Multichannel marketing may be defined as a marketing strategy involving the use of multiple and different marketing avenues to reach a customer, interact with him or get business from him. The strategy makes it easier and convenient for a customer to buy a product or order a service because he can choose from different ways to do so. Possible marketing avenues or channels include television advertisements, websites, telephone calls, catalogs, mobile, email and direct mail. Then there are channels which directly market to the customer in the form of retailers, consultants or repackagers.
Why Multichannel Marketing?
Businesses adopt the multichannel marketing system to make their presence felt wherever the customers are, which is everywhere. What’s more, research indicates that multi-channel customers tend to spend significantly more than their one-channel counterparts.
Eddie Bauer is now and again taken as an example for “brick, click, and flip” multichannel marketing, referring to retails stores, website and catalogs respectively.
Benefits
Multichannel marketing is associated with several business advantages:
The Customer has Choice – Customers are always happy when they have several options because they need only use the one they are comfortable with. In addition, if they can choose from different mediums – online or offline to interact with a business, the chances of them buying from the business are greater than if they had only one medium/marketing channel from which to buy from. A consistently happy customer becomes a loyal customer.
More Brand Visibility and Recognition – With so many channels to promote itself, a business gets more visibility, attention and even recognition for itself. This leads to more customers and more sales.
More Touch Points – Touch points are points of contact between a vendor and a buyer. More touch points enable collection of more data relating to visitors and buyers. With this data, a business can better understand where their promotions are most successful as well as analyze their success.
If properly tapped, multichannel marketing can help businesses reach the right customer with the right offer and at the right time by way of the right channels – all while keeping costs down and enhancing the performance and efficacy of their marketing endeavors.
