Do you prefer to pick up a magazine and read it? Or open up an email and read it? Some people are tactile learners, some people are visual learners, why not make your communication efforts reach and attract all types of learners.
Enter "multi-touch marketing."
Digital communication and social media have significantly transformed marketing and how consumers buy products and support brands. It’s not just a process, but also an experience. Consumers are bombarded by a plethora of marketing messages as different brands and businesses try to beat the competition. A brand needs to work hard to stand out in a crowd, and a more personalized approach can make all the difference. Through multi-touch marketing, consumers can be engaged through multiple channels, using both tangible and digital marketing. How does a marketer develop a successful multi-touch marketing campaign?
What is a Multi-Touch Campaign?
A multi-touch campaign is one that delivers your message in multiple formats in a coordinated and intentional way. For example, you could create, print, and distribute brochures and postcards in and around your community, mail newsletters to your existing customers, and place advertisements on social media platforms. These campaign tactics increase the viewership of your message by providing multiple ways for people to see it, as well as numerous opportunities for it to be seen. This means you achieve maximum brand exposure from your prospective customers, which increases the chance of converting a lead into a sale.
What Goes into a Multi-Touch Campaign
A successful marketing campaign partially depends on lead generation activities by your dedicated team, but a lot more is required. You have to keep prospects engaged in the process. Why do you think sales abandon such a large percentage of leads? It’s a matter of prospects being unresponsive when contacted by email or phone call. Marketers must be mindful of the simple fact that high conversion rates are impossible if a single channel is used to communicate with prospects or existing customers. What’s needed is a combination of communication channels, including multiple online channels, from social media platforms to rich media content, that will deliver your message in a way that engages your prospects.
Related: Multi-Channel Campaign Tips
If you want to achieve your marketing goals without major hurdles, create multi-channel marketing campaigns that have the potential to connect with your prospects and keep them engaged at all times. A happy customer tends to be a satisfied one, so lend focus to creating marketing campaigns that are unforgettable and will leave a lasting impression on prospects. This will ensure that you have better ROI and minimal customer churn rate. Single customer touchpoints are generally not enough these days. Marketing automation is one way of creating multi-touch campaigns in a manner that is simple and efficient.
How to Develop or Plan a Multi-Touch Campaign
Every marketer should understand that their marketing campaign needs to have a level of influence when it comes to reaching customers. You know who and where your customers are and it’s imperative for you to be there to grab their attention and keep it. Still, it’s challenging to keep customers consistently engaged, but with an integrated multi-touch marketing campaign approach, you can elevate your game and create powerful and successful campaigns.
Begin developing your multi-touch campaign by selecting the channels that will allow for maximum exposure and impact. Create a checklist for each channel and assess the impact that each can have on your marketing campaign. There are numerous marketing channels, from direct mail to websites, and each offers something unique, including a different degree of effectiveness. Key things that you should do include:
- Build a coordinated action plan to prevent your multi-touch marketing campaign from diluting. Make sure it is knowledge-based and draws on collaboration, shared learning, and a thorough understanding of the target consumer.
- Apply A/B and multivariate testing to each channel and choose the best ones that can be incorporated into your campaign for success.
- Identify the channels that your target personas frequent and their manner of interaction with those channels (as well as their manner of interaction within the channels).
Reasons Multi-Touch Marketing Campaigns Bring Greater Reach and Impact
There is no doubt that marketing through multiple channels brings greater reach to your target consumer and ultimately a greater impact of results. The combination of tangible marketing and digital marketing can reach people in different ways and be impactful because people have different sense-triggers and ways of learning. For example, different customers will be aural learners, visual learners, and tactile learners. As such, your target audience will be drawn to particular touch points or marketing channels. Visual learners will be drawn to social media platforms that feature online video advertisements, while tactile learners would appreciate booklets and brochures. With several marketing channels to employ in your multi-touch marketing campaign, you can reach more of your target consumers and have a bigger impact on influencing their decision to support your brand or product. In reality, you are covering all your bases and nurturing leads with multi-touch marketing campaigns that feature a diversity of communication mediums, which improves your chance of success.
Combining tactile and digital marketing helps to increase your reach to your target consumer, spread the message further, beat your competitors, and guarantee an increase in your campaign’s ROI. Deploying your campaign message in multiple ways allows you to engage a variety of target consumers with their behavior in mind. For example, a college student may not be inclined to pick up a newspaper, but if similar content were provided on a social media platform, they may be more inclined to view and read the information. Furthermore, if a target consumer views the same ad multiple times, such as on social media and later on an outdoor banner, it helps to build awareness around your brand or product, and increases the likelihood of that individual supporting your business.
Developing a successful multi-touch marketing campaign is no walk in the park, However, with careful planning, multi-touch channels, consumer knowledge, assessment, and a little risk taking, you can elevate your multi-touch marketing campaign and achieve success. The simple fact is that multi-touch marketing is the way forward and the best way to engage your target customer, enhance your marketing campaigns, and boost sales. We’re here to help - give the marketing team at Ironmark a shout and we’ll be happy to put together a marketing campaign that covers all the right media.
