How to find success with a multichannel marketing strategy

There was a time when the path between your brand and your audience was far more direct. With fewer established channels and largely local or national reach, there were only so many routes marketers could take to connect with consumers.

Today, the picture is very different. The rise of digital platforms, social media, and countless apps has created a hyper-connected, fast-moving landscape. One that offers immense opportunity for multichannel marketing success alongside increased complexity.

For customer-first brands with big ambitions, multichannel marketing isn’t optional. It’s essential. To truly engage modern audiences, you need to meet them where they are while delivering consistent branding, engaging experiences, and creative content marketing at every touchpoint.

So, how do you make it work? What’s the value of a multichannel approach, and what should you look out for? Let’s break it down, so you’re equipped to build the best marketing campaigns and drive real results.

What is multichannel marketing?

Multichannel marketing is a way of reaching your customers by promoting your content on multiple channels simultaneously. That could include traditional media like TV or print, or digital spaces like search, social media, and display ads.

The aim is to connect with your customers wherever they spend their time. Whether it’s an email campaign that lands at just the right moment, a banner ad on a trusted news site, or a branded poster they walk past daily, multichannel marketing increases the number of ways people can encounter – and engage with – your brand.

How does multichannel marketing differ from omnichannel marketing?

The terms multichannel and omnichannel marketing are often used interchangeably, but they’re not quite the same.

Multichannel marketing focuses on publishing content across multiple platforms. Omnichannel marketing, meanwhile, takes this further – it’s about delivering seamless and consistent branding at every stage of the customer journey.

In short, omnichannel marketing can be seen as an evolution of multichannel marketing, where the fundamentals of the approach are supercharged into one flawless, integrated customer experience.

Why multichannel marketing matters

Did you know more than half of marketers create content for at least 3 or 4 channels? The reason is clear: as digital maturity grows, brands are recognizing the limitations of single-channel marketing strategies.

Here are some of the benefits brands experience by going digital:

Increases client lifetime value

When your brand shows up consistently across different platforms, you’re building more than visibility – you’re building trust. That trust leads to stronger customer relationships and more repeat purchases over time.

Boosts brand awareness

When your brand is present on the numerous channels and devices in your customer’s buying cycle, you are better able to reach and engage your prospects at the times and places that suit them and their natural behaviours.

Your audience’s journey spans multiple devices, channels and moments. Being present across that full journey reinforces your brand, ensuring your products or services stay top of mind.

Deepens customer understanding

Knowledge is power, as the old saying goes. A multichannel strategy gives you more insights – because every additional interaction is another data point. People interacting with your brand across multiple platforms gives you more opportunities to understand what resonates, when your audience is most active, and how they prefer to engage.

Shortens time to conversion

Did you know that it can take as many as 8 interactions with your brand before customers consider making a purchase? By reaching people through several channels at once, you can speed up the time involved in reaching that threshold.

Reduces overall cost per contact

A multichannel campaign doesn’t just deliver better performance – it also leads to improved ROI. By enabling you to repurpose content and maximize your reach, a multichannel strategy can help you reduce your annual cost per contact by up to 7.5% [Source: Shopify, 2024].

Your 8-step guide to multichannel marketing success

Many leading brands have achieved measurable impact by embracing multichannel marketing. But success is not a given, especially when you consider the many challenges involved in rolling campaigns at scale.

Follow these 8 steps when building your multichannel campaign to secure the best results.

1. Define clear objectives

Start with your goals. Are you looking to increase brand awareness? Improve lead quality? Drive web traffic? Build trust? Defining what a successful multichannel marketing campaign looks like from the outset will help ensure every decision creates the right outcomes.

Your objectives should be:

• Informed by business insights
• Aligned with your company’s mission and goals
• SMART – Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-sensitive

2. Know your audiences

A successful multichannel strategy starts with deep audience understanding. You need to know who you’re speaking to, where they spend their time, and what motivates them.

This should include building strong buyer personas, giving you and your team valuable insight into what your typical customer looks like, where and when they spend their free time, and what kind of messaging appeals to them.

Look into your in-house data to determine the attributes your most loyal consumers share. If not, conduct your own research by arranging interviews with people you think could fit your audience or analyzing your competitors.

Knowledge is everything when it comes to effective brand marketing. So it pays to spend time at this early stage defining your customer journey, segmenting your audiences, and building detailed customer profiles.

3. Select the right channels

Not every platform will be the right fit for your brand or your audience. Creating a successful multichannel campaign is all about getting the mix right.

There is no right or wrong answer here. You need to analyze the data you’ve gathered on your customers and work out where your audience engages most, the type of content they prefer, and where your brand can deliver most value.

The right blend might include:

• Organic and paid social
• Email marketing
• Display advertising
• Direct mail
• SEO and content hubs
• In-store activations

Channels may not always perform as you expected. So keep testing and analyzing as you go and prepare to be agile if needed.

4. Create a multichannel marketing plan

With your objectives set, audiences defined, and channels locked down, the next step is to establish your roadmap for long-term success.

Marketing plans will vary from campaign to campaign but should typically include guidance on:

Look over the data you have for each area and be realistic about what you can achieve. Your marketing plan is your blueprint for success; by setting overly lofty goals, you risk going off-piste and falling below expectations.

5. Use content creation tools to streamline production

Once you know where your message is going, it’s time to ensure it looks, feels and sounds like your brand – everywhere.

You can’t just speed into this process gung-ho. Rushed content is likely to erode brand equity and shatter the trust your company has spent so long nurturing.

This is where your templated content creation tools prove their value. By providing marketers and frontline employees with easy-to-use design templates, you empower them to produce high-quality and engaging content – while always maintaining brand consistency.

Design jobs that would have taken hours can instead be handled in minutes. And anyone can build the collateral needed to get campaigns off the ground.Content creation tools also make it far easier to repurpose content for different platforms. A long video for your website can be easily carved into a series of mini videos for social or photos in your brochures.

6. Implement marketing automation software

Creating, planning and launching a multichannel campaign is a big job for even the most experienced marketing teams.

Good-quality marketing automation software can help by managing the countless small tasks involved in running a clear campaign. For example:

• Personalizing marketing emails
• Nurturing leads
• Scheduling social media posts
• Aggregating customer data

There is an abundance of marketing automation software out there. How can you tell which solution is right for you? Here are some key points to look out for:

7. Coordinate campaigns effectively

Before launching any multichannel campaign, alignment across channels, teams and regions must be seamless.

Without clear coordination, it’s all too easy for outdated content to go live, messages to reach the wrong audiences, or brand inconsistencies to appear across markets. Strong internal communication is essential – but emails and calls alone aren’t enough to keep growing teams aligned.

Digital Asset Management (DAM) provides the structure and clarity global teams need. By categorizing content by type, campaign, channel, or location, a DAM system ensures your people can access the right assets at the right time – and nothing goes live without the proper checks.

Adding campaign execution tools helps bring workflows under one roof, making it easier for teams to plan, localize, and distribute assets across channels. The result? Coordinated, consistent campaigns that feel unified no matter where they’re seen.

8. Measure performance

To maximize campaign impact, define success metrics before you launch – not after. Clear KPIs keep your team focused and give you the clarity to refine performance as you go.

Avoid tracking everything for the sake of it. Instead, focus on the metrics that tie directly to your goals. Common indicators include:

• Social media engagement
• Return on investment (ROI)
• Customer acquisition cost (CAC)

As your campaign evolves, analyze the data regularly. Are engagement levels increasing? Are conversions tracking against expectations? Is brand visibility growing? If not, use these insights to adapt quickly and keep your strategy on course.

Multichannel marketing should never be static. The more you measure and learn, the more agile and effective your campaigns become.

Delivering multichannel marketing campaigns through templated content creation

To meet the demands of today’s audiences, a one-size-fits-all strategy simply isn’t enough. Multichannel marketing gives you the flexibility, reach and insight to connect meaningfully wherever your customers are.

When executed with clarity, consistency, and coordination, multichannel campaigns can deliver real brand impact – elevating awareness, driving engagement, and accelerating growth.

But to succeed at scale, you need the right foundation. Papirfly empowers global teams with the tools they need to manage their assets, deliver templated content creation, and maintain brand consistency across every platform.

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