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The world of marketing has been turned on its head in the last twenty years. Where once marketers only had three or four main promotion channels to choose from (TV, radio, newspapers/magazines and billboards), now there is a seemingly limitless number of options available.
We all inherently appreciate the importance of promotions for companies, but, in 2020, just how do you choose which channels will give you the best Return on Investment (ROI) from your marketing budget?
The importance of branding
Before attempting to promote your company, you first need to make sure you have a clear and identifiable brand. In essence, branding is your company’s personality – the image it evokes in the minds of consumers.
For a more technical definition, the American Marketing Association defines branding as, “A brand is a name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller’s good or service as distinct from those of other sellers.”
So, if we take the example of bottled water, here we have a clear, tasteless substance where it’s almost impossible to differentiate one type from another. Yet, say ‘bottled water’ to a consumer and most will think immediately of a specific brand – Evian, Perrier, San Pellegrino etc. That linkage between a product and a particular company is the power of branding at work.
Choosing your promotions channels
Once you have a strong brand in place, it’s then possible to think about how you can market and promote it. As mentioned previously, not so long ago, marketers only had a limited number of channels to choose from, but, since the birth of the internet, the marketing industry has expanded tremendously.
As well as the traditional channels, you now also need to consider the various internet options available including (but not limited to) social media, email, online advertising, blogging, direct messaging, online video, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) etc. So, multiple channels leading to the coining of a completely new term, ‘multichannel marketing’.
Most companies these days engage in some form of multichannel marketing to promote themselves. Of the available options, it could be argued SEO is the most important – the process of getting your company to the top of the search engines under requests directly related to your company. Incidentally, the world of SEO is a dark and confusing place and, while you can attempt to do this work yourself if you’re to see the best results you should think about contracting a specialist firm. Companies like Click Intelligence will take a holistic approach to your online marketing – which, in truth, is the only way you’ll get your business to the top of search engine rankings.
The basics of multichannel marketing
Multichannel marketing means engaging with all the available promotions channels to bolster your company’s image and put it forefront in the minds of your clients (existing and potential). And this is where we come back to the importance of branding – because, without a clear and distinguishable brand, it’s impossible to construct a clear marketing message.
In its most basic form, taking a multichannel approach should mean your clients can come to your website, Facebook page, Twitter page, YouTube channel or even just see an offline newspaper advert and immediately associate each as representing your company.
Multichannel marketing sends out a powerful message across all media, online and offline, to convey the same brand concepts and hook consumers to your products and services. If used correctly, it can have a dramatic effect on the success of your company.