Okay, pop quiz time. Of the following three components, which one is the most important for an airplane to remain in the air? Is it the left wing, the right wing, or the tail section? If you answered “You need all three in order to fly”, then congratulations! You not only got the right answer, you also provided the answer for “Which of the following three media are most important for online campaigns: social media, texting, or e-mail?”
When you combine all three of these channels, you increase the effectiveness of your mobile marketing campaigns. As the article “Integrating Social Media, Text and Email” says, “To create a successful, holistic campaign, you need to foster a ‘cross channel synergy’ between each channel.”
Why Media Integration Is A Good Idea
The most effective advertising campaigns are the ones that extend across various media, since not everyone has or wants access to any given particular medium. For instance, some people refuse to go on Twitter or Facebook, so that eliminates social media for them. Others avoid texting, while there are people out there who think e-mail is obsolete and simply don’t check it, resulting in hideously neglected and clogged in-boxes.
A well-thought out online campaign covers all of the bases, so that the maximum number of people will see your message. If you miss them with email, you’ll get them with a text. It’s really not much different than multi-media advertising during the elder days of the pre-Internet era: advertisers ran commercials on tv and radio, put ads in the newspaper, and mailed out fliers.
But there’s another reason for cross-channel marketing. By engaging in a multi-media campaign, you can make your message all the richer, making it easier to engage the potential customer, and improving the odds of a conversion. After all, you can only say so much with 140 characters, but if you include a link to your Facebook page, then you can really shine.
How To Implement Cross-Channel Synergy
When you send out a mass email barrage, mention which social media networks you can be found on. Surely you’ve heard the ubiquitous “Like us on Facebook” message? It’s overused for a reason; it’s an easy way for any business to get even a bare minimum of social media action with the smallest effort.
Embed links to your pages in the body of your emails. Conversely, place your email address and other contact information on your social media pages when you conduct a new ad campaign. Give people more than one means of getting a hold of your business.
If you send out texts to subscribers, place a link to your site, or again, to your social media pages, in the body of the text message. Even if they can’t act on it it right away, people usually end up saving their text messages in order to check them out more closely later.
When putting together a multi-media mobile campaign, you must remember one thing above all others: people are lazy. So if you have a campaign in which someone who receives a message in one medium telling them to go to another, you have to make it worth their while.
This means that you have to provide incentives for people to respond to your messages and access your other media messages. Perhaps you can offer a discount to everyone who clicks on a link in an email to visit your Facebook page and Likes it. Encourage people to re-Tweet certain of your promotional Tweets, perhaps having a contest to see who re-Tweets the most.
If you’re really feeling ambitious, why not try to string together a cross-media campaign, like some sort of virtual treasure or scavenger hunt? Perhaps it starts off in the form of an email, and the reader needs to click on a link in order to get to the next stage. You could put in clues that can only be found by visiting all of the sites, and then offer prizes or discounts for the lucky winners.
So Much Media, So Little Time
While these ideas are a decent way to get your feet wet, there’s plenty more inspirations out there to be found. As the article “Take A Glance On The Online Remarks Of Professionals Regarding Web Marketing Strategy” points out, “The Internet has significantly transformed the way people correspond, shop or even promote their business.” Just make sure your latest online promotion has both wings and a tail, and see how high you can soar.