How To Implement a Multichannel Approach to Lead Nurturing

Any business owner worth their salt will tell you that acquiring new leads is only the first step towards sustainable growth. Sure, you might have a constant flow of new leads, but that doesn’t necessarily guarantee a steady revenue stream.

It’s the lead nurturing process that sets the stage for conversion and cultivating meaningful customer relationships. Keeping your customers engaged at every touchpoint keeps your brand living rent-free in their heads.

But how do you achieve this? Multichannel marketing.

Sticking to one channel isn’t going to cut it anymore, not in this wildly evolving digital landscape where your customers might be using several channels. 

The risk of sticking to one channel is that it makes it harder for your leads to find you. This means fewer leads, more missed opportunities, and slower growth. 

We’re going to explore the benefits of utilizing a multichannel approach to nurture your leads and enhance the results of your inbound marketing strategy.

First, You Need to Understand Customer Behavior and Preferences

Understanding your customers’ behavior and preferences is the key to forging meaningful connections. Blindly assuming you know who your customers are is one of the biggest lead-generation mistakes.

The more you know about your customers, the better. Everything from their age, income, and even education level can help predict their behavior. From here, you can create content that aligns with their needs and preferences.

The first and most obvious method to achieving this would be to utilize an analytics platform, like Google Analytics. This would help you understand your customers’ behavior by tracking their website interactions, identifying traffic sources, and identifying their demographics.

For example, if you found that most of your visitors were coming from organic search and converting primarily to blog posts, you might want to invest more time and energy optimizing this area.

Another way to understand how your customers are behaving and interacting with your business is through live chats.

Yes, live chats have received their fair share of criticism over the years, but they’re at a stage now where not only are they useful, they’re essential. In fact, 52% of online users are now more likely to remain loyal to a company that offers live chat support. 

Additionally, 60% of younger consumers (18-34), prefer to and regularly use live chats for customer service. Combine this with the insights you’ve gained from your analytics platform and you can understand your audience better before engaging with them on the live chat. 

To make your life even easier, you could also invest in a platform designed to identify your target audience and deliver a constant and relevant flow of leads.

Next, Create a Cohesive Brand Experience

At its core, brand cohesion is all about consistency. 

A lack of brand cohesion can confuse your customers and create a jarring experience every time they interact with your brand in a different space. In fact, studies show that consistent visual branding can increase revenue by up to 33%.

Your business needs to have a cohesive brand experience across every channel. This includes your:

• Website
• Social media channels
• Design
• Messaging

Even the functionality of your systems needs to be cohesive and authentic, with 88% of users claiming that authenticity is a key factor in deciding what brands they trust and support. For example, if your customers are on your website and hop over to your Instagram, the transition should be seamless. 

The first port of call is to define your brand identity. A good starting point might be to ask yourself what words you’d use to describe your brand. 

Are you cutting-edge? Transparent? Luxurious? Eco-friendly? Answering these questions will help you hone in on what you stand for and how you want to be perceived. 

Take transparency, for example, 74% of customers say transparent communication from brands has become more important post-pandemic. 

Next, why does your business exist? How do you plan to make your customers’ lives better? What is your mission statement? 

Your mission statement shouldn’t be about what you’re offering, but why.

For example, Apple sells computers and phones, but so do thousands of other companies. What makes them different is their ideology. Apple’s slogan, “Think different” taps into a deeper level than “We sell nice computers that are easy to use”.

Your brand’s ethos, its belief, and its ‘why’ should resonate with your target audience.

Leverage Multiple Communication Channels

A multi-channel approach involves utilizing various marketing channels and networks.

By strategically choosing the right channels based on your target audience, you can capture your users’ attention even if they stop interacting on one platform. For example, if one of our customers stops interacting with our website, we could capture them again on our LinkedIn.

Deciding what platforms to be on depends on your audience. Graphic designers and illustrators might prefer to use Instagram to showcase their work, whereas SaaS businesses may prefer LinkedIn to outreach to prospective clients.

The average person bounces between seven different social networks per month. This doesn’t necessarily mean you have to be on seven platforms, but you should certainly consider being omnipresent across more than just your website.

Testing different channels and continually optimizing based on results is the key to success. Setting clear targets and monitoring performance ensures that you allocate your budget effectively and drive meaningful results.

Implement Marketing Automation

Marketing automation allows you to ping relevant messages across multiple channels to nudge your leads further along the sales funnel. 

By analyzing your leads’ behavior, interests, and preferences, you can adapt your messaging to align with whatever stage they’re at in the customer’s journey.

What automation strategy you choose to use depends on your goals and KPIs. Do you want to drive more traffic to your content? Increase email open rates? Or simply build trust between your leads and your brand? 

Here are a few key notes to consider:

Identify your audience

Without knowing who your audience is, how are you going to effectively communicate with them or understand their pain points? Research your audience, create audience avatars, and invest in a software solution that can deliver high-quality leads straight to your sales team.

Follow them on their journey

The most important part of marketing automation is following your lead wherever they go. 

If they’ve left your website, you need to know where they’re heading next. Is it your LinkedIn? Instagram? Or somewhere else? Knowing this will help you map out their journey and match your marketing automation to relocate them.

Review and adapt when necessary 

Reviewing your marketing automation strategies is crucial. The data provided will offer super valuable insights into campaign performance, customer behavior, and lead progression.

If your product or service changes, or even your customers’ preferences, your automation should change with it. 

Analyze and Optimize Performance

In Eric Ries’ book on Lean Analytics, he states that your marketing activities should be constantly evolving by testing different hypotheses, measuring the results, trimming what isn’t working, and doubling down on what is.

This involves analyzing the initial marketing automation targets and lead nurturing goals you set.

See how your expectations line up with the hard data. What worked? What didn’t? And what needs changing, and how? These metrics will serve as benchmarks for measuring success. 

Here are the most important elements to consider when analyzing your performance:

• Use analytics tools to gain valuable insights into website traffic, customer behavior, and engagement metrics. 

• Monitor the effectiveness of your campaigns across your channels, such as email marketing, social media, and paid advertising. Analyze metrics like click-through rates, conversion rates, and engagement levels to see where your biggest wins are.

• Experiment with A/B testing across different elements of your campaigns, like subject lines, visuals, and calls to action. See what works well and focus on this.

Continuously optimize your strategies based on data insights and customer feedback. Refine your campaigns, messaging, and targeting approaches to enhance results.

A Multichannel Approach is the Way Forward

Implementing marketing automation into your multichannel approach will make your business ventures considerably easier. While it might take some time to put your strategies together, in the long run, it will save you a lot of time, energy, and money.

As long as you know who your audience is, what your goals are, and what channels to use to achieve those goals, you’re on the right path to success. 

Remember, don’t be afraid to dedicate time to testing your campaigns and automation on different channels to see what works and what doesn’t.