What is Cross-Channel Marketing?

Cross-channel marketing is a digital strategy that allows marketers to create a personalized, consistent user experience. This strategy enables marketers to interact with users through various channels, creating a more effective customer journey. Implementing a cross-channel marketing strategy is not a simple task. Tracking multiple campaigns at once can seem intimidating, but a successful cross-channel marketing strategy can put your digital marketing efforts on the map. 

With so many channels for users to explore, a cross-channel marketing strategy has the power to create brand awareness, generate leads, and drive installs. Your users are likely exploring various touch-points at any given time. Make your messaging more cohesive by combining these touch-points. Now that you know why cross-channel marketing is needed, let’s explore how to successfully build a cross-channel marketing strategy. 

How to Get Started With Cross-Channel Marketing

Identify Trends in User Behavior 

Enhance the user experience with more personalized and relevant ads. Utilize contextual targeting in your marketing strategy to combat ad fatigue, and apply relevancy toward the ads you display to your users. Then, use a data-driven approach to target the right audience based on their demographics and user behavior. 

Having a great segmentation strategy can further bolster your efforts to engage users across multiple marketing channels. By identifying user segments, you can organize your efforts when targeting users based on behavioral and demographic data. You can then use this data to track and analyze the channels your users are exploring; allowing you to create a more tailored marketing strategy based on user trends and behavior. This can result in a more cohesive user journey that is both relevant and targeted.

Consistency is Key

Consistency across channels is key in an effective marketing strategy. While it’s one thing to run various marketing campaigns across multiple channels, it’s another to make sure those campaigns are integrated. 

When communicating with users across many channels - social, email, digital ads, paid search - keep a tight focus on your messaging. Incorporate the same keywords that your users search for across your content, stay relevant to your product’s offerings, and use similar themes across imaging. Consistent brand delivery will help your brand stand out amongst competitors by ensuring your brand voice, messaging, and content strategies remain cohesive across all channels. This process builds trust with your users and keeps them engaged with your brand.

Retarget Users Across the Funnel

Cross-channel marketing strategies allow brands to reach users at every stage of the marketing funnel. Use this to your advantage, and focus your efforts on re-engaging users who have already downloaded your app within each touch-point of your cross-channel strategy. 

In 2020, almost one-third of apps with a marketing budget included retargeting in their marketing toolbox. Retargeting is key for app marketers’ growth strategy because it allows them to resolve the ongoing mobile user retention problem. 

Don’t limit your cross-channel marketing approach. Kick your retargeting strategy into gear with the same techniques you are already utilizing in your cross-channel strategy. Identify your user segments using real-time data to better engage your users. Then consider the channels that would be best utilized to retarget users. Using consistent messaging to keep users engaged with your brand, and a segmentation strategy to effectively target user segments will then allow you to retarget users across multiple touch-points.

Be Creative in Your Approach

The way you build your cross-channel strategy will differ depending on your product, user segments, and business model. Don’t be afraid to think outside the box when deciding which channels will be most effective in your strategy. Depending on the size of your marketing budget, you may have to be selective when it comes to incorporating a seamless and cohesive campaign across multiple channels. Paid social media, targeted push campaigns, and personalized creatives can be important tools to include in your marketing arsenal, for example. 

Reaching a substantial organic reach on social networks can be difficult, and investing in paid social for key campaigns can vastly improve your reach. Building personalized creatives for your target audience based on your defined user segments is another powerful tool to increase engagement. Lastly, targeted push notifications that are relevant and delivered at the right time can take your cross-channel strategy to the next level. 

Analyze and Optimize

After incorporating various tools into your cross-channel strategy, a critical step is to analyze your findings. Collect real-time data from your marketing campaign and analyze this data to optimize your strategy. If the data doesn’t add up, ask yourself important questions to see if you are making data-driven decisions to bolster your cross-channel campaign strategy. 

Does your campaign reflect the same message throughout each channel? Is the social media platform you are currently using more effective for your cohort of users over another? Are you targeting the right users on each channel? By going through this checklist, you can strengthen and optimize your strategy at each stage of the funnel. 

Takeaways on Building a Cross-Channel Marketing Strategy: 

A cross-channel marketing strategy is necessary for apps to boost engagement with their users across multiple touch-points. Since users often explore various channels at once, marketers have an opportunity to create more effective and seamless user journeys with cross-channel marketing. A cross-channel marketing campaign will look different for each app based on their product, users, and business model. These are a few ways to optimize your cross-channel strategy no matter your budget size:

  • Identify Trends in User Behavior:  Enhance the user experience throughout the funnel by creating a more tailored strategy for your users. Focus your efforts on a dynamic segmentation strategy to engage users across multiple channels at once. 
  • Consistency is Key: For a seamless cross-channel strategy, your campaign must be integrated across each channel. This requires consistent messaging within each channel. Focusing on consistent brand delivery will help you stand out from the crowd, and build trust with your audience. 
  • Retarget Users Across the Funnel: Take advantage of your cross-channel marketing strategy to focus on re-engaging users at every stage of the funnel. Kick this strategy into gear with the same techniques you are using in your cross-channel approach. 
  • Be Creative in Your Approach: Think outside the box when deciding which channels and methods are optimal for your strategy. Consider tools such as paid social media, targeted push campaigns, and personalized creatives to boost your cross-channel strategy. 
  • Analyze and Optimize: Use a checklist to strengthen and optimize your strategy at each stage of the funnel. Collect and analyze real-time data from your campaign to support data-driven decisions in your optimizations. 

Need Help Retargeting Users Across Channels?

Now that you understand how a cross-channel marketing strategy can help meet your growth marketing goals, you need a plan. If you need help with that plan in the mobile retargeting realm, we'd love to connect and hear more about your team's app retargeting growth goals.