Making Money On-line: The Undeniable Benefit of a Consistent Cross Channel Marketing Message

Wednesday, 25 January 2017

The Undeniable Benefit of a Consistent Cross Channel Marketing Message

While you may see trend articles about the value of reaching out to customers and prospects on the mobile channel, the reality is that your audience wants to hear from you there. However, they also want you to talk to them on other channels, including digital and traditional channels.

With the desire to hear what you have to offer across channels, the best way to maximize the value of sharing marketing messages this way is to ensure consistency in what you are saying, combining a digital marketing strategy with additional tactics designated for traditional channels.

Say it the Same Way Everywhere

Not only does it make sense to take this approach, but there is also research that substantiates the benefit of consistent cross channel marketing messaging. An IAB study found that consumers that view a consistent message across multiple channels increase their purchase intent by 90% and improve their perception of that brand by 68%. An additional benefit on a cost level for brands is that sending out messages across both traditional and digital channels has resulted in a greater return on their marketing investment.

The IAB used two live ad campaigns to study whether desktop or mobile advertising can help improve the impact when this is combined with traditional advertising methods like television, radio, and print. They studied advertising campaigns from across multiple industries, such as consumer products, retail, automotive and finance. The automotive industry came out on top with the strongest impact from consistent cross-channel messaging.

Multiple Channels Consulted for the Purchase Process

The reason why this approach seems to work so well is because consumers actually use multiple channels when they go through the purchase process, including search engines, brand websites, and customer reviews as well as social media, blog posts, and mobile channels.

Blue Nile Research conducted a research study, entitled, “The Content That Compels People to Buy,” and found that more than 70% of those consumers surveyed use three or more channels to research and make a purchase.

Of those surveyed, 45% of consumers and 46% of B2B customers consider the information found in headlines and content they see on these channels as a factor for determining if they are making the right purchase decision. B2B customers also put a lot of stock in blog posts as content that helps them make decisions.

In relation to this study, if customer or prospects come across you on many channels, they want to see that you are saying and delivering the same thing as any other channel they recently saw you on. Hence, being consistent in your messages and actions across channels is a way to build trust and confidence with your audience. I’ve found with my company that when I’m inconsistent with our messaging, our customers become overly concerned that we are not telling the truth or we lack the attention to detail.

Creating One Single ID for Offline and Online Data

Throughout your campaigns, you are also gathering a significant amount of data from your efforts on both offline and online channels. It’s important to collect that data together into one place to analyze and assess the responses to the content you have supplied across all channels to understand which messages have resonated.

Seeing the data altogether can also point to the channels where your audience are participating in the most conversations, which help you determine which channels to focus on. After all, you don’t want to take on every channel but only those where your audience are most interacting with you while they research, discuss, and decide whether they will buy or not.

This single view of the data related to audience’s reaction to your messaging on each channel could also ensure that you are being consistent in what you are saying on every channel to further the return you can get from cross-marketing campaigns.

Numerous automated tools are available to compile this offline and online data into one location to further assess your ability to consistently appeal to your audience’s emotional and logical sides across channels like search, customer reviews, videos, case studies and website.

When examining the data all in one place, you can check for consistency in messaging and themes as well as in tone to ensure it consistently impacts those emotions and logic you are trying to engage and educate.

To learn how you can deliver the most meaningful, positive, and consistent customer experiences across all channels that enhance loyalty and deliver results, download Cross Channel Orchestration Fundamentals: Aligning Web With All Marketing Channels.