A multi platform advertising strategy is critical

The pandemic has created an even greater dependence on social media amongst the general public. While the platforms have already been ingrained in the fabric of our daily lives pre-pandemic, the current times have seen them evolve. As they are now serving different purposes for consumers and seeing an increasing diversity of channels used by all age groups, a multi platform advertising strategy is especially critical in 2022!

The beginning of 2022 sees Snapchat sitting at number six in Australia with 6.4 million active users in addition to all the other usual players holding steady. So the question becomes: how do you capitalise on the need for first-party data and use that to drive your cross-platform advertising spend?

It is no longer enough to just throw some money at a platform  or agency and hope for the best.

Strategies now all hinge on user experience and serious omnichannel marketing.

This means that the brand awareness aspects of your campaigns, or the always on advertising, should be running across all the platforms you deem important to your market. They also need to be customised and framed up for the audience you are targeting on that platform.

Here are the obvious things to consider

The customer journey (sometimes called the buyer’s journey) refers to the experiences that people have before deciding to purchase a product or service. It can be roughly divided into three stages:

Awareness: When the customer first learns about a business or product.

Consideration: When the customer becomes interested in a business or product.

Conversion: When the customer decides to buy a product or service.

Your digital marketing efforts need to regularly present your product or service in different ways to your current and potential customers. This allows you to have a successful sales generation funnel which is why a multi platform advertising strategy is critical for your business now more than ever.

Awareness

At the awareness stage of the customer journey, you want to reach as many people in your target audience as possible.

To do this focus on imagery of your products and services that will prompt people to pause and learn more. Include general information about your business, and basic descriptions of your products or services. In targeting your clients across multiple platforms you increase your brand  visibility and have a greater share of voice in your market.

This could include Video ads on Facebook and Instagram as well as using Snapchat to create multiple ad sets with more advanced targeting and bidding capabilities.

You can also leverage the Snap Pixel to measure the impact of your campaigns and optimise towards your goals.

It may include sponsored content on LinkedIn as well; all designed to start the conversation and begin the customer journey.

Google ads at this point are critical for those customers actively looking for a product or service like yours.

Remember there is a pixel for every platform and as marketers, we need to be using these effectively to gather the first-party data to inform our campaigns and refine their success.

Consideration

Once people are aware of your business, you want to focus more on the specific benefits of your products and services. This is a good moment to talk about how your products and services differ from those of competitors, since customers may be comparing brands.

This may include case studies on your website and video testimonials from clients.

A strategy around capturing online reviews across your different platforms such as Google Business profiles, Facebook recommendations, LinkedIn recommendations etc.

You may even drive customers to an interactive quiz designed to help them self assess their service needs.

Now is a good time to consider YouTube ads and Google display network. Remember, people often switch between online search and video while researching products to buy. So high-performing keywords from search should also be effective on YouTube.

At this point, it is critical that the pages on your site that you drive traffic to are built with the end in mind. They must be geared toward increasing the trust in your potential customer and driving enquiry. This is also a great stage to consider sponsored message ads on LinkedIn to people who have already engaged with your site in some way.

Conversion

Finally, at the conversion stage, you want messages that remove the final hurdle to purchase.

For example, promotions and special offers that prompt your customers to act now. Sometimes, this is creating a finite opportunity to engage by suggesting that there is a limited opportunity to work with you.

This is often the stage where you will activate lead generation ads on Facebook or LinkedIn.

Local inventory ads are another crucial ad format for converting local prospects.

These are product listing ads that include a label showing users that you have the item they’re looking for and activate their desire to purchase.

Google Shopping campaigns really come into their own at the conversion stage of the funnel where users are typing in specific product types or names.

So as you can see, there is a lot more involved than boosting some Facebook posts or running some ads on Instagram. A well designed multi platform advertising strategy built with your business goals and your customers journey in mind will allow you to increase your share of voice in your key markets and ultimately create a sales pathway that meets your businesses sales goals.