Most Digital Marketing guidance today stresses the need to be “Omnichannel” or using a variety of different – and ideally, integrated – channels to reach your prospects and customers. But how do you know how many channels are right for you, and most importantly, which are the right ones for your business? The right answer starts with data.
Listen to Understand
Online customers leave their footprints across the web to help you understand what channels they’re using, what content they find most valuable and what platforms they prefer to use to interact with brands and companies.
By evaluating how your customers are using and navigating your website, you can determine what content is most useful. Search and social data can also help you see where visitors are coming from, what platforms they’re using most and surface the intelligence you need to be selective about the channels that are working best for your brand.
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Deliver Strong Experiences
The most important element of any channel strategy is the experience that your customers have.
Many brands are tempted to chase the latest new platform or innovative technology, but not every company can execute well. For instance, consumer tech buyers might love the pace and community of social media while a heavily-regulated healthcare firm’s physicians may prefer more private communication channels.
No matter the channel, remember that today’s marketplace is a truly global one, so delivering content in the language that your customers speak is modern-day table stakes. Consider how you’re populating both your website and your outpost channels – like email, search, multimedia content and social media – with content in the languages that your customers use to do business.
Lean Into Global Brand Continuity
The one constant in a digitally-connected world is that the channels always change. Instead of worrying about doing everything, the smarter strategy is to pick the channels you can do well, and ensure that your brand is consistent, visible and trustworthy in all of them.
Making the core content from your site available in multiple languages can create a strong foundation for other Marketing channels. Did you know you can house your translated website content and repurpose it for other channels, like social media, email or even offline campaigns? This can help you save on translation costs while keeping brand elements and messages consistent and effective.
And as your Omnichannel strategy evolves to accommodate emerging platforms or even entirely new geographies, the foundation you’ve built for multilingual content and brand presence will help you easily grow and expand without missing a beat.
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Less Can Be More
While an integrated Omnichannel strategy for your marketing can be powerful, it can also be too much of a good thing.
Taking a thoughtful – and global – approach to your channel strategy can help ensure that you’re present where your customers need you to be, that your brand is strong and relevant in among the communities where you do business, and that your company is poised to adapt your channel mix as the market evolves.
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