Cross Channel Marketing: Problems & Solutions
Cross channel marketing, while more profitable than confining your efforts to a single channel, does present problems all its own. This is especially true when it comes to cross channel marketing in the digital age.
That’s partly because several different marketing channels exist within a limited amount of media: the Web, email, SMS, and that hazy twilight area of mobile apps. It’s also because many of these marketing channels exist across multiple media simultaneously, which obviously makes integrating and tracking cross channel marketing efforts more complex than ever.
Cross Channel Marketing Problems: A Few Examples
For example, your Facebook and other social media marketing efforts must take into account that prospects could be accessing your stream from a desktop computer’s Web browser, a smart phone’s mobile app, or a tablet that may utilize either or both of these methods.
Another example of this cross channel marketing phenomenon is that while users will see Google pay per click ads regardless of whether they’re using a desktop or a smart phone, you will need to optimize across this channel for two different media.
With so many different moving parts, cross channel marketing can get confusing pretty quickly.
Cross Channel Marketing Must Let You See Which Channels Work Together Best
It could be that Facebook brings in the most responsive subscribers to your email marketing list, while your blog brings in subscribers that are mostly seeking freebies. Or, you may find that pay-per-click advertising delivers a high amount of Web traffic that requests further information, while SMS marketing and remarketing on focused lists brings in prospects who are ravenously ready to buy ASAP!
You can see how complicated this can get. In fact, you’ve probably experienced it yourself when dealing with cross channel marketing. No one can blame you for throwing your hands up in the air after even a little bit of time trying to figure out what it all means.
Good cross channel marketing, by definition, requires that you integrate analytics for a single business across multiple channels, platforms, and media. It’s important to be able to assess your effectiveness on all fronts of your marketing campaign. This is the kind of marketing intelligence that can literally make or break all of your digital marketing efforts.
What Else You can Learn from Integrated Tracking of Cross Channel Marketing
One of the great things about being able to easily take in your entire marketing picture is that you may find a vein of pure gold in the rock of your marketing efforts. Perhaps you have several different profitable channels but most of them give you an average 5:4 ROI that, while nicely profitable, don’t even compare to the one channel you have found (email marketing, for example) that brings back 5:1!
Focusing On One and All Through Cross Channel Marketing
In today’s ever changing world, it can be disastrous to put all of your eggs in one marketing basket. Still, you’d be crazy not to focus most of your time, effort, and money on the most highly profitable channel for your business.
Yet you should always keep an eye on other channels and other media through cross channel marketing. This is true because of their future potential, as well as for the potential traffic they can send to your “gold vein.” Typically, the best way to do this is by using a single Internet marketing software that tracks multiple channels over a variety of digital media.
CriticalMAAS is coming! Click here to sign-up to be notified upon our public beta launch this Spring. Our Professional Membership starts at only $29 /mo and gets you access to our All-in-One Digital Marketing Software complete with Facebook Apps, Email Marketing, Mobile Marketing, Reputation Monitoring, and more coming soon. Early adopters will receive a 60 Day Free Trial. You can’t afford to wait, your competition may have already signed up!