Online businesses are becoming more aware of the value of multichannel marketing and the necessity of being present on all platforms where buyers congregate. Thus it undoubtedly is one of the most appreciated strategies by marketers. But, it isn’t always applicable or suitable for all businesses. Nevertheless, marketers utilize this strategy more frequently due to its potential to increase customer engagement, although it seems more challenging to adopt than traditional single-channel marketing.
Several difficulties you may face with multichannel marketing, regardless of the channels you use to communicate with your target customers. This article will point out the struggling side of businesses with multichannel marketing.
Notable statistics on multichannel marketing barriers
- 61% of customers have difficulty switching between channels when communicating with customer service. (source)
- 23% of marketers have listed a lack of time and resources as a critical obstacle to executing multichannel marketing. (source)
- 21% have listed a lack of knowledge as an obstacle to creating multichannel marketing campaigns. (source)
- Only 30% of marketers have enough confidence in their ability to execute a multichannel strategy, while the remaining 67% have only a modest amount of confidence. (source)
Struggling aspects with multichannel marketing
Below are the aspects that favor multichannel marketing or areas that need improvements.
1. Lack of consistency
Your brand messaging should be consistent and relevant to stand out across all channels in a multi-channel approach. It appears to be one of the challenging aspects of maintaining that consistency. Having several channels to manage, it wants your attention to be aware of how your audience uses each channel and how they behave there.
2. The necessity for more resources
You need to spend more resources (especially money) since there are more channels. Multichannel marketing does allow you to increase customer engagement and brand awareness on more than one channel. But you should not always go for all the channels at a time. First, determine whether or not a new platform is within your budget.
Generally speaking, it’s better to concentrate on a limited number of channels rather than grab them all at once and tax your staff. So, if you are a small business, carefully sketch everything according to the budget restriction before executing a multichannel strategy.
3. Challenging co-ordination
Managing campaigns across multiple channels with so little time in hand may be stressful. Marketers must plan integrated campaigns that span both physical and digital channels to create a brand experience that is mutually beneficial and meets customer needs. Cross-promotion management is undoubtedly an issue with many channels and limited time. If you are not an effective coordinator, the challenge arises.
4. Time-consuming tasks
You need to monitor user behavior across all channels to understand their preferences better and tailor the customer experience. Nevertheless, some channels are more difficult to evaluate because they require time-consuming work.
With multi-channel marketing, there is so much more to take care of that you’ll probably need to spend more time on it. You must build effective strategies, conduct campaigns, gather insights, and retarget the audience as you handle plenty of marketing mediums. It’s simpler to say than to do! Therefore, you must learn how to handle multichannel marketing software correctly to save time and effort.
5. Creating effective campaigns for each channel
Not all campaigns will work on every channel. What works on one channel might not work on another. Therefore, you must tailor your campaigns to each channel to maximize their effectiveness.
6. Personalizing the user experience
Another critical challenge of multichannel marketing is personalizing the user experience. Providing a personalized experience for each user can be difficult with so many channels. However, this challenge can be overcome by using data to segment users into groups and then tailoring the content and messages for each group.
Marketers should understand that encouraging customers to make repeated purchases through various sales channels isn’t always the best strategy for generating income, especially when there are budget constraints. Therefore, it’s necessary to identify which of your marketing channels are effective and vice versa. Your business may benefit most from multichannel marketing by carefully utilizing the data and in
