In the past, the local shops had all the power in a customer-seller relationship. You’d have to drive an hour or two just to get a chance to buy something. And often, you would end up being turned around because they were already sold out. Multi-channel marketing didn’t make sense because sellers got results without going the extra mile.Now, the whole relationship is reversed. Customers have all the power and sellers are constantly trying to one-up each other just so that a customer will consider them when buying.
To adapt to this reality, businesses have to make it as easy as possible for customers to buy something from them. They appear on different channels familiar to potential customers so that they have a higher chance of netting a sale. They have to embrace multi-channel marketing if the want to make a dent in the market.
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What is multi-channel marketing
Multi-channel marketing is a marketing strategy based around the idea that customers are more likely to buy when they can use their favorite channel. For example, a shop may offer both online and offline options for different customers to maximize the number of sales.
Your multi-channel marketing strategy can include channels like your website, social media, email, live chat but also sales from your offline stores, catalogs and phone orders. In multi-channel marketing, all these options are equally viable if they all lead to sales.
Multi-channel marketing is about choice. Customers can pick the channel they want to use. It also about the cooperation of the channels. Potential customers should have an easy way to switch to a different channel and they shouldn’t have to start the entire process from scratch when they do.
Why your business needs multi-channel marketing
Multi-channel marketing allows you to get a bigger slice of the sales pie. You get to reach more customers on channels where they are the most likely to make a purchase.
Apart from more sales, you also get more customer feedback. It will allow you to make more informed product development decisions and quickly fix any problems that come up.
Multi-channel marketing can be a goldmine of information if you have systems in place that allow you to track customer movement from channel to channel, the conversion rates on different channels and allow you to gather the valuable feedback.
The extra data will allow you to make smarter pitches in the future and shows you where you should direct particular customers to increase the chance of getting a sale.
You can’t have multi-channel marketing without multi-channel customer service
When selling on multiple channels, you also need to be ready to answer customer service questions on those channels. You can’t simply start selling on 10 different channels and wish for the best when customers start asking questions.
The help option should always be available and, preferably, it shouldn’t require switching to a different channel. When doing multi-channel customer service, you have a number of channels to work with:
- email (cheap and fairly reliable but tends to be slow),
- phone (much faster than email, but takes a lot of manpower),
- live chat (as fast as phone and you can have several conversations at a time,
- help desk (good when email is not enough and you need to organize)
- social media (not optimal but you need to be ready to answer customer service questions here)
- self-service (the most scalable form of help that doesn’t require an agent).
Where you will get multi-channel marketing strategy and solution ?
Sampark Infoways provides you the multi-channel marketing strategy and complete solutions. Visit www.samparkinfoways.com or call +91 9993023888 . Visit office – Building No.- N/2, Beside Indian Bank, Avanti Vihar Main Road, Raipur, 492001.
Be prepared the modern era of marketing is already started.
