Why Do You Need a Cohesive Marketing Strategy Across All of Your Channels?

A couple of decades ago, there weren’t that many ways for customers to interact with organisations. Maybe they could call or send a letter. Today, that’s not the case; there are so many ways for customers to reach out to firms. 

There’s social media (which, in and of itself comprises several platforms), mobile devices, email, and websites. If any of those are out of synch, you risk alienating your customers with confusing messaging. No one can afford to lose business because your users didn’t understand what you were trying to say. 

A Cohesive Multichannel Marketing Strategy: The Definition

So, what does it mean to have a cohesive multichannel marketing strategy? We’ve come up with a definition that we think offers a pretty clear explanation. 

A cohesive multichannel marketing strategy means that your marketing messages are consistent across all of your channels. There are no discrepancies between any two channels; you’re not offering one thing in your email newsletters, while you’re putting a different ad on Facebook for the exact same customer. A cohesive multichannel marketing strategy isn’t confusing in the slightest; everyone knows what you stand for because your messaging is abundantly clear. 

Best Practices for Achieving a Cohesive Multichannel Marketing Strategy

We’ve identified a list of personalisation best practices so you can achieve a cohesive multichannel marketing strategy and improve your customer experience: 

• Get everyone onboard to create a cohesive strategy.
• Gain a 360° view of your customers.
• Understand the customer journey from start to finish.
• Use the right tools.

Get Everyone Onboard to Create a Cohesive Strategy

It might seem as though a cohesive multichannel marketing strategy is the sole realm of the marketing team, but that often doesn’t turn out to be the case. Sometimes, Sales needs to repurpose content to reach a customer (say, taking a few paragraphs from a white paper), and they don’t have time to collaborate with the marketing department to make that happen. As a result, content can spring up in silos, leading to fragmented messaging.

That’s why everyone needs to be onboard when it comes to creating a marketing strategy. A cohesive multichannel marketing strategy addresses not only the needs of the marketing department but what other customer-facing teams require, too. When everyone is on the same page, there’s no need to create content silos. 

Gain a 360° View of Your Customers

Part of a cohesive multichannel marketing strategy involves understanding your customers. You need to know what your customers want, when they want it, and what channels they prefer. Armed with this information, you’ll have more successful campaigns.

How do you create a complete profile of your customers? It involves gathering information about your customers – what they do online, what they’ve purchased from you in the past, and what their preferences are. Keep the information all in one place so it’s easy to find as well as to combine for new insights.

Understand the Customer Journey from Start to Finish

Multichannel marketing works much better when messages are delivered at the right time. If you deliver a message at the wrong time (before a customer is actually ready to buy), you’ll effectively ruin his or her customer experience.

A deep understanding of the entire customer journey gives you the knowledge of not only when to share marketing messages, but which marketing messages to deliver. That raises your chances of sending out a marketing message when the customer is the readiest for it (and thus more likely to buy). 

Use the Right Tools 

An important best practice is using the right tools to get the job done. In this case, Sitecore, a market-leading customer experience platform, allows you to implement customer experience best practices. 

Sitecore offers a digital asset management component that centralizes artwork, photos, layouts, video, 3D content, and other marketing collateral so that it’s accessible to anyone who needs it. Users can categorise content easily and search high volumes of material quickly. Users have the power to create collections of content and share it with others, too.

Moreover, Sitecore provides a repository for customer information, so you can build a complete profile of your user base. Every time your customers interact with you, you can capture that data so that you understand what the customer is doing online, what they’ve purchased, and which device they prefer using. All of these details help you build a stronger multichannel marketing strategy. 

Additionally, Sitecore makes it easy for you to understand your customers’ journey. It helps you segment customers into groups so you gain insight into which of them are your most valuable. In this way, you can focus your marketing efforts on the people most likely to buy. When you grasp who your most valuable customers are, you can begin creating content that will resonate with them; you can also schedule distribution for optimal effect.

Enlighten: Helping You Implement Sitecore

Enlighten Designs is a proud Sitecore Gold partner. We have over two decades of experience in helping create exceptional customer experiences that delight your users. To learn more about how Sitecore enables you to implement personalisation best practices to better reach customers, contact us.