There used to be a time in digital marketing where you could focus most, if not all, your marketing efforts on a single marketing channel?or even just your website!?and be very successful.?

If you focused your efforts on your website, you could rank high in Google and generate many leads that way. If you focused on email marketing, you could build your list and reach out to potential leads without much competition. If social media was more your speed, you could build a following on Facebook or Twitter and use that to grow your business.?

The problem in 2020 is that today?s technology allows your potential customers/clients to consume multiple forms of media pretty much anywhere, anytime. Your audience no longer gets their information from a single source. They may spend some time on Twitter, then check their email, then visit a website?all before they finish their morning coffee.?

What does this mean to you??

It means that you cannot focus your marketing efforts on a single channel because, while you have your messaging on one channel, your potential client/customer may be on another channel. You will miss the chance to get your message in front of them and engage with them.?

This is why a multi-channel approach to marketing is critical when it comes to distributing your marketing content and engaging your audience.?

And considering it can take as many as EIGHT touches before converting a prospect, you want to catch your audience in as many places as you can.?

Let?s take a look at how you can develop a multi-channel approach for your marketing efforts.?

Determine Where Your Audience Gets their Information

You want to distribute your marketing content where it is most likely to be seen by your target audience. This means taking some time to determine where your target audience gets their information.?

Certain demographics favor certain channels. Business professionals tend to favor email,? LinkedIn, and sometimes Facebook. Younger audience like social apps like Instagram, Snapchat, or Tik Tok. And older audiences lean towards Facebook and email.

Once you know where your audience gets their information, you can determine which channels to use when promoting your business.?

Set Up Each Channel

After you determine which marketing channels you will be using, the next step is to make sure they are properly setup.?

For social media, this means that each platform has the correct business information such as name, logo, hours, address, and contact info. If using multiple social media channels, make sure your branding info is consistent across each platform. The worst thing you can do is confuse your audience.?

You also want to ensure your profile is searchable, which includes any important or branded hashtags.?

For email marketing, you want to select an email service that best suits your business needs and then upload your list of email addresses to it. If possible segment your list. This means creating different, smaller lists for your networking contacts, current clients, potential clients, etc. This allows you to create messaging that is more targeted. You can also setup templates for a weekly/monthly newsletter or any other regular emails you envision using to carry out your marketing strategy.?

For your website, you want to make sure you highlight the product/services you want to sell the most. Your website should be set up to convert potential leads, so organize it to funnel visitors to the page(s) onyour website where you can convert them with a phone call, sale, or other marketing objective.?

You want to make sure your marketing channels are ready to be used to carry out your marketing strategy in the easiest and clearest way.?

Assign Role(s) For Each Channel In Marketing Funnel

There are different phases to your marketing funnel:?

• Awareness
• Educate, Entertain, Engage (3E?s)
• Close/Retarget

To make the most of the content you produce and publish, you have to assign a role or role(s) for each marketing channel you plan to use. This allows you to create marketing content with intention.?

For example, let?s say you want to use Facebook to promote an ebook to collect email addresses. As you collect email addresses, you are sending drip campaigns to people who download your ebook. In the emails, your audience is directed to your website where they can schedule a sales call.

In that example, Facebook is at the top of the funnel, creating awareness. Email is in the middle of the funnel educating, entertaining, and engaging your audience while directing them further down the funnel. At the bottom of the funnel is your website where a potential lead becomes a paying customer.?

This is a simplistic example, but you can see how each marketing channel has a role and how it would be easy to produce content to fulfill that role.?

Create a Content Calendar

A content, or marketing, calendar is a great tool that helps you manage content creation. In the calendar, you detail the topics you will cover, what forms of content needs to be produced, who is producing and editing the content, and when you need to publish everything.

A detailed marketing calendar lessens the chance that you will overlook or miss an important piece of marketing content. It helps your team communicate and stay on track.?

Produce and Publish Content

Get to work producing and publishing the content you detail in your calendar. Use your calendar to guide your actions. Make sure to actually schedule time in your weekly schedule to produce or possibly review the content needed to fulfill your calendar. Since you are mostly likely the final decision maker, avoid being the bottleneck that holds up the process of reviewing and publishing content.?

Review Performance

There is no ?auto-pilot? setting when it comes to marketing. As you produce and publish content, take time to review the analytics from your email service, social media platforms, and website. Try to understand which content is resonating with your audience by seeing which topics are being clicked on, shared, commented, or liked. This will provide you valuable insight into the pain points your audience really cares about. You can use this information to produce more content to address those pain points.?

It takes time to properly build a multi-channel approach to marketing, but it is well worth the planning and effort. When you are done, you will have a system of marketing that is constantly generating and processing new leads. At the end of the day, that?s what marketing is all about!