How you can improve your cross-channel marketing strategy

First of all, what is cross-channel marketing? Cross-channel marketing (or omnichannel marketing) is essentially how you manage your brand’s strategy across social media, websites, newsletters, word-of-mouth, and everything else. A good cross-channel marketing strategy is all about consistency. Whether a customer is browsing your LinkedIn profile, receiving a newsletter, or having a chat on the phone, there is a consistent tone and experience across your brand.

Not enough businesses realise how important this is for building a recognisable and reliable brand. If we move away from digital and focus more on the product, the importance of being consistent is abundantly clear. It all comes down to expectations of the [potential] customer. When you go to McDonald’s, whether you’re in London or Lima, you expect that you will be able to buy a burger. Yes, depending on where in the world you are, you may be able to get more regional type foods. Be that the McShrimp sold in Japan or the McKroket sold in the Netherlands. But you’d never see a McDonald’s not selling a burger. Implementing a successful cross-channel marketing strategy is as important for your business as the burger is for McDonald’s.

Channable is the ideal companion for cross-channel marketing. On one hand, you can distribute your products on as many channels as you wish, which will increase traffic. While on the other hand, Channable offers you retargeting opportunities that improve your conversion rates. As the vast majority of internet users require multiple visits to a site before buying, retargeting is incredibly valuable. But how does it work?

1. Improve your online visibility

Before retargeting can be effective, you need to increase the visibility of your products. For example, you sell summer dresses on your eCommerce site. When a potential customer uses Google or Bing to search for the perfect summer dress to buy, you want them to see your ads (text and/or image) directly on the search results page.

With Channable, you can easily create relevant text and/or image ads from your feed. Discover more ​here​.

The simplest way to develop new points of contact with your potential customers by using a feed manager. As a cross-channel marketing strategy is now essential, your products need to be present on marketplaces, comparison sites, and affiliate platforms to give you the best chance at being successful. If your products are not available across all of these types of channels, you risk losing potential customers as the products of your competitors will be. If you want to stay ahead of the competition, you need to at least match their every step.

2. Retargeting is an effective strategy

It’s very common that potential customers do not make a purchase after their first visit to your website. I mean, the same can even be said for offline shopping as well. Everyone wants to browse and compare products and prices before committing to a purchase. So what’s the best way to not lose this potential sale to a competitor? One of the most effective strategies is retargeting. Retargeting is the, well, re-targeting of people who have already visited your site or viewed your product through third-party sites.

With retargeting specialists like ​Criteo​ and AdRoll, through Channable you can target potential customers who are already familiar with your brand and product. Due to this familiarity, the online display advertisements used in retargeting and more effective and more likely to result in a purchase.

As we mentioned before, retargeting becomes even more successful when it is coupled with a strategy to improve visibility (AdWords, Shopping Campaigns, etc.). Which is why eCommerce businesses who implement a strategy for both get a higher ROI (return on investment) than those who don’t. Simply put, your best chance of success is to use a tool to generate traffic then use retargeting to take advantage of that traffic. Channable offers both features within the same app. All of these functions are automated through powerful, intuitive rules that are quick to set-up. If you want to test any of Channable’s features, you can ​create a free trial account​ on ​Channable’s website​.

Joshua Ogugua looks after Channable's UK Marketing efforts.