Focus on one thing at a time – you must’ve heard those words a thousand times over. It’s a traditional philosophy in managing tasks and projects as a key approach in setting priorities and hitting one goal per swing. And I concur, for the record – one should learn how to set objectives according to their importance and hit them right in the nail step by step.
But here’s my antithesis: why just aim for one when you can hit two (or three, or four) birds with one stone?
In digital marketing, the most-followed notion is to focus on one platform. Pour all your efforts, resources, and energy into one medium they say. The most common channel that leaders, marketers, and CMOs target is LinkedIn. Surely, it makes sense – it’s the haven for all things business and tech. Simply put, every relevant prospect is on LinkedIn, making your marketing strategy about 80% successful in hitting your target audience. But my question is this: what about the 20%? Why settle for an almost-full glass? Why not go for a hundred? After all, there are only a couple of steps left.
I know what you’re thinking – it takes too much time and energy to spread out your marketing strategies onto different channels when you already have the golden pond. To a certain degree, yes – only if you don’t manage it efficiently. If you learn the art of multi-channel marketing by heart and mind, you’d find yourself reaping rewards more than reeling over a couple more minutes spent.
Wider Reach, Increased Engagement
Truth be told, customers have their own preferred channels. It may be LinkedIn for you, it may be Twitter for others. It’s always a gamble to assume that every customer uses all channels there are – or even if they do, they would always be more active on one platform than the other. Which platform is it? Who’s to say? Your job is to hit all those touchpoints and make your reach as wide as possible, and exponentially increase your engagement. The goal is to tap untouched territories to maximize brand awareness, and you’re missing out on an abundance of opportunities if you’re solely focused on one space.
Imagine this: a prospect is randomly browsing on Twitter, saw your campaign, got curious about it, and clicked it. That said prospect was immediately redirected to your LinkedIn page, your main channel, where all the information, specific details, and selling points are reiterated. The prospect reached out to you, expressed interest in your product, and was eventually converted. Voila! You got yourself a client from another channel, and an organization with a LinkedIn-only presence can’t say the same thing.
Repurpose Your Content, Leverage Your Strengths
One of the most common misconceptions of multi-channel marketing is that each platform should have unique, individual content. If you have the luxury of time, you can most certainly do that. But the goal is to distribute one single campaign to as many platforms as possible, creating a single, unified strategy to attract clients in an omnichannel approach. Naturally, there would be nuances. For example, a lengthy ad on Facebook or LinkedIn should be congested into a 280-character post on Twitter – different structure, but the same essence. Repurposing your content does not only allow you to hit multiple touchpoints at a time, but it will also provide consistency in your social media presence without you sweating a bead.
To put it into perspective, let’s say you posted an article on LinkedIn. Since you’re at it already, you posted the exact same content on Facebook with an added call to action. Then, you congested that article into a tweet for your Twitter followers; you turned it into an infographic and posted it on Instagram; then, you leveraged that same content into an infomercial and uploaded it on YouTube. If you want to take it a step further, you can congest that video into a short-form format and upload it on TikTok, as well as on your IG stories and reels, and YouTube stories. In total, you managed to hit 8 touchpoints with just one piece of content. That’s automatically 8 times the engagement rate you’ll get from a single-channel strategy, and 8 times higher chances of finding a prospect.
But keep in mind that you don’t have to hit all those channels – grab what you can with the time and energy you have. The key is to leverage your strengths by keeping track of your campaigns, analyzing their performances, and evaluating which touchpoint has the highest engagement and conversion rates. This will help you figure out which platforms to optimize, improve upon, and further invest in.
Keep Up with the Constant Digital Evolution
The truth is not one channel’s here to stay for good. The nature of digital space is constantly evolving and changing, consistently disrupting old models and introducing new trends. For example, Facebook ad placements were the biggest thing a decade ago. In just a few short years, the emergence of Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn completely overhauled those existing marketing practices. Soon after, video consumption became the next revolution, making marketers rapidly shift to YouTube. And just when everyone thought that there wouldn’t be a more nuanced advancement with video content, the rise of short-form videos via TikTok, reels, and stories happened.
The point is digital marketing is a continuous search for the next big thing. You cannot be complacent with just one channel and call it a day. Effective leaders know that success can be achieved by being five steps ahead of the game.
