We live in an era of gadgets. Research shows that 94% of people have their cellphone within arm’s reach at all times, consumers are shopping on tablets while watching television, and more email is opened on mobile devices than a desktop.
Customers continue to move into a multichannel world, and responsive marketers need to go there, too.
Channel integration isn’t something marketers can afford to ignore. According to Target Marketing’s Media Usage Survey, 37% of marketers’ 2016 budgets went to online marketing, 29% went to print (direct mail, magazines, newspapers), and 21% went to live events. The rest was split between radio, television, and space advertising.
Even as direct mail remains the bedrock of highly effective marketing campaigns, digital components are increasingly part of the mix. According to Target Marketing, the following digital channels are growing the most rapidly:
- Online advertising (54%)
- Email (49%)
- Mobile marketing (38%)
- Search engine marketing (41%)
- Search engine optimization (43%)
- Social media engagement (55%)
- Social media advertising (49%)
Consumers’ lives are multichannel, so marketing is increasingly multichannel, too.
The multichannel approach also produces better results. In a data analysis of retailers, McKinsey found that the more channels customer use to engage with the store, the more they spend on an annual basis. Customers who shopped both in store and who used catalogs spent three times more than those who did not. When Internet marketing is added to the mix, revenue grows by four times. Likewise, customers who shopped online spent four times as much when catalogs were added to the mix and six times more when they also shopped in store.
Why does multichannel work so well? One reason is that it provides repeated exposure and reinforcement of the message. Another is that different media play different roles in moving customers along the sales funnel.
What does your channel mix look like? Why not talk to us about adding, not just more channels to your mix, but creating the optimum mix of channels to keep your message in front of customers, move them through the sale funnel, and get them all the way to a sale.
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