How to Launch Effective Multi-Channel Advertising Campaigns

If you were to take a guess, how many ads do you think you see in a day? 100? 1,000? Try up to 10,000 ads.

According to estimates, the average American was exposed to about 500 ads back in the 1970s. By the early 2000s, this number had jumped to as many as 5,000. Today, with new media platforms popping up regularly, consumers are expected to see anywhere from 4,000 to 10,000 ads each day.

Now, of those thousands of advertisements, how many can you recall days later? Better yet, how many of those daily ads successfully led to you making a purchase? Probably not anywhere close to the number of ads that you were exposed to. We doubt you’re checking out with hundreds of items in your shopping cart each day.

The current advertising landscape is overwhelmingly competitive. With consumers being bombarded with messages left and right, putting out just one single ad isn’t going to cut it. In fact, it often takes “6 to 8 marketing touches to generate a viable sales lead.” Through strategic repetition with their ads, brands can better lead targets through the customer journey, from awareness all the way to loyalty.

But how do you do that without triggering ad fatigue from your customers? By diversifying where and how you advertise through the use of multi-channel campaigns.

Where Your Customers Are: The Benefits of Multi-Channel Campaigns

Back in the day, when media options were limited, it made sense for advertisers to stick to a single channel. As CBS put it, “in the golden age of television, an ad on one of the big three networks could reach 70 percent of the viewing audience,” making single-channel campaigns quite effective.

Of course, things are drastically different these days. No longer centralized around a handful of broadcast or print mediums, buyer journeys now involve a complex web of different channels that can vary widely from person to person. Whether it's social media and podcasts or streaming apps and video games, having a presence on the multitude of channels that your customers engage with is crucial to ensuring campaign success.

Here are just some of the ways multi-channel campaigns can improve your ad strategy:

• Greater reach and visibility. Utilizing multiple channels means casting a wider net and meeting your customers in all the places they spend their time. In doing so, you also empower your customers with the choice of interacting with your brand where they most prefer — a great way to encourage a positive brand experience.  
• Targeted messaging and design. Customer segments and content styles can vary greatly from channel to channel. So, rather than creating generic advertisements, brands taking a multi-channel approach can design unique and targeted ads that resonate better with each audience segment.
• Boosted engagement is the natural progression from improved visibility and tailored messaging. The more a customer is exposed to your brand through these multi-channel ads, the higher the chance that they’ll pay attention to and engage with the campaign.
• More opportunities for data collection. Each touchpoint is a chance for you to learn more about your customers, such as how they navigate the buyer journey. Including multiple channels in your campaign means diverse data sets, leading to comprehensive insights about your customers that can be used to optimize your ad strategy.
• Increased sales. We’ll let the numbers speak for themselves. Studies have shown that customers acquired through multi-channel channel campaigns spend as much as 4 times more than single-channel customers. In a survey of marketing professionals, 97% confirmed this increase in revenue from using multi-channel marketing.

Launching a Multi-Channel Advertising Campaign

Including multiple channels in your ad strategy is like spreading your message to a whole new world of customers — and you won’t need a magic carpet to do it. Here are 5 key steps to successfully launch a multi-channel campaign.

1) Identify your campaign’s purpose and goals

Before you even start to think about the different channels, establish the foundation of your campaign. What is the purpose of the campaign? Some common ones include:

• Increase brand or product awareness
• Boost engagement
• Drive conversions
• Generate revenue

Once you’ve decided on the overall purpose, use the SMART goals framework to turn it into an actionable goal that is Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. This helps to minimize any confusion and ambiguity around the campaign. (You can learn more about SMART goals in our post here!)

Admittedly, if you have limited campaign experience, it can be a challenge to understand what goals are “measurable,” “achievable,” and so on. If that’s the case for you, working with a marketing agency like ours can be a huge help. With insights into the success of other campaigns, we can guide you in establishing goals that are appropriate for your campaign.

2) Define your target audience

Next, you’ll want to clearly determine who the target audience for the campaign is. Your audience can be segmented based on a range of traits, including where they are in the buyer journey, demographics, location, interests, habits, and more.

A well-defined target audience will help you make critical decisions down the line about your campaign, including the channels you’ll distribute it through and the messaging it will present.

3) Pick your channels

Here is where a simple ad becomes a multi-channel campaign. When deciding which channels on which to run your campaign, consider every media channel that is available for you to advertise on and pick the ones you expect to be the most effective in reaching your target customers. From there, you can filter it down based on engagement levels, budget, and other factors.

Don’t be afraid to explore channels you haven’t worked with before. Here are just a few examples of advertising mediums you can leverage:

• Video:​​ ads on TV, YouTube, streaming, gaming, etc.
• Online: display ads, search engine, email, etc.
• Audio: radio, podcast, music streaming platforms, etc.
• Social Media: paid social, paid influencers, etc.  
• Print: magazines, newspapers, flyers, etc.
• Out-Of-Home: billboards, murals, etc.

Not sure which combination of channels would be best for your ad strategy? We can help you craft the most optimal multi-channel campaign based on your brand’s specific goals.  

4) Develop the details of your multi-channel campaign

With a multi-channel campaign, you’ll want to design distinct campaign assets with each channel in mind. An Instagram Story ad would look quite different from an advertisement designed for YouTube, for example, so be strategic as you develop your campaign.

Overall, though, while the visuals and copy can vary across channels, be sure to maintain consistent messaging and branding across all aspects of the campaign. Each touchpoint should complement and strengthen the other — not be contradicting and confusing to your customers.

5) Launch and analyze the campaign’s performance

Finally, it’s time to launch! As your campaign runs, track the metrics and keep a close eye on how each channel performs. Monitoring your results is the only way to know if a campaign is working well or if improvements can be made. From knowing which channels are the most effective to which messages best resonate with your audience, look for insights that will help you optimize your advertising strategy for the future.

One Agency. Multi-Channel Experience.

In a world cluttered with advertising, having multiple channels in your ad strategy is one of the most effective ways to actually reach your customers and fulfill your marketing goals. Well-versed in the development of multi-channel campaigns, PH3’s team of experts knows exactly how to integrate strategies across channels in order to deliver results.

Ready to expand your impact? Send us a message.