Multichannel in B2B marketing describes how a brand interacts with potential customers in both online and offline modes across multiple channels. Hence the name “Multichannel”

The main purpose for brands using multichannel is to ensure not to miss any channel that their potential customers are likely to use and engage them in the interactions in the easiest way.

What is Multichannel marketing?

Multichannel marketing is promoting a similar marketing strategy across all other channels to increase the interest in brand offerings among potential customers.

In its simplest, Multichannel helps brands offer products or services to the customers using the channel of their choice.

These channels can include both offline and online but not limited to advertisements, store front, social media, email campaigns, word of mouth, mobile apps, website and many others that help brands to reach wider audiences.

Marketers can use both on & off-line modes individually or combined to make customers procure products in their preferred way.

For example: A business can sell products or services at brick-and-mortar stores while maintaining the online store by advertising on social media.

As 72% consumers say they prefer to engage with brands when seen on more platforms that they usually hang on.

Businesses cannot reach their full potential if they cling on to one platform. Placing your messaging on numerous channels gives freedom of choice to customers on how they want to interact with you. Maybe few love watching your posts on Twitter or Instagram but never engage with your message if seen in their mailbox.

Multichannel gives you exposure to a wider audience and attracts new users, as customers have more choices than ever in terms of getting information about the products or services. The growth of social media, email, and online websites has caused marketing departments to increase their presence on the channels in order to develop better customer relationship management (CRM). 

Most businesses already use multichannel in their marketing campaigns and customer service to enhance the chances of success by pushing them to their maximum potential.

What are the benefits of Multichannel Marketing?

Around more than 70% consumers love using the product/service of business when brands make them easy to connect on any channel. And, businesses using more than 2 or 3 channels are likely to generate more revenue than those using a single marketing channel.

Here are the list of benefits that one gets using multichannel marketing approach:

• Expanded Reach

It’s well known for marketers that the more the reach is, the more customers are likely to engage with the brand. Many customers interact with the business on a limited number of channels – so by expanding your campaigns to more channels, increases the chances of finding potential customers that are untapped earlier.

• Increased brand awareness and customer engagement

The more your brand has a presence outside, the more likely people find you, and remember you when they think of purchasing a product/service. This also increases the chances of consumers receiving more touch points and increases the frequency of getting your customers engaged with the brand.

• Reach potential customers on their preferred channel

Most of the consumers are internet users and have access to social media. Instead of waiting for customers to find your brand, you need to uncover the channels that your customers prefer to use. So, if a user gets interested in your product then, they can easily reach out to you online for any product related information or any queries that they may have. 

• Speed and Efficient

Any prospect before turning to a customer or thinking of talking to a sales rep  interacts with your brand more than 30 times. Multichannel approach gives you the opportunity to appear everywhere that your customer most likely looks for, and by the time they know their need you’ll be at the top of their minds.

• Get analytics and insights about customer buying behavior

Companies spend huge amounts of money in analysing the buying persona of the customers. And, it’s a known fact for marketers how expensive and difficult it would be to get insights about buying habits and demographics of customers. 

But the more channels you utilize in the system, the easier it will be to understand the customer buying persona throughout the customers’ journey.

Many businesses who adapted multichannel as part of their marketing strategy have seen an average increase of 24% in ROI. And, many statistics reported by marketers say that they reached their financial targets with a 9.5% increase in annual revenue and 7.5% decrease in cost per contract resulting in increase in ROI.

What is the difference between Multichannel and Omnichannel approaches?

Multichannel vs Omni channel:

As customers want to interact with the brands on multiple channels of their preferred choice, and experience customer service across all these channels, these expectations gave rise to two marketing approaches “Multichannel” and “Omnichannel”

Often, many confuse between these terms Multichannel and Omnichannel but their meanings are substantially different.

Marketing channels are important for brands to create awareness among the customers, promote the products or services irrespective of the channel the customer comes in contact with including website, billboard, physical store, or even a product packaging.

Now, let’s have a look at the definitions of Multichannel and Omnichannel.

Multichannel

Multichannelis where a business promotes their brand on more than one platform such as voice, chat, email, social media, etc. These channels are not integrated with one another but engages the customers with brands on multiple channels they are likely to use.

For example: Billboards and online advertisements- both are not connected with each other but work for common purpose either to increase the awareness or promote the products.

In simple terms, marketers use multichannel to engage the customer with the brand using multiple channels and focusses effectively on how to make it more engaging with the customers while promoting the brand on channels.

Omnichannel

Omnichannel also refers to communicating with customers on more than one platform but the key difference is it allows businesses to keep all their channels in one place.

It aims to provide personalized and integrated experience across multiple touch points. This unified way helps customers to easily access information of the brand from any of the channels seamlessly as all are connected to each other.

While many consumers expect a seamless experience between channels and devices, Omnichannel ensures that the customers don’t get lost when switching between the channels.

Key differences between Multichannel and Omnichannel:

1. Channel centric vs Customer centric:

Multichannel aims at maximizing the number of channels to promote the brand. It focuses on enabling customer engagement with the brand through multiple channels. 

Omnichannel focuses on customers rather than channels. It aims at delivering seamless customer experience when interacting with the brand from multiple channels.

For example: Multichannel focuses on a number of channels to communicate the message such as social media, advertising, SEO, TV, radio, email, and website and increases the customer engagement. 

Omnichannel takes a different approach where its focus would be making it convenient for a customer by updating the function to the last experience the customer had on any of the channels.

1. Personalisation:

The multichannel approach focuses on increasing the customer engagement by communicating the same message with the customers across numerous channels. While the channels are not connected in multichannel, it involves manual work for marketers to have an eye on customers when they come in contact with the business.

However, in the Omnichannel approach as the channels are connected in a unified way, the data left by customers at each touch point and channel helps businesses to create a seamless customer experience. 

For instance, when they click on a social media ad, they are taken to your website providing an improved customer experience.

What is Multichannel Retailing?

Multichannel retailing is a marketing approach used by companies to sell products on more than one sales channel. The most common types of channels include websites, online stores, eCommerce platforms like Shopify, brick and mortar stores, market places, and social media platforms etc.

In its simplest, making products available for customers on different channels for promoting and purchases is known as multichannel retailing. It focuses on communicating information in hope of customers buying more from the businesses.

For example: Let’s take a brand which sells its products in both online, offline channels and third party marketplaces like ebay, or Amazon. 

Customers can purchase the products from any of these channels by researching for the product on an online website and may purchase it in an offline store. This means the more channels you leverage, the higher chances would be to increase loyalty and sales.

Multichannel Ecommerce:

When you have your business present on eCommerce, you need to make sure that your customers purchase products in a convenient way. The easier you make it for your customer to purchase something from you, the more likely the customer repeats his second purchase. 

Multichannel eCommerce provides information about the product and allows customers to make purchases. 

Businesses use multichannel eCommerce as the experienced retailers know that selling the products or updating new releases on multiple channels is the best way to promote their brand in front of the larger customer base.

How can you make multichannel as part of your marketing strategy?

So, now that you’re convinced to make multichannel as a part of your marketing strategy, Here’s how you can do it!

1. Have a clear marketing strategy or a campaign to be executed for the target audience and develop a general messaging you want to communicate.
2. Start by adding only one channel to your campaign as it becomes easier for you to track and manage in the long run.
3. Tweak your messaging to fit different channels without changing the context. As copying and pasting the same message on different channels lowers the impact of the strategy.
4. Check your analytics and tracking are set up correctly on the channels.
5. Finalize your budget based on conversions and user engagement on each channel.
6. Launch your campaign and analyze the performance on every channel and continue with what’s working and improve what’s not working.
7. Repeat the same process for every channel that you add.

With multichannel marketing, businesses can offer their customers different channels to buy from them, increase their revenue, and also collect customer buying behavior which they can use as insights for future sales.

For more information, talk to our experts today and get your multichannel approach ready for your next marketing strategy.