Multichannel Marketing is The Road to Success for Brands in 2021

Do you know focusing all your marketing on one channel is risky? Because while you are doing that, your competitors are out there taking multiple routes to reach out to customers. So, what should you do? Well, you too should follow the trend.

Marketing Then & Now

Gone are the days when one marketing strategy was enough to please and lure customers because today, you don’t know behind which screen your customers are hiding. So, you have to be there where your customers are. What we mean to say is you need to take multiple routes to market your brand if you want to get noticed by a large customer base. But, how should you market? On your own or your exposure in a marketplace is enough for your brand? Let’s get into the details.

The exposure a brand gets in a marketplace is not as same as the marketing a brand does for itself as both have opposite goals. Where multivendor marketplace owners want their customers to choose from the brands that are available at their marketplace, brands want customers to go to any retailer to find their product. Therefore, depending solely upon the marketplace for marketing your brand is not advisable for brand owners if they want to stand out from the crowd.

Keep in mind that marketplaces give prime importance to customer behavior and display and rank products as per their demand, ratings, reviews, and choice. Therefore, for your brand to get noticed either it must meet all the above eligibility or you as a brand owner need to deliver a unique experience that beats the competition. Also, as per the research, 70% of users never go past the first page of the search results so to be there and maintain the first-page position; brands need to have a sound channel strategy spanning which includes other channels i.e., Multichannel Marketing.

What is Multichannel Marketing and Why Branded Manufacturers Need to Focus on It?

Multichannel marketing is the utilization of multiple platforms to reach out to customers at every touchpoint. By diversifying your marketing strategy, you not only get to connect with more leads but also can stay top of mind with your customers. There are various ways to achieve that like:

Direct to Consumer – You can reach out to your customers directly, cutting out the need for any intermediaries. It allows brand owners to provide an end-to-end brand experience because they have control over the entire process. Unlike marketplaces, a brand is fully responsible for driving traffic, customer experience, acquisition, and relation.

Social Platforms – Today social networking platforms have turned into shopping mediums more than connecting with people. With the rise in smartphone usage, people are always hanging in one or the other social platforms, and hence it becomes easy for brands to reach out to customers on such platforms as the chances of getting noticed are more via them than the website or app. Social platforms act as the best medium to lure customers to your website or mobile app and push them to make a purchase.

A lot of commercializing happens nowadays on social platforms because the majority of customers are on it, and hence; it takes fewer efforts to reach out to them than the traditional techniques.

Also Read: Multichannel Selling: Experience eCommerce at its Best

Traditional Methods – Although the world is becoming digitalized and people more tech-savvy, it is important to stick to your roots and hence, traditional ways of marketing still play an important role in a brands’ success. Therefore, print, television, radio, emails, all these are necessary and one must incorporate in their marketing strategy along with the latest methods to achieve the attention of a wide customer base as well as for growth and sales.

Now, to travel multiple roads of the market, you must have an eCommerce solution that supports all of the marketing strategies as well as the below-mentioned points.

• It must support multiple touchpoints i.e., website, mobile, any other connected device, social media etc. as you never know where your customers are using what kind of device. Thus, while developing your eCommerce solution, ask your eCommerce mobile app builder implement headless API-first architecture to onboard new sales channels. Know from your developers whether the APIs are RESTful, well-documented, and easy to use as the nature of it significantly impacts the speed to market for new sales channels.

• It must be scalable. As your business grows, you will have to make changes in your eCommerce solution as well because you cannot build a new one every time. Therefore, ensure that your multi-vendor marketplace solution is extendable to accommodate new experiences with changing trends in order to deliver a unique experience to your customers.

• It must provide a unified shopping experience across all sales channels. A customer not necessarily browses and shops at a time. It happens that they leave a shopping cart halfway in a website and then later open up in a mobile app but, if at that time the customer is displayed that the shopping cart is empty, it can annoy the customer so bad that he/she may never come back. Thus, your marketplace solution must give a unified experience no matter what sales channel the customer uses and when.

In a nutshell

The competition is getting fierce and for your brand to get noticed, you need to not only make your marketing strategies effective but also your marketplace solution well developed to stand out in the competition.

Rakesh Jain

Rakesh Jain is the co-founder and CEO of MobiCommerce. When he is not busy taking the company to newer heights, he authors detailed blog posts for leading publications, teaching eCommerce store owners different ways to manage, grow and scale their business. As a seasoned entrepreneur, he is passionate about proactively finding the “next big thing.”