Keep Calm and MultiChannel On

Welcome back to “Stuff My Daughters Have Taught Me About Marketing.” If you’re new, here’s a little bit of context. I have two daughters different as night and day, summer and winter, Nebraska football and, well, any Florida team. It’s fun and challenging and leaves me on the edge of my seat wondering who’s going to end up on the verge of tears today. #girlmom  

Here’s today’s lesson. It’s the second to last day of school, which means fun activities – specifically bowling and water parking – for my girls. One daughter has been packed for the water park since last week, woke up at 5:30 this morning (sorry in advance, teachers) and baked muffins. The other daughter still wasn’t dressed for school at 7:20 and may or may not skip school to avoid going bowling. They don’t love the same things or like to be convinced/told/disciplined the same way.

How does this apply to marketing? I’m glad you asked!  You see, your audience doesn’t respond positively or negatively to the same information or delivery method, either – even if you’ve nailed down your ideal customer and your target audience. People, by which I mean your customers, are still going to be different with their own quirks, personalities, and preferences, and it’s your job as a marketer, just as it’s my job as a parent, to adapt.

For example, social media is a relatively effective way to communicate your stories – in fact, 82ish% of Americans are on some social channel. (Statista) However, people have So. Many. Choices. for which channels they use, and your customers likely switch up their preferences on a periodic basis. And if they’re within the 20% of the population NOT on social media, you’re not going to reach them at all regardless of how great your campaigns are or how extensive your multichannel strategy is.

If you really want to scare yourself, you can consider the perfect email you’re about to send to your customers must compete with 120+ other emails each person receives in a day! (financesonline) Plus, the average open rate is just 20%. That means your email has an 80% chance of not being opened. (Quick math, I know!) Oh, and did you know open rates are higher on mobile devices? I hope your email is mobile-friendly!

A website must be the perfect answer, right? The answer is actually more complicated then navigating life with a teenage daughter. You MUST have a website, you MUST keep it current, and you MUST utilize at least a little SEO (Search Engine Optimization; keyworks telling the search engines what’s cool about your site). Even the most beautiful, useful website, though, may leave your customers saying they “didn’t know,” or “there wasn’t any information,” or asking where to find something. The truth is, websites are only as good as the traffic you drive to them.

The moral of the story is that you have to hit ‘em from a variety of sides – a multichannel approach. Maybe one daughter – I mean some of your audience – prefers you text them when there’s big news with your organization because “Email is for old people.” Well, you had better adapt if you’re more of an email person yourself. If you’re disappointed in a particular piece of communication, try sending it out through a different channel or tweak the message either in the email subject line or post copy. If you really want to get serious, use a program like Hootsuite (which just added TikTok to its suite) or Hubspot to receive recommendations on the best time to post on various social channels or the best day to send an email to your audience.

Just like parenting, you have to adjust, customize, and learn from your own teachable moments. The trick is to keep calm, adapt, and multichannel on.