eCommerce and traditional businesses use multichannel marketing to interact with consumers and prospects across a number of marketing channels.
Direct and indirect channels include digital marketing channels and marketplace marketing. These channels allow companies to engage with their audience through multiple touchpoints.
Omnichannel marketing refers to a comprehensive approach to multichannel marketing.
Customers should have many opportunities to find your products and a similar shopping experience across all channels. For example, your logo, brand aesthetics, and product purchase process need to look the same whether potential customers use a desktop PC, mobile device, telephone, or visit a physical location.
The best digital sales channels include SEO, social media marketing and email marketing, according to a global report from Statista.
All channels marketers use must mesh together. Setting up ads on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, email, a blog, a website, and affiliate marketing is just the first step. The campaigns must work together to get the message across and convince users to click on the ad or come into your business.
Consumers moving across these formats expect a seamless experience. Sending conflicting messages may confuse prospects and negatively affect your conversion rate.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the art of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search results, also known as the unpaid section.
This involves designing your website to attract organic traffic by ranking high in search engine results pages. SEO makes your website appealing to search engine crawlers, particularly Google.
SEM stands for search engine marketing and it’s primarily focused on paid ads.
With SEM, companies pay for ads to appear on top of organic search results on search engine results pages (SERPs). Those businesses target keywords and they get charged when users click on their ads (PPC)
With PPC, companies pay per click — that is, they pay each time someone clicks on the ad and goes to their website. They include the above referred search ads but also Display ads. These type of ads appear at the top, on the side, and in the middle of web content on most websites. With fewer limitations than search, your ads can be personalized to fit your brand.
Social media marketing offers unique opportunities to directly interact with consumers. Doing a great job managing your social media presence builds a community of brand ambassadors likely to share your posts and convert their connections into customers.
From behind-the-scenes content to raising awareness for social issues, leverage social media to show what the people behind your brand care about — and get the message out to customers with similar values who can benefit from your products.
When creating a social media marketing strategy, keep these things in mind:
Email marketing is a cost-effective sales tool, and once you build a viable email list, it's practically free. Email marketing, however, can't make up for a poorly designed website that fails to attract SEO/SEM results. Since email marketing requires customers to opt-in to your message, they probably already want or need at least some of your products.
Some ways to make the most of email marketing include:
Affiliate marketing has a number of benefits for merchants. Affiliate partnerships allow independent marketers to earn commissions by promoting products. While most brands only pay commissions if customers click on the link and buy the product, some others use a PPC model.
Every new link back to your site or online store can potentially improve your ranking. So, besides getting sales, affiliate marketing can also boost the SEO for your site.
Some advantages to affiliate marketing include:
You can collect valuable information on the effectiveness of individual affiliates, which improves your forecasting results.
The digital and physical marketplaces converge in multichannel marketing. Building a consistent experience for customers gives you visibility in search engines — SEO/SEM — and provides access to a new set of buyers — affiliate marketing and social media.
Marketplace marketing allows you to advertise directly where you offer your products. Much like placing an ad in the window of a physical retail shop, sponsored ads you get in front of shoppers on Amazon, eBay, and other digital marketplaces increase your online "walk-in rate" and expand opportunities to pitch your product.
Just as in SEO marketing strategies, successful sponsored ads on Amazon and eBay depend on PPC campaigns and keyword bids.
Amazon allows sellers to purchase cost-per-click ads that display when customers type in certain keywords. Sellers bid on the keywords they believe will attract buying customers to their product pages. The ads themselves don't cost anything since retailers only get charged when a customer clicks on the ad.
Tips for successful Amazon Ads campaigns:
eBay also has a tool for sellers who want their products to gain prominence in on-site search results. eBay promoted listings lets you put products from eligible categories in front of users searching for specific terms. Some specific terms include:
Like Amazon Ads, this option increases your visibility and, potentially, increases your sales. Your promoted listing retrieves content from your product page, including the main photo, price, title, and formatting. Because of this, it helps to optimize the elements it retrieves to suit the audience you wish to reach.
Multichannel marketing channels allow you to hone your omnichannel selling strategy. It helps you keep everything hyper-connected and ensures consistent engagement. The channels discussed here are the ones to focus on for the best results in the current market. Personalize your campaigns to reflect your brand ethos and connect more deeply to customer wants and needs.