How often do you find yourself scrolling through one social media feed before getting caught up—or even bored—before switching to your next account? Cross-channel marketing is a strategy to create an integrated and uniform digital presence across multiple channels, such as multiple social media platforms, email, SEO, apps, etc. Your marketing strategies should be tailored for each channel while simultaneously building a recognizable brand. This may sound difficult, so how can you create a consistent digital brand at the same time?
It's all about balance. With cross-channel marketing, the purpose is to blend your marketing channels in a logical, cohesive way that creates a uniform digital brand that's easy to track from one platform to the next. Your platforms should build on each other in a meaningful way rather than juxtapose one another. If you send an email newsletter highlighting an upcoming event, course, or program, you can also promote it with organic and/or paid social media advertising. You could also create pop ups on your website to serve as reminders for your target audience to buy a ticket for the event or sign up for the online course.
If you read my post last week about repurposing content, you might be thinking: how is cross-channel marketing any different? Repurposing content is an excellent marketing content that helps you save time by taking something you've already published and sharing it again in another format while updating for relevancy to contribute in a meaningful way. Cross-channel marketing, on the other hand, is providing a seamless, uniform user experience across various channels. It helps your target audience recognize your brand wherever they find you and resonate with the content.
Building a uniform and consistent brand across multiple channels can be difficult when each channel will require specific marketing strategies, but taking the time to research and test techniques will help you build a strong digital presence. Cross-channel marketing will help you increase engagement, build loyalty, and participate in different trends to grow your audience. With cross-channel marketing, you can build your engagement by connecting with your audience in different ways on various platforms. For example, if you're a soap company primarily targeting women in the United States, you will want to utilize more than on social media to target women of different ages and other demographics.
For this soap company to have potential social media success, TikTok might be a great way to reach young women since 25% of U.S. TikTok users are between 10 and 19 years of age. (Statista); however, it might not be the right platform to use to reach older women since only 18% of U.S. Tiktok users are 50+ years old (Pew Research Center). The same soap company might have good luck on Facebook because according to HubSpot Blog Research many "marketers believe Facebook is the most popular social media platform across all age groups." Like you, your entire target audience is never on just one social media platform.
We all have multiple access to different social networks and marketing channels, and it's important that brands or businesses use more than one too. Cross-channel marketing helps you not only reach your target audience but also build brand recognition and loyalty, which will convert online users into to followers, supporters, or even customers. it can be difficult knowing where to start, so I recommend doing lots of research on your target audience to figure out what they're doing, what they're interested in, and so on. Your research what help you find which social media or marketing channels that your target audience uses the most, which will help you get started as you launch your brand on those platforms.
We all start somewhere, so don't worry if you're not getting lots of engagement and followers quickly. We all start from ground zero, and it takes lots of trial and error to gain traction online. Keep testing and trying new tactics. The Internet is constantly growing, so you'll need to keep up in order to keep your audience's attention. If you're confused or lost, follow other creators in your niche, find a mentor in your industry, network with peers, and study what your competition is doing. Learn from others who are actively using cross-channel marketing and see what's working well for them—or not—to see what may work well for your brand too.
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