Multichannel marketing

Multi-channel marketing is a combination of various online and offline channels that helps companies put products and services in front of the target audience at the right place and time.

In this article, we’ll discover the importance and benefits, explore the best trends and tools, and provide tips to help optimize your strategy. You’ll also check out some excellent examples and statistics of multichannel marketing, compare omnichannel and multichannel marketing, and explore the best trends and tools, along with tips to help optimize your strategy. You’ll check out some excellent examples, too.

The Importance of Multichannel Marketing

Utilizing different marketing channels at once helps brands to be present where their target audience is. Communication across different channels maximizes the chances of users' engagement. If you sell jeans, your audience comprises people of different ages. The youth spend more time on social media, while older people prefer looking for sales and discounts in their email inbox, so you need to be active on both channels.

The bigger your audience, the more revenue you can generate if you wisely combine marketing channels relevant to your business. Today, people expect all trustworthy companies to be active on social media, have chatbots, advertise via emails, and have a well-designed, informative website.

Chatbots on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Telegram enable companies to provide support and assistance around the clock. Prospects and customers can contact customer support at any time, regardless of their time zone and the working hours of human agents. They will receive responses to FAQs in no time and make reservations, bookings, and appointments effortlessly. Implementing chatbots along with live chat empowers businesses to communicate with their customers through their preferred channels, which improves convenience, customer satisfaction, and loyalty.

Now that you know some general information regarding the importance of multichannel marketing, it’s time to uncover the pros in detail. They will help you decide whether your customers will be glad to have several channels available when they need your support.

Businesses can reap numerous benefits after incorporating multichannel marketing. We’ve listed the most essential ones, so let’s dive in.

• Wider reach and better visibility. Having multiple channels for communication with customers enables you to reach people interested in your product on these platforms. It results in a broader reach and more prospects on your list. Moreover, online presence on the most popular communication channels like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok helps you gain brand awareness, recognition, and visibility. Your brand will seem familiar to a wider audience.
• More touchpoints for communication with customers. In today's business world, having more touchpoints for customer communication is essential. It's crucial not only to provide support through traditional channels but also to engage potential customers in interesting and interactive ways. Social media platforms enable you to answer FAQs, educate leads about your products through short interactive videos, Stories, highlights, reels, and more. These tools are vital for interacting with customers and communicating the value of your product, including how to use and benefit from it.
• Enhanced customer experience. With multichannel marketing, you can provide personalized experiences to customers based on their purchasing history, preferences, challenges, needs, and behavior. With its help, you can identify the channels clients use most often and use them to send relevant offers, personalized recommendations, and interesting promotions. It increases the chances that these customers will see your messages and interact with them.
• Comprehensive customer insights. When you have customer data from multiple channels, you can have a clear understanding of your customers, their needs, preferences, and problems. You can see customers' purchasing history, the web pages they view, and the products they prefer. Based on this information, you’ll be able to make well-informed marketing decisions and send product recommendations, email campaigns, and proactive messages through chatbots that are timely and relevant.
• More conversions. A well-prepared marketing strategy created based on people’s preferences helps you deliver relevant content and value. When prospects receive the information and products they seek, they are more likely to convert into customers. This leads to higher conversion rates and better profitability for your business.
• Higher customer loyalty and retention. When you regularly communicate with customers through their preferred channels and provide valuable offers, they become more loyal to your brand. Additionally, if they are satisfied with your support, they will likely remain loyal to your business.
• Better implementation of market changes and new trends. If your business effectively incorporates a multichannel strategy, it will have a competitive advantage. Customers are more likely to repeat purchases when they are comfortable with the brand and can easily use the platform they prefer for communication. Several channels will allow you to adapt to market changes and new trends easily.

Now that you know the advantages, it’s time to support them with statistics to show that multichannel marketing is a driving force toward more efficient customer support, personalized experiences, and higher sales.

Multichannel Marketing Statistics

Numerous statistics demonstrate the real value of multichannel marketing for businesses. We will highlight the most crucial ones to encourage you to consider incorporating multiple channels for customer interaction.

• 84% of marketers think that using multiple channels for companies is more effective than having one channel;
• 64% of clients buy products after viewing a video on social media promoting those products;
• 51% of businesses use a minimum of eight channels to interact with their prospects and customers;
• businesses that managed to incorporate a multi-channel marketing strategy successfully received a customer satisfaction rate of 85%;
• 74% of companies report an increase in customer base after the implementation of multiple marketing channels;
• 73% of shoppers buy products using multiple marketing channels;
• marketers who use at least four communication channels for their marketing campaigns are more likely to gain better results and performance;
• marketers using more than two marketing channels have 166% higher engagement rates.

Now that you have robust reasons to implement multichannel marketing, you need to understand the difference between multichannel and omnichannel marketing, which are often misinterpreted or used interchangeably.

marketing">Omnichannel vs Multichannel Marketing

Omnichannel and multichannel marketing might look similar at first glance, yet they have distinct differences every business should be aware of. In this section, we’ll compare the concepts and find the differences.

Multichannel marketing is the process of using multiple independent channels to communicate with customers. These marketing channels aren’t connected, and they all have separate strategies and key objectives. In multichannel marketing, each channel operates independently without having access to all the customer insights from other channels.

Omnichannel marketing is the process of using multiple channels to reach customers and interact with them when these channels are integrated. This integration allows businesses to gather customer insights across channels and use them to provide seamless support and personalized recommendations, as well as ensure consistency across all platforms. All the channels are interlinked and function under one unified strategy.

Simply put, the main difference between multichannel and omnichannel marketing is the connection of channels. While channels in multichannel marketing are independent and have separate strategies and operations, omnichannel marketing has all processes and channels interconnected.

Now that you know the difference and are sure about developing a multichannel marketing strategy for your company, it’s time to explore our step-by-step guide below.

To successfully create an effective multichannel marketing strategy, you need to manage the planning and execution processes. We’ll simplify your team’s efforts by providing a step-by-step guide on how to do it right. So, let’s explore.

1. Understand your target audience. Before diving into strategy development, you need to research your customers’ demographics, preferences, interests, and problems. With this information in mind, you can devise your campaigns wisely. Then, divide these customers into segments based on their similarities. You should develop buyer personas that cover all the mentioned criteria for each group to create highly targeted campaigns resonating with the needs of each segment. This will help you select the right channels and relevant and timely content.
2. Identify key goals. When outlining your main objectives, remember the SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Timely) principle. SMART goals will serve as direction for your multichannel strategy. You should also determine KPIs, including engagement rates, conversion rates, customer acquisition costs, and customer lifetime value, to evaluate the progress toward attaining the mentioned goals.
3. Find the right marketing channels. After researching the channels your target audience uses the most, consider choosing the most popular. You should identify communication channels that make it easy for you and your audience to interact. These channels might include websites, social media networks, messengers, live chat, chatbots, search engines, email campaigns, brick-and-mortar stores, etc. Then, ensure that all the selected channels ensure a unified shopping experience.
4. Work on consistent company messaging. When interacting with customers, you still need to communicate a consistent brand voice, message, and visual identity using all the channels. Your content should be tailored to the specifications of every channel to look good on it and effectively deliver the offers.
5. Develop a relevant content strategy. Creating a content strategy is about the content type you choose and the time you send it. With a special tool and content calendar, you can schedule your content and share it on autopilot at a specific time. Since channels are different, you need to create different relevant formats for them. You can create blog posts, videos, infographics, social media posts, and webinars depending on the channel and audience you want to talk to.
6. Consider using automation. Automation tools prevent you from a lot of manual work and human error. To optimize your business efficiency, consider implementing automation to send email campaigns, schedule social media posts, nurture leads, follow up with customers, etc. With a service like LIKE.TG, you can seamlessly schedule and send personalized email campaigns, create web push notifications to collect contact data, create chatbots to make appointments, etc.
7. Personalize customer experience across channels. Consider using customer insights, behavior, and actions to provide targeted experiences to clients. You should use dynamic content in email campaigns, chatbots, websites, and advertising to ensure messages resonate with customer needs and the latest search history or items added to the cart.
8. Ensure mobile-friendly design. When you outline your multichannel strategy, you should create content that is easily accessible from smartphones on different channels. Prospects should feel comfortable contacting you through live chat, chatbot, or social media networks from mobile devices. Your strategy should cover SMS marketing, mobile apps, and location-based marketing.
9. Actively engage with your audience through the preferred channels. Show customers you care by engaging with them on social media using comments and mentions. Consider collecting customer feedback and responding to it. This way, you’ll get valuable insights and show appreciation for help and suggestions.
10. Adjust your strategy to the latest marketing trends. Since the marketing industry and technology evolve fast, you need to monitor the changes. It is essential to identify new trends and switches and implement new technology. Being flexible is a must if you strive to remain a relevant and competitive business.

Now that you know how to develop an effective multichannel marketing strategy, it’s time to explore some trends to help you stay afloat and succeed. Here are some popular trends for you to remember when optimizing your campaigns.

Multichannel Marketing Trends for 2024

To stand out from the competition, you need to be aware of emerging trends and be able to adapt quickly. Below, you can find some of the main multichannel marketing trends for 2024.

• Leveraging email marketing. It allows brands to communicate with willingly subscribed users via emails. The core idea of email marketing is to build long-lasting, trusting relationships with a genuinely interested audience. With bulk email services like LIKE.TG, you can send automated emails, create email templates, and manage mailing lists. Within your email marketing strategy, you can set email workflows to cover processes like shopping cart abandonment, onboarding, upselling, etc., without further interference.
• Establishing an online presence on social media networks. This marketing channel means using socials like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, etc., to advertise to your target audience. Socials are an excellent platform for growing your audience, engaging in a more natural, humane way, or performing giveaways supported by email. Facebook, for instance, allows you to contact leads organically by sharing helpful content and with paid PPC ads in various formats. Video ads, Carousels, Slideshows, Images, etc., are highly customizable in terms of visuals and targeting.
• Building a chatbot. You can create a chatbot for Facebook Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp, or Telegram app to promote your products, automate answering customers' frequently asked questions, collect orders, etc.
• Sending SMS with discounts, promo codes, and special offers. It is a way to reach people via mobile phones with short promotional messages. They have an extremely high open rate — up to 95%. Like email marketing, it requires opt-in users to start communication. It is a beneficial marketing tool for local businesses, but with LIKE.TG, you can send bulk SMS in over 200 countries, too.
• Creating web push notifications. This is a channel for advertising via small messages that appear in the screen corner when users browse the internet. Web push notifications help instantly inform people about news and updates, promote upcoming events, and provide relevant materials like blog articles and how-tos.
• Using AI technology. More and more businesses use AI for various purposes, including customer support, product recommendations, and customer communication. Features like predictive analysis enable you to predict customer behavior and create relevant campaigns that meet customer needs and solve their problems. With chatbots and virtual assistants, you can provide instant quality support around the clock and personalized recommendations. Your chatbot will help you make reservations, appointments, and bookings without human involvement, preventing human error and reducing the workload on agents.
• Personalizing customer experiences. With AI, you can track, analyze, and use customer insights. This data helps you develop personalized campaigns optimized for your customers’ needs, challenges, and preferences. You can ensure a seamless shopping experience across social media platforms and messengers. Besides, AI enables you to adapt to users’ needs in real-time based on their interactions and behavior. This way, you will always be able to develop relevant and timely offers.
• Using shoppable content. When visiting brands’ social media, users can often see shoppable content. Incorporating shoppable content enables potential customers to explore the offer, its price, and features and complete the purchase instantly. Customers can shop from social posts, videos, and stories, which is convenient for those who prefer to scroll Instagram, TikTok, or Facebook rather than search websites.
• Leveraging virtual reality. Virtual reality is becoming increasingly popular because it helps people try products online and find out whether they suit them without any need to visit physical stores. For example, before buying sunglasses online,m customers can try them on using virtual reality. It helps them see how the product will look on their faces.
• Incorporating influencer marketing. Most well-known brands leverage influencer marketing for higher reach, visibility, and recognition. Startups and small companies cooperate with opinion leaders for various reasons, including expanded reach, credibility, trust, niche audiences, higher ROI, better engagement, and interaction with potential customers.
• Encouraging user-generated content. Since professional promotional content requires brands to spend thousands of dollars, more and more business owners encourage user-generated content. It’s often high quality, free or low cost, and trusted by people. Potential customers trust customer reviews more than a professional video made by the company itself.
• Developing an app. Many brands create apps to ensure seamless shopping for smartphone users. Customers can easily navigate the app and find all the necessary items faster. The app is designed to enhance customer experience and ensure everything is visible and convenient. Features like saved preferences, easy checkout, and one-click purchasing make shopping with a company more pleasant. Moreover, your company can provide more personalized offers based on purchased items, added to the cart, or viewed.

Now that you have a clear understanding of the trends for 2024 let’s proceed to the five best multi-channel marketing tools. They will help you effortlessly incorporate all the trends using automation.

Multichannel marketing tools are essential for every business, integrating multiple marketing channels to reach customers. Yet this task could be overwhelming if done manually. Here are the best multichannel marketing tools for you to consider.

LIKE.TG

LIKE.TG is a multipurpose solution that allows small and big businesses to automate customer communication with CRM, build professional email campaigns, create chatbots, develop web push notifications, deliver SMS, and integrate all these channels using Automation 360. With the service, you can set conditions once and send campaigns on autopilot when the automation is triggered by specific actions or events. You can instantly send welcome emails, abandoned cart reminders in chatbots, order confirmations in web push notifications, etc.

The platform enables scheduling campaigns and sending them on time based on customer behavior and actions. With this feature, you can personalize your offers and send relevant content when customers search for these products.

Pricing:

• free plan: 500 subscribers, 5,000 emails, 5 flows, 1 event, and 50 elements in Automation 360 monthly;
• paid plan: 500 subscribers, unlimited emails, 10 flows, 10 events, and 70 elements in Automation 360 for $6.40 monthly, billed annually.

Brevo

Brevo is a platform that empowers you to easily create and run cross-channel campaigns without any special coding knowledge or skills using pre-built templates. With the platform’s help, you can communicate with customers through email, SMS, WhatsApp, push notifications, and live chat. That’s why it can become a good fit for companies of all sizes and from different backgrounds.

The service allows you to customize your chat widget, install it on your site, set operational hours, and turn on notifications. Besides, the platform enables you to use its mobile app to answer customer questions anywhere through live chat. To respond to customers 24/7, you can create a chatbot that allows you to send messages in bulk and respond individually using a personalized approach.

Pricing:

• free plan: 300 emails/day, customizable email templates, drag-and-drop editor, transactional emails, SMS and WhatsApp campaigns.
• paid plan: 5,000 emails monthly without daily sending limit, no Brevo logo, and basic reporting & analytics for $9 monthly.

Agorapulse

Agorapulse is a comprehensive social media management platform enabling you to effectively establish an online presence, build visibility, and successfully engage with your target audience. With the platform, you can develop your link in a bio page and include all the links to your social media networks and messengers to encourage conversions. Even more, with Agorapulse's AI-powered assistant, you can optimize your content and ensure it’s effective on your link in bio page.

The service’s social media publishing tools help you improve your content for better engagement and schedule posts for your social media networks using a publishing calendar. With multiplatform scheduling options, you can share your content on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, X (Twitter), Pinterest, LinkedIn, and more on autopilot. These include all content formats like Reels, Stories, Pins, TikTok videos, and more. After publishing content, you can track performance and analyze customer feedback using social media listening tools.

Pricing:

• 30-day free trial;
• paid plan: 10 social profiles, posts scheduling, unlimited posts, draft posts, unified publishing calendar, standard social inbox, instant translations for $49 monthly per user paid annually.

Sprout Social

Sprout Social is an all-in-one social media management tool that empowers you to share content on multiple social media networks and optimize your multichannel marketing strategy. This solution offers publishing, analytics, listening, advocacy, and influencer marketing tools, helping you enhance customer experience and engagement across the communication channels you choose.

Combining employee advocacy, paid promotion, publishing, and analytics tools allows you to widen your reach, establish awareness and recognition, and gain more interactions. In addition to running paid ads and advocacy campaigns, you can identify the best times to share your posts based on the platform's data-driven insights into customer behavior.

Pricing:

• 30-day free trial;
• paid plan: 5 social profiles, an all-in-one social inbox, a social content calendar, paid promotion tools to boost Facebook posts, and more for $199 per seat monthly if billed annually.

Buffer

Buffer is a platform that allows you to create and publish content, effectively engage with a wide audience, and analyze social media performance across multiple channels, including Instagram, Facebook, Shopify, TikTok, YouTube, Pinterest, Threads, LinkedIn, and more. The service will suit even beginners because it enables them to develop a customized landing page quickly without coding skills.

With this solution, you can create content from scratch, import it from other platforms, and save ideas. Its AI-powered assistant helps improve your copy, repurpose content for other social media networks in seconds, or make revisions. Once your content is ready, you can publish it across multiple channels using a single dashboard. After your posts become visible to your audience, you can track performance and keep an eye on users’ interactions with them, including comments, likes, shares, etc. This information gives you a hint about the necessity of optimizing or repurposing

Pricing:

• free plan: 3 channels, planning & publishing tools, landing page builder, and AI Assistant;
• paid plan: 2 channels, engagement tools, and analytic reports for $10 monthly when paid annually.

Now that you know the tools, it’s time to find out how to use them to optimize your multichannel marketing strategy. Here are the ten most effective tips.

Companies can implement numerous tips to optimize their strategies, but not all of them ensure instant results. We’ve listed the most effective ones for you to consider.

1. Don’t stick to a single channel. If you use only email marketing and gain success, there are still more potential customers who may not be keen on emailing or hanging out on socials. To grow your audience, create multichannel subscription forms with LIKE.TG. This way, you will collect users' email addresses and let them join your brand on Facebook Messenger and Telegram.
2. Gradually implement different channels. If you run a small business, start with one or two marketing channels that you clearly understand how to use. When your efforts pay off and your company grows, connect other channels, choosing those that complement each other.
3. Find out your buyer persona. Define your ideal customer to quickly find the appropriate marketing channels for communication with your audience. To bring that idea to life, research, collect data from subscription forms on your website, use Google Analytics, and monitor statistics for every email campaign.
4. Provide value instead of just selling. Today, the competition for users’ attention is so intense that offering a good discount alone is often not enough to drive sales. Many businesses provide discounts, but few offer real value. Combine promotions with how-tos, helpful articles, instructions, and tips on using the products you sell—anything that makes your audience feel appreciated and loyal to your brand.
5. Use a communication style that fits a specific channel. Change the way you sound on different channels. Your message should look slightly different across every marketing platform—socials, emails, SMS—even if it contains the same information.
6. Ensure responsive design. When developing your multichannel strategy, you should always keep in mind the constantly increasing number of mobile users. Since more and more people prefer to search for products using their smartphones, it’s a must to design a website that looks good on small screens and ensures fast load time and simple navigation.
7. Use marketing automation. Consider incorporating automation to run your email campaigns, social media campaigns, and customer communication on autopilot without human intervention. They will help you deliver your campaigns at the right time through planning and scheduling features. With live chat and chatbots, you can promptly respond to customer concerns across any time zone. Platforms like LIKE.TG can assist you in building chatbots for Telegram, WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook Messenger and add live chat to your website in no time without coding skills.
8. Incorporate social proof. Since prospects pay attention to customer reviews and feedback, include these elements on your website. Positive reviews will influence your leads' purchasing decisions. Besides, add case studies to show how customers succeed in reaching their goals with your product. This will encourage trust and credibility.
9. Provide seamless customer support. Multichannel marketing implies ensuring excellent customer support across multiple marketing channels. You should take advantage of technology to resolve problems effectively. Chatbots and live chat, along with AI, can understand customer inquiries and respond to them using human language. This improves efficiency and lets your customer support agents focus on serious issues. LIKE.TG allows you to connect ChatGPT to your chatbot and ensure seamless support.
10. Interact with your prospects and customers. With a multichannel marketing strategy, you can engage with your audience through any channel, including social media, messengers, live chat, etc. If you actively use these platforms, they will allow you to build awareness, visibility, and recognition. By responding to customer comments, messages, and mentions on social media, you show that you care and encourage trust. With polls, Q&A sessions, and user-generated content, you can establish a community around your brand.

Now that you know some strategies to implement for better performance of your multi-channel marketing, it’s time to review some examples. They will serve you as inspiration for your future multichannel marketing campaigns.

There are many multichannel marketing campaigns out there, yet not all of them have reached their primary goals. We’ve chosen the three most viral campaigns that gained customer trust and loyalty.

Starbucks

Starbucks cares for its customers by providing an excellent shopping experience across its website, web, retail stores, and other channels. The company’s loyalty program is highly rated by customers and other businesses around the globe. Starbucks’ loyalty cards have no limitations like other brands. So, customers can check and reload their cards using multiple channels, including in-store, the company’s app, their smartphones, and the website.

Apple

Unlike other brands, Apple prioritizes delivering exceptional customer experiences across all channels rather than pushing for sales. The brand engages potential customers through its physical stores, website, advertising, Apple TV+, and Apple News. These channels enable Apple to interact with customers and highlight the key benefits of its products. As a result, customers return to make repeat purchases due to the quality and value of Apple's products rather than being pressured to complete their orders.

Topshop

Topshop, a clothing company, developed a successful multichannel campaign during London Fashion Week to promote its newest product catalog. The brand placed billboards around British cities under the #livetrends hashtag. The content was published across all the digital channels Topshop uses for promotion and communication. Customers can instantly see the products on the catwalk and shop for them at the nearest stores or online.

Congrats! Now you know what multichannel marketing is and why it’s important. We hope our tips, tools, and examples will help you develop a worthy strategy for your business.