept – cross channel marketing. It's not merely as simple as running different marketing campaigns in each channel. So, what is it? And what are some of the common blind spots that you should avoid? Let's talk about that.
Today we consume and publish content in more forms and fashion than it was ever possible. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, even emails, phones, text messages, and the list is endless. For businesses, this brings enormous opportunity to interact with their target audience in least intrusive fashion. And that brings us to the crux of the need for cross channel marketing. There is an enormous need to find efficient and effective ways to continue interacting with the target audience as the conversations move between channels.
Here are the three most common blind spots in cross-channel marketing, and some of the ways you can avoid them before it's too late.
1. Having an overall big picture of the marketing spend but still running various marketing efforts in their own silos.
Many marketers fail to understand how much they are losing by not creating synergies across their cross-channel marketing efforts. Having an overall big picture of your marketing spend is a good thing. But just that information won't be enough to tell how consumes are shifting from one channel to another and what kind of experience they are getting when they do so.
To fully utilize the power of cross channel marketing, marketers need to think beyond consolidated marketing dashboards. They need to think about customer journeys that span across multiple channels, and come up with ways to make those journeys seamless.
2. Another very common pitfall is measuring the wrong goal or not having a measurable goal to begin with!
Partly this is the problem that has been created by channels themselves. To differentiate themselves from each other, different channels came up with their own 'measuring yard sticks'. In online Ads, it's clicks, in Facebook it's likes, in Twitter it's the number of followers, retweets, and the list again is limitless.
For really setting up an effective cross-channel marketing effort, marketers need to think beyond the 'silo specific measuring yard sticks' they have been forced to use. They need to think about their target audience and come up with ways to measure campaign performance from business standpoint.
3. The third most common blind spot is forgetting about a key marketing channel in the overall cross-channel marketing strategy.
This is a very hard blind spot to figure out, especially if you don't know your target audience well enough. For instance, a marketer may craft the entire campaign around emails and follow up phone calls, and totally miss the point that many of their target audience are savvy about Twitter and may start separate conversations on that channel.
This can be avoided relatively easily by spending a bit of time and effort in understanding the target market. Unfortunately, however, many marketers avoid doing that, which is one of the main reasons why some of the cross-channel marketing efforts end up being unsuccessful.
ellipsis can help marketers avoid all the blind spots that can happen while orchestrating and executing cross-channel marketing efforts.
Tags: cross-channel-marketing