Developing a Multichannel Marketing Plan for Your Business

June 29, 2017 by Lindsey Perron

What is a multichannel marketing plan?

A multichannel marketing plan is one that focuses on using a variety of inbound marketing channels, techniques, and types of content to bring in new customers and keep existing customers coming back over and over again. Multichannel marketing is important for the simple fact that your offer, your solution, your resource must be where your customers are.

This type of plan encompasses both online and offline activities. Marketers who develop multichannel plans focus on specific aspects of the entire customer journey, from the initial contact with the customer to encouraging an action, converting a sale, and continuing engagement.

Certain aspects of a multichannel marketing plan are very similar to digital-specific marketing plans. However, the disadvantage of digital-specific plans is that they can have some limitations in terms of marketing integration, which is already a major challenge for marketers. Once a business has already implemented its digital marketing plan, that plan should be integrated into the company’s overall marketing efforts rather than being seen as an entirely separate entity.

Successful multichannel marketing plans…

What value is an optimized digital customer experience if your customer has a negative experience when they pick up the phone?

A successful multichannel marketing strategy focuses on customer value, engagement, and retention instead of vanity metrics. 

It is a huge mistake to view or evaluate your digital marketing efforts without equally evaluating your entire reach. For example, let us presume you are a traveling consultant that speaks at live events and seminars. Your website is your reference deck, your slide deck is your educational vehicle and your social media is where your audience can engage with you after your presentation. Multichannel marketing is about being everywhere and encompasses both offline and online activities.

Thorough multichannel marketing plans can be helpful in many ways, including:

• Creating annual communications plans for small businesses
• Creating annual communications plans for a specific market or target audience for larger businesses
• Developing long-term customer engagement plans focusing on a specific market or audience

Creating your own clear multichannel plan

Any successful multichannel marketing plan should contain the following elements:

• Clear goals you can realistically achieve with your plan. A single view of the customer journey across all channels.
• A well thought-out strategy that will allow you to achieve those goals, while also factoring in the competition you face
• Plenty of details about the actions you must take to be able to take this strategy and put it into action
• Ways to measure the success of your plan to ensure you remain on track for achieving the goals you have set for it

Your multichannel marketing plan will take into account many of the same elements a marketing plan on a single channel does but in more of a “big picture” sense. For example, which industry influencers are you able to leverage to get more visibility and improve your ROI? Which types of tracking tools are available in each specific channel to help you ensure sustained success? What are the best methods of increasing engagement in each individual channel you are using? How do you assess the value of customers across each channel?

Your multichannel marketing platform must include processes and technology that support campaign segmentation, workflow, campaign optimization based upon analytics, content creation that is multipurpose across various channels, attribution tracking, inbound and outbound call tracking by resource, response attribution, and more.

For more information about developing a multichannel marketing plan, contact us today at Viral Solutions and we will be happy to help you begin your next marketing journey.

Filed Under: Business Tips Tagged With: advertising channel, marketing plan, marketing strategy, marketing tactics

About Lindsey Perron

As Thomas’ daughter, Lindsey was introduced to the world of sales and marketing at an early age. Curious about what her dad did, Lindsey would jump at every opportunity to help and ride along on sales calls. Always quick to take charge and lead the group—a trait that has only grown with time—Lindsey was frequently told by her parents that she was destined to be a manager or CEO of some sort. While working toward earning her bachelor’s degree in human services from the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, Lindsey interned with the UW Office of Equality and Affirmative Action and served on several councils, which gave her the opportunity to develop her persuasive writing skills, researching skills, problem-solving skills, project management skills, and more. After working as the lead teacher of the 4-year-old room at the local daycare center, Lindsey decided to switch gears and join the Viral Solutions team. In her position, Lindsey is able to help clients think through an end goal and reverse engineer it into the steps needed to achieve it.

When she’s not working, Lindsey loves spending time with family, be it traveling somewhere together or just hanging out at home.