Digital marketing strategies play a crucial role in the development, growth, and success of an ecommerce business. It is one of the tools used by entrepreneurs to promote their products and connect with their customers as well. Without a good marketing plan, it would be difficult for startups and small businesses to gain customers and reach a larger audience.

Luckily, one of the perks of starting a business online is that it’s relatively easy to campaign on almost every ecommerce platform and digital channel available. Cross-channel marketing is an effective and cost-efficient way to reach a target audience and interact with potential customers. This type of marketing strategy blends a variety of marketing tools and tactics with the goal of leading and guiding valuable leads throughout their buying journey and ultimately boosting online sale.

Interested? Utilizing a cross-channel marketing strategy for your ecommerce website can significantly improve its performance. To give you a better idea, here’s a simple introduction and guide on how cross-channel marketing works in the electronic commerce industry.

 

What Is A Cross-Channel Marketing Strategy?

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Cross-channel marketing is a form of marketing strategy that allows online businesses and ecommerce websites to connect with their audience using a combination of platforms and channels. The goal of a cross-channel marketing campaign is to create a cohesive and logical customer journey and experience.

It is considered a customer-focused marketing tactic that is used to engage customers continuously at different points of their customer journey. A cross-channel marketing strategy allows an ecommerce website to integrate its marketing efforts on any relevant or preferred platform or channel. It also allows them to design their marketing strategies as a form of customer service and thus encourage an online sale. 

Cross-channel marketing helps bridge possible gaps and inconsistencies in customer support and service which is often the challenge when it comes to omnichannel marketing. Different marketing efforts work hand in hand in order to provide potential customers with a logical progression through their buying journey.

 

Omni-channel vs Cross-Channel Marketing

It’s not unusual for ecommerce websites and other online retailers to utilize a variety of marketing tools. Some start with search engine optimization, email marketing, social media marketing, and more. However, people often confuse omnichannel and cross-channel marketing strategies with one another. 

The question is if you’re using multiple marketing techniques in your online business, does that mean that you are utilizing a cross-channel marketing strategy? Not particularly. Cross-channel marketing is more than just using several marketing tactics. Instead, cross-channel marketing focuses on delivery, timing, and the overall customer experience.

In an omnichannel marketing campaign, an ecommerce website may interact with its email list and send out promotional emails, run a targeted ad campaign on different social media sites to boost visibility, as well as publish search engine optimized content. 

Under this circumstance, each of these marketing efforts is considered independent of one another. The email marketing campaign was dedicated to retargeting potential customers while the social media posts are meant to boost online presence and visibility. Each marketing effort and campaign has its set of goals and objectives which makes it difficult to accurately gauge its success in terms of return on investment (ROI). 

In contrast, cross-channel marketing depends on unified and dependent marketing campaigns conducted on different platforms. For a cross-channel marketing strategy to work, it is essential that your marketing channels work together in order to provide your target audience with a cohesive and logical progression from one stage of the buying process to the next. 

The goal is for your marketing channels to build off of each other to send or create a more significant impact on your audience. Aside from that, the unity of the message and the matter of delivery are key elements necessary to achieve a successful cross-channel marketing strategy. This will then serve as a guide or form of encouragement to a prospective customer or lead throughout their buyer’s journey. 

 

How To Start a Cross-Channel Marketing Campaign

Adopting a cross-channel marketing approach for your ecommerce business can be intimidating at the start. While it’s one thing to know the concept of this marketing tactic, it’s important to know the steps necessary to implement a cross-channel marketing strategy. Here’s a brief step-by-step guide on how to start a cross-channel marketing campaign.

 

Step #1: Collect and analyze your data

Cross-channel marketing is a customer-focused strategy. So in order to create a targeted marketing effort, it’s important that you collect, analyze, and understand your target market’s demographics and persona. With the use of a customer relationship management (CRM) software or a customer data platform (CDP) program, you should be able to access and manage data that comes from your ecommerce website’s activity. From there, you can develop unified data that best defined your customer persona as well as other consumer trends present in your online retail business. 

 

Step #2: Define segmentation in customer data

The next step in creating your cross-channel marketing strategy is to identify and determine the different customer segments present in your data. Find similarities, differences, and other trends that can help you design your marketing campaign according to its strengths and weaknesses. 

Some of the trends that you can look into can be related to the interactions between the customer and your marketing efforts, campaigns with high conversion rates, and even the duration a lead spends interacting with targeted marketing activity. 

All of these factors can help you gauge your current marketing efforts and apply your cross-channel marketing to segments where leads are losing interest. Aside from this, you can also pinpoint which marketing channels are more valuable for your target audience and what type of content has the highest ROI. 

 

Step #3: Create optimized and customized content 

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Segmentation in your customers’ data allows you to get a bigger picture of what your marketing campaign is lacking. This in particular revolves around the marketing paraphernalia and content you produce and publish online. 

Once you’ve successfully identified and segmented your customers based on their website interactions, you can design your marketing efforts according to their needs. One of the easiest ways to do this is to utilize smart content along with your content management system (CMS). Smart content is a dynamic form of content management and production that basically pushes out marketing paraphernalia based on the customers’ interaction. Smart content works under the notion that if a user does this, proceed to the next content that aligns with their previous action. 

In cross-channel marketing, your marketing efforts should involve content that is most relevant and valuable to your customer regardless of their position in their buyer’s journey. The goal is to provide them with the right type of content at the right time through the different marketing channels available. 

 

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