With today’s digital marketing, it’s rare to have one channel doing all the work.  The way people shop and interact with brands today, you just can’t do it with one type of content, advertisement, or platform.

Success relies on multi-channel marketing.  A blend of ads, organic rankings, informational material, images, videos, and social media content come together as a complete strategy.

The need to market across channels is dictated by consumers – we live our digital lives on many platforms using multiple devices.  We’re all researchers, visiting websites, review platforms, YouTube, and social media to learn more about our options.

So what does effective multichannel marketing look like?  Here is an example from a company that knows a few things about channels and changing currents.

 

A Durango River Rafting Company Master Multichannel Marketing

Channel #1:  Top Placement Ads®

From the start, this Durango, Colorado rafting and adventure tour company had challenges that could only be overcome by multichannel marketing.

The main challenge was the extended reach they needed to connect with their audience.   While their services were in the Durango area, their target audience was anyone planning a vacation in the area.  That meant advertising in the entire lower 48 states – at least.

We used our pay-per-click advertising tactic, Top Placement Ads® (TPA), to generate this traffic.

Marketing 360® started by targeting keyword phrases that showed intent to vacation in the Durango area, as well as those that connected to activities like rafting, ziplining, kayaking or visiting Mesa Verde Park.

We pushed up budgets during the spring when planning and bookings were most active.  The result was an essential 266 conversions over the spring/early summer:

 

Channel #2:  Retargeting

Today, you can’t expect everyone to convert with just a single exposure to your brand.  You have to use retargeting ads to get additional touch points as they surf the web and use social media.

Website visitors who did not convert got a reminder of how fun a family rafting trip would be with ads like this:

This resulted in an additional 59 conversions:

Pro Tip:  Message Match and Hero Shots

An important tip to note here.  The main target audience for this business is families looking to book a river rafting trip.

Because of this, the keyword choices and ad copy include family friendly as a benefit.  This message matches the page the ads people click through to on the website:

This message and image lets visitors know they’ve found just the service they were looking for, increasing conversions.

 

Channel #3:  Natural Listing Ads® (NLA)

Our search engine optimization service, NLA, is the tortoise of multichannel marketing.  And while it’s slow to start, it often ends up providing the most ROI because the cost-per-conversion tends to be so much lower.

We started by analyzing the TPA traffic to see what keywords were performing best.  We then took those phrases and optimized the main service pages.  Likewise, we started blogging and sharing social media content based on the keywords.

Once this channel hit, it hit.  They went from 258 keyword phrases ranking on page one in May 2017 to 597 by mid-July:

 

Main keywords gained impressions with impressive click-through-rates:

The best news is how well the NLA channel does with cost-per-conversion:

 

Channel #4:  Social Media

This Durango adventure tour business does its own social media, which works since much of their content is images of clients out on adventures:

This content is shareable, particularly when it shows clients during their adventure since they’ll share it on their channels and can then tag the business.

They also do a good job of collecting reviews on Facebook:

Reviews and testimonials are almost like another channel, creating a sense of trust that no advertisement can match.

The one channel this business has yet to develop is advertising on social media, which would be a solid next step to retarget website visitors and people who have engaged with their Facebook page.  They could also try email marketing to keep previous clients in the loop and make offers for return visits.

As this case study shows, it’s also a great help to use marketing software so that you can track results of all your multichannel marketing from one resource.

Marketing isn’t a channel in today’s digital environment.  It’s channels.

Follow this business’ lead and discover the channels that work best for you.

*Results are based on past client performance. Individual account performance may vary. Results are not guaranteed.