Cross Channel Marketing: What is It?

Author: Arun Pillai

Consistency is the key to campaign success. However, in the current B2B landscape, customer experience is divided across multiple channels or means of communication – from the website, mobile app, email to social media, and more. This has resulted in inconsistent and one-off brand voices. Given the situation, how can a brand convert more?

This is when cross channel marketing comes to the rescue.

What Is Cross Channel Marketing?

Cross channel marketing is a type of multi-channel marketing in which brands communicate with prospects and customers via different channels – and each channel interacts with the other in one way or another. Channels interact either by:

• A unified campaign flow
• A single data set
• A cross channel analytics

In any case, the cross channel makes sure no channel operates in silos. All communication channels are interconnected and share information. Brands can use cross channel tactics to create a single campaign flow and unify the customer journey for a seamless experience.

Multi-Channel Vs Cross Channel

Put simply, cross channel marketing is actually a subcategory of the multi-channel category, although often used interchangeably. Multi-channel marketing refers to the practice by which a business uses multiple communication channels to connect with prospects and customers. Marketers can use both inbound and outbound tactics to reach potential customers on the channel preferred by them.

Common multi-channel mediums include:

• Brick and mortar stores
• Social media
• Email
• Mobile devices
• Text message
• Company website

In multi-channel, every marketing tactic has a specific goal. For instance, you may run an email campaign to increase subscriber counts or use display Ads to create brand awareness. However, since every multi-channel medium operates independently, customer experience is not unified. Your brand message will suffer from a lack of clarity and consistency.

But in the cross channel, you can interconnect communication mediums to smooth out the customer experience. You can combine and analyze behavioral data from different channels to understand various touchpoints in the customer journey. And consequently, create a more personalized and effective campaign flow to drive higher ROIs.

To illustrate: If a potential customer is interested in a particular product say ABC of your brand, you can show them a display Ad for ABC on their social media the next day. In addition, you can link the blog post about how your product ABC solved a business problem for your customer in a direct email. However, each communication needs to be timed properly to reap the best results.

Besides, with cross channel marketing you can:

• Offer a seamless customer experience
• Increase engagement
• Enhance customer retention
• Get a consistent brand message
• Run personalized campaigns

Below, we take a look at how cross-channel marketing can benefit your brand.

A Consistent Brand Message

A prospect does not become a paying customer by visiting your website once. For conversion, a prospect needs to undertake a journey first. This usually involves methods to nurture and warm the prospect via different channels. With a cross channel strategy, you can provide a consistent marketing message across channels with the use of cross channel data analytics.

Based on the data insights, you can use relevant content to engage prospects. This builds trust and credibility in the brand. Consequently, prospects are more likely to convert. As several kinds of research have concluded – brands that use a consistent cross-channel marketing strategy enjoy increased revenue year by year.

Personalized Campaigns

Customers love personalized services more than cookie-cutter campaigns, irrespective of the communication channel. In fact, most consumers expect brands to provide personalized content. They are more likely to buy if you remember and resolve their pain points. You can harness cross-channel data to deliver personalized content.

Especially since cross-channel mediums provide behavioral data from every touchpoint, the task becomes simpler. You can create hyper-personalized and in-context content relevant to your ideal demographic and deliver it timely via multiple channels

Increased Engagement

If your content is personalized and consistent across multiple channels, engagement is bound to increase. Your content is shared more, talked about often, and trusted. And as your brand awareness boosts, you can attract more prospects.

In addition, the cross channel allows you to reach and connect with prospects via multiple communication mediums at different times in a day. Or via communication mediums most preferred by your potential customers. This keeps your brand at the forefront and ahead of the competition. Even if your prospects are not prepared to make a purchase, they will remember your brand name when they finally decide to buy.

As engagement with your brand increases, you can benefit from enhanced:

• Brand visibility
• Response rate
• Prospect acquisition
• Sales and conversions

Enhanced Customer Retention

Increased engagement fosters brand loyalty and customer retention. Believe it or not, customers want to come back and buy from you again. Most customers want to avoid the whole buying process, no matter how easy it was.

Cross channel tactics can improve brand experience with consistent and personalized messages across communication channels. This is likely to enhance customer satisfaction and facilitate more engagement and interaction with the brand.

Wider Brand Reach

If your ideal customer profiles use multiple channels to communicate online, so should you. Perhaps half of them prefer one channel more than the other. To market effectively, you need to know what those channels are. This is when cross channel marketing steps in. You can harness customer data to understand when, where, and what content to deliver to your ideal profiles.

Moreover, when you market on multiple channels, you can improve brand awareness and engagement. In turn, your brand can attract more prospects and widen the brand reach. And if you employ successful tactics, those prospects can even become paying customers.

Lower Marketing Costs

In cross channel marketing, you can collect behavioral data from different channels and create a consolidated data set. This allows you to have a comprehensive view of your ideal audience via data analytics. Know which channels and campaigns receive the most response and allocate the Ad spend accordingly.

If a specific channel is underperforming, you can harness data intelligence to modify the marketing strategy for that channel. This can cut down the costs significantly.

Get Started!

A cross channel marketing strategy is an effective way to improve the customer experience. And in consequence, a way to increase sales and revenue. If you have been using multi-channel tactics to drive revenue, incorporate cross channel tactics to upscale. Cross-channel marketing is known to increase customer interaction, brand loyalty, customer retention, and much, much more. Get started today!