One Brand, Many Channels

A single strong brand can be enhanced by effectively using a variety of channels to reach your target audience of clients and prospects. In addition to traditional print, radio and TV advertising, direct marketing, and in-person client events, online marketing offers a wide range of opportunities to connect with clients. These can include your company website, blogs, and social media, (including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and others) where you can listen to clients and respond to their concerns.
 

Bricks and Clicks = Better Effectiveness

There are many channels to use to enrich your connection with customers. “Bricks” refers to the more traditional offline marketing, while “clicks” refers to leveraging opportunities in the digital realm. Remember that it's not a question of bricks OR clicks, but instead bricks AND clicks. To get the most out of all available channels, use as many of them as apply based on your brand and your audience. This will help you reach a wider audience in total and improve on your brand’s effectiveness through repeated exposure to your marketing message.
 
Using multiple channels can provide many benefits: You can reach more people, create synergies between offline and online marketing strategies, raise awareness by accessing audiences via multiple touch points, and take advantage of more opportunities to “click” with your audience and possibly have your content go viral. By reaching your audience multiple times, you make it more likely that they’ll remember your brand. For example, market research firm Nielsen found that consumers were 100% more likely to ask their doctors about pharmaceutical products when they were exposed to ads on television as well as online.
 

Many Ways to Interact

Online channels provide faster and more interactive messaging opportunities than traditional channels like print advertising and outdoor (billboards and signage). Online, you can get a better read on how customers and prospects feel about your company, your products and those of your competitors – as well as the relevant issues and opinions that are top of mind for your clients. You can listen to consumer concerns on social media, answer their comments on blogs, and even get them to help in your product development and testing. And by getting buy-in on your new products from bloggers, you can potentially enjoy an inexpensive and powerful viral wave of new interest.
 

Track Your Effectiveness

You can combine channels in creative, clever and effective ways that improve marketing results and allow you to measure those results more easily and clearly. For example, you can originate a marketing effort through offline channels, such as print advertising or direct mail, and direct respondents to website landing pages that present offers or customized content. You can measure the effectiveness of your campaign, simply by monitoring traffic on those dedicated pages. Then, you can modify or – if successful – attempt to build on those results in future campaigns.
 

Game Plan

The number of marketing channels has exploded in recent years. So, it makes sense to invest the time to learn about best practices, observe what others are doing and get expert help as you make your foray into, or expand your presence in, the full range of marketing channels.
 
Next steps:
 
  • Learn all you can about the various marketing channels available today. If you haven’t already, spend time on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other websites, where customers, prospects and competitors gather. Before establishing a presence, listen, read and observe what is being discussed. Think about how you can use these social media forums to promote your brand.
  • Work with experts. If you lack the time or expertise to take your branding across multiple channels, work with an experienced marketing or advertising agency. With the online world changing so rapidly, outsourcing could be a wise use of time and resources.
  • Read more about 360-degree marketing and how to use multiple channels effectively in this presentation.
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