What is multi-channel marketing: pros and cons

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Multi-channel marketing is a business communication and sales strategy designed to reach potential customers at the same time using multiple simultaneous communication channels. It also allows customers to access information about products or services using different means of communication. Multi-channel marketing has developed with the emergence of new information and communication technologies.

Multi-channel marketing: what are we talking about?

Multi-channel marketing is the term used to designate the possibility for a company to use a wide choice of sales channels (physical, digital and virtual) to promote and sell its products or services. A useful strategy for companies, but also for customers who can at any time and thanks to multiple information networks find elements of a product or service that interest them.

Multi-channel marketing as opposed to what is called the single distribution channel, at work before the arrival of new information and communication technologies Internet(kissanime), social networks, etc., that caused companies to focus on a single distribution channel to sell their products and services, without customers being able to decide for themselves when and where to buy them, due to the lack of choice in these means of distribution.

With multi-channel marketing, companies can now simultaneously use several distribution channels such as fixed stores, mail order, e-commerce, itinerant commerce, or sales exclusively via smartphones for example.

These different communication or distribution channels are independent of each other and adapt precisely to the needs of each of their marketing targets. One of the objectives of multi-channel marketing is therefore to achieve the best possible performance in terms of communication or sales by targeting multiple and different customers in order, in the end, to maximize your market.

The benefits of multi-channel marketing

A company that uses multi-channel marketing obtains good results, in particular in terms of customer satisfaction, who, thanks to this strategy, have many possibilities to learn about products or services and facilitate their purchase. A satisfied clientele is also a clientele that remains loyal to a product, a brand, services, etc.

The means of information and distribution offered by multi-channel marketing being multiple and all different, they also give the opportunity to the company which adheres to this strategy to diversify according to the targeted customers and to adapt as much as possible. precisely possible its products or services to the needs of its customers, and those to come. Multi-channel marketing also gives a company the possibility of expanding into new markets or new sectors of activity, with the aim of increasing its sales.

With Multichannel marketing, companies today are diversifying (online store and fixed store for example) and adapting perfectly to changes in the market generated in particular by new information and communication technologies.

The disadvantages of multi-channel marketing

Multichannel marketing requires companies to have to play on several tables at the same time (sale in-store, online, itinerant trade, etc.) to communicate and sell their products or services. And this positioning requires a consistent policy for each of the information or distribution channels chosen so that the company’s brand image remains the same and above all recognizable by its potential customers, regardless of the channel used.

This commercial strategy, therefore, requires significant logistics which inevitably entails additional costs that must be able to be met.

On the other hand, it is important to ensure, in the context of Multichannel marketing, that for the same product or service, one of the distribution or communication channels does not take precedence over the others.

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Finally, since the various means used in multi-channel marketing are independent of each other, in particular, because they do not target the same clientele, the passage of information, know-how, etc., between them, does is not facilitated while they communicate or sell the same products and services.