All too often we get mired in the search for the “silver bullet” of marketing and advertising; that one campaign or channel that will flood your sales pipeline with new, quality leads. In most instances this feels like a futile experiment in advertising waste. In reality, your customers may be in EACH location and channel you’re targeting, however you’re just a puff of smoke in a forest fire of marketing material they receive on a regular basis. The answer may not be in the “where” but rather “how often” and “how to respond.”
Multichannel Campaigns
Yes, building a comprehensive multichannel campaign can be expensive, but often times will yield a higher response rate. Take for example a $1,500/mo PPC advertising budget which yields a cost per lead of $17, versus a monthly investment of $4,500 in print, online, email, and retailer/in-store promotion advertising which produces a cost per lead of $8. Now, the leads may be dropping in the sales funnel from different channels, meaning no single channel is producing a greater ROI, but they work in concert with one another to place your brand or product in front of the prospective customer at different points, increasing the likelihood of response.
Where Direct Response Comes In
This is your call to action (CTA). At each interaction you want to provide the customer the opportunity to respond to the advertisement, whether it’s a phone call, return mailer, Website click/form fill, or email campaign sign-up. While many advertising platforms scale linearly in cost, print and direct mail campaigns actually become more cost effective as the volume increases. Mailing costs, of course, are determined by the post office, but with regard to printing, you’ll see economies of scale as you ramp up your reach.
How To Measure Results
Running a multichannel or multi-touch marketing campaign adds a layer of complexity to measuring ROI. Fortunately, several tools and services are available to help track user response sources through a variety of channels. Online, email, and click-to-call digital ads can all have unique tracking codes assigned, and print mailing advertisement can have phone tracking services which assign a dedicated forwarding number to register the source.
