Multichannel Marketing: Coordinating Existing Media for Maximum Conversion

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Ding dong; the purchase funnel is dead. Out of its ashes, a new, more challenging, and infinitely more exciting consumer-buying model has emerged: the consumer journey. This journey is radically different, and requires a radically different approach.

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The New Car-Buyer Journey: Choose Your Own Automotive Adventure

While the purchase funnel was linear; the consumer journey is downright labyrinthine. Today’s car-shopper may check out your reviews, then visit your dealer website, then backtrack to reviews, and so forth. Because there’s no clear path; there’s no clear marketing order of operations. Though the nature of the journey has changed, the goal remains the same: propel the consumer from inspiration to ownership. So how do you do it?

To propel a modern consumer to purchase, marketers need to be “always on,” powerfully present across all mediums so that car-buyers can find them however and whenever they like. This is where the multichannel marketing approach comes in. Rather than turning on different channels at different times in a neat cascading order, you must be ever-present, so that however, whenever, and wherever, the modern consumer chooses to find you, you will be on and active through a compelling mix of media: email, search engine rankings, advertising, reviews, website, etc.

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Multichannel Marketing: Multiply and Conquer

Multichannel marketing not only makes emotional sense; it’s proven to deliver results. A new study finds that multichannel marketing (use of five or more marketing channels such as email, social media, advertising, website, etc. used in a coordinated campaign) is actually far more effective than buying any individual channel in getting real business growth metrics, particularly those tied to an optimal customer experience.

This makes sense. In an environment where your shoppers interact with a rapidly changing mix of media, you can fail to win their hearts by either not being present where they are, or by having inconsistent messaging that results in a chaotic and unsatisfying brand experience.

marketing channels in a

coordinated campaign is

far more effective than

using any single channel.

5+Using

”

“

Aberdeen, 2012

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According to Aberdeen’s July 2012 Customer Experience study; businesses who engaged in multichannel marketing saw growth in key performance improvements across the board, such as: a 6.8% increase in customer retention, a 5.1% increase in customer lifetime value, and a 4.0% increase in customer satisfaction.

These findings are even starker when compared to those businesses not engaged in multichannel marketing. Multichannel companies improve customer retention far more than all others on a year-over-year basis.

Key Performance Improvements

+4.0%

+2.0%

+3.0%

+0.4%

CustomerSatisfaction

CustomerLifetime

Value

CustomerRetention

+5.1%

+6.8% Multichannel Marketers

Non-Users

Source: Aberdeen July 2012 Customer Service Experience Management: Using the Power of Analytics to Optimize Customer Delight.

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They also double the year-over-year improvement in customer satisfaction results, compared to companies without multichannel account management. Every business knows the importance of happy customers, so forgoing a multiple channel approach is definitely a missed opportunity for maximum success.

Multichannel marketing is the key to strengthening your brand, pure and simple. As we see in the chart below, the Aberdeen study found that the more marketing channels a company employs, the more positively the brand is perceived.

More Channels = Better Results

6.3%6.3%

Number of positive mentions through social media channels

Companies using 1 channel

9.1%10.7%

2%

4%

6%

8%

10%

12%

Companies using 2 channels

Companies using 3 channels

Companies using 4 channels

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Happy customers are the lifeblood of any business, but delight doesn’t pay salaries. However, another study found that this delight really does translate into improved business results.

A separate Aberdeen study found that multichannel marketing also improves campaign participation and conversion rates of digital marketing programs. The study reported that businesses using three or more channels achieved 48% better year-over-year results in terms of unique website visitors, a metric we all know heavily correlates with increased sales and revenue.

Beyond Perception:

Delight Doesn’t Pay the Bills

“Businesses that use three or more marketing channels see 48% more unique web visitors year-over-year.”

- Aberdeen, 2012

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Multichannel: Noise Versus Nurture

We’ve talked a lot about being “always on,” but there’s more to multichannel marketing than a consistent presence. The magic of multichannel marketing is a constant presence with a targeted twist. It’s noise versus nurture.

The best multichannel marketing campaigns are activated by some form of opt-in: a car-buyer visiting their website, or viewing an ad, for example. As such, while noise marketing attempts to win by “blasting” messages to anyone and everyone, nurture marketing is multichannel marketing that is behavior-based; it takes its cues from the consumer and responds appropriately.

Noise marketing is crashing every party; nurture marketing is accepting every invitation. If you don’t step up to the multichannel plate, however, the consumer may feel discouraged and noise could still end up ruling the day by sheer persistence. Don’t let that happen.

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Overcoming Objections: Multichannel Myths Debunked

Myth #1: It’s going to cost too much. Although the knee-jerk resistance to multichannel is usually around dollars, the adoption of multichannel marketing is usually not as big of a financial investment as many fear. Notice the title of this eBook is around coordinating existing media, not necessarily increasing your spend. In many cases, marketers are already using most of these mediums, so there isn’t a real additional cost accrued. It’s less of an upgrade and more of a reallocation. Instead of adding more mediums, it’s about using the same mediums differently: better and more harmoniously.

Multichannel marketing is less of

an upgrade and more of a reallocation.

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Myth #2: We already have multichannel marketing; we utilize every channel. The reality is, unless you’ve made a concentrated strategic shift, you most likely are not practicing multichannel marketing today. After all, organization is the difference between an army and a mob. You can’t just throw more channels in the mix and expect to instantly improve results. Multichannel marketing isn’t really about simply using many mediums; it’s about a mindset: shifting from siloed objectives to a single unified approach. In the multichannel model, there can no longer be a SEO department, or an email marketing department, or a social media department. There’s just a marketing department, with all tides lifting the same boat for maximum power.

SOC

IAL

SEO

AD

S

WE

B

EM

AIL

One Marketing Department

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Myth #3: Multichannel marketing is a luxury to think about for the future. On the contrary, multichannel has emerged now as a life raft, not a luxury. Why? The digital battle has always boiled down to this: Distraction versus Determination. What separates the modern experience however, is that today, these stakes are on steroids. Distraction is at an all-time high, which in turn means determination is at an all-time low. With today’s average consumer being exposed to 5,000 messages per day, 75,000 new blogs being created each day, and 100,000 links shared on Facebook every twenty minutes, there has never been such a cyclone of swirling information, nor such a buffet of infinite options to choose from.

In the face of almost insurmountable noise, multichannel marketing is a modern marketer’s only hope. It’s the only way to truly motivate the consumer to push through in order to reach the finish line: a purchase. In other words, this new more sophisticated marketing isn’t an extravagance; it’s a survival mechanism. Today’s consumers are seriously savvy, and marketers must match wits to make ends meet.

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Last but not least, there is one preconception about multichannel marketing that isn’t a myth: that it’s really, really hard. Like all new and forward-thinking marketing shifts, this is absolutely true. This is where a trusted marketing partner can come in handy. In the long run, many time-starved automotive professionals find it infinitely more satisfying to stop juggling keywords and media placements with their day job, and simply tell their digital marketing partner, “This is what I want. Make it happen.”

If that’s the case, we’d love to hear from you. Contact us at 206-219-8000, or fill out this information form to receive a free marketing assessment. You can also check out Cobalt’s full multichannel solution here.

For more information, visit:www.cobalt.com