Do You Have a Multi-Platform Advertising Strategy?

Every business owner knows the importance of a good marketing strategy and is certainly aware of the need for a strong social media presence. They may even understand that social media presence should extend across multiple online platforms. However, what many businesses struggle with is having a truly unified vision across all of those platforms. This is known as a multi-platform advertising strategy, and it’s a critical element of business success in today’s technology-dominated world.

To help create this strategy, the experts at the top advertising agency in San Diego, InnoVision, have some advice. Below, we’ll discuss how your business can create a multi-platform marketing strategy that will improve your reach, broaden your customer base, and create brand loyalty.

Begin By Setting a Goal

On its own, the concept of “marketing” is actually a fairly vague one. It’s not enough to simply say you want to advertise your brand. You should have a specific goal in mind before you begin designing a marketing strategy. For example, are you looking to have more customers enter your physical storefront? Are you trying to push customers to order a specific dish at your restaurant? Are you more interested in driving traffic to your website, where prospective customers can read everything they need to know about your product? Different goals will necessitate different marketing strategies.

Of course, it’s certainly possible to set down more than one goal at a time. You can have many marketing goals, as long as they are clearly defined so that you can incorporate them into your strategy. Spend a little time with your team trying to decide what the end result of your marketing strategy should be.

Get To Know Your Customer Base

The next step in creating a strong multi-platform marketing strategy is having a good understanding of your prospective customer base. Who are you trying to reach? Where are they likely to live? What are their social, ethnic, and economic backgrounds?

Data like this can help you to make educated guesses as to their social media habits and what products they are likely to be looking for. Different customer bases use different social media platforms, and any advertising you create will have to be tailored to them specifically.

Before creating a marketing campaign, try to gather as much information as possible on your potential customers. An advertising agency in San Diego can help you collect the data you need. Marketing research is an extremely important element of a successful advertising strategy, so don’t skip this step.

You Need a Consistent Message

Multi-platform marketing means a lot more than simply having a marketing presence across multiple social media channels. It’s crucial that that marketing presence is cohesive: if a customer sees an ad on Twitter, it shouldn’t be wildly different from an ad they see on Facebook, Google, or YouTube.

Creating that consistent message is a multi-pronged process. It begins with strong branding, including logos, fonts, and other elements. The “voice” in all of the ads you place across the varied platform should be uniform as well. If you adopt a playful and humorous style for one ad, the ads you have on other platforms should reflect that style as well. If your ads veer more toward the informative, then they should remain so regardless of the platform being used.

Organic Marketing Matters

On any given social media platform, you can place ads and promote posts so that they’ll reach a larger audience. Oftentimes, you don’t pay unless you earn the clicks, so if you misstep in your marketing decisions, it won’t be devastating for your advertising strategy. However, paid marketing can only take you so far online, so it’s important that your customers are sharing your ads, organically.

Different businesses have found different methods of creating advertising that customers will share with one another. When you work with an advertising agency like InnoVision, you’ll have a team to help you create ads that will grab customers’ attention, which will make them more likely to be shared with other prospective customers.

Mixed Media Is the Key

If you’re going to advertise across multiple platforms, your business will need to be the master of different types of media. On Twitter, you’ll be looking at short messages of 280 characters or less. On Instagram, you’ll need attention-grabbing photos. Note that almost all social media platforms will allow you to either post videos or link to another platform that allows you to post videos.

The ubiquity of videos across all social media platforms means that you should definitely be producing video advertising as part of your multi-platform strategy. The advertising agency San Diego marketers prefer for their video production services is Pretzel Logic Productions, a subsidiary of InnoVision. We specialize in creating videos that will properly represent your brand, a lot more than simply creating a cookie-cutter commercial. Your videos should tell the complete story of your business: who you are, what you represent, and what you can offer prospective customers.

Be There for Your Customers

The ultimate goal of a multi-platform advertising strategy is to drive customers to your business, but that’s only the beginning. Once you’ve earned those much sought-after clicks, that’s where the hard work really begins. You have to not only get new customers but hold on to them.

Of course, the key element of this is having a product you are proud of and can stand by. There is, however, a lot more to brand loyalty than that. Your business must be communicative with its prospective customers, and you’ll have to be available to respond to tweets, emails, online comments, and phone calls.

This may seem obvious at first, but it’s an area where many businesses struggle once they implement a successful multi-platform marketing strategy. They may have set the goal to earn new customers, but when those new customers show up, they find themselves underprepared. This is another task an advertising agency in San Diego can help you with so that you can focus on running your business.

Need help designing and maintaining your multi-platform advertising strategy? The experienced team at InnoVision would be happy to lend a hand. Reach out, and we’ll show you what we can do for your business.