Checklist of a Best-in-Class B2B Multi Channel Strategy

Our first party research conducted among 200 senior B2B marketers within our Insights for Professionals (IFP) community explores the current state of play when it comes to multi channel marketing, the 9 most common multi channel pain points facing B2B marketers, and the importance of an effective strategy in delivering fully integrated channel alignment.

Read on as we take our first party insights one step further with this 8-point checklist, aiming to create the ultimate seamless cross channel experience that engages your target audiences across multiple touchpoints.

8 Features Every Multi Channel Strategy Needs to Include

You’ve got all of the right channels, but how do you combine them to operate in the most effective way? What sets the most effective strategies apart? Here’s 8 key factors of a winning B2B multi channel strategy in 2022 and beyond…

1. Channel alignment with holistic masterplan

While you need a diverse range of channels to ensure thorough coverage and reach, this is only worthwhile if all channels align with your overarching plan. This will ensure that channel budgets, targeting and content that resonates with target audience needs and pain points is all in line with the fundamental goals of not only your marketing plan, but the wider company objectives as well.

How can you ensure channel alignment?

In today’s digital world where many different channels exist, keeping them aligned can be challenging. You need to avoid channels working in silo without any appreciation of how they fit the bigger picture. It is therefore wise to:

• Define your target audience
• Select the appropriate channels that will reach this target audience
• Ensure channel content aligns with the overarching plan and that messaging is consistent across all channels
• Regularly monitor and report on performance.

If your goal is to reach greater audiences for example, then Paid Search and Paid Social channels will be the most appropriate to invest in. Creating relevant and engaging content with enticing images and even videos can take time, but is worth the effort. After all, when information is teamed with a relevant image, 65% of its message can be retained three days later compared to just 10% without. Likewise, 53% of adults and 66% of millennials will engage with a brand after watching a video on social media.

2. Brand awareness activity targeting total ABM list through multi channel execution

12% of senior B2B marketers are allocating over 75% of their budget towards brand awareness, while 57% are allocating over 50%. Brand awareness is clearly an important factor in B2B multi channel strategy once again. Targeting your total Account-Based Marketing (ABM) list through multiple channels – primarily across a combination of Paid Social, Email and Programmatic Display – ensures the distribution of timely messages at critical touchpoints to create an immersive B2B brand awareness campaign.

This helps to drive engagement and ensures the people you are targeting make a lasting connection with your brand.

3. Data informed sequential messaging and remarketing for sustained multi channel engagement

Combined with effective content repurposing, sequential messaging can help align your messaging to deliver a seamless channel experience that immerses your target audience and complements their channel content consumption behaviors.

Sequential messaging can be approached in numerous ways, yet it all comes down to two key components:

• Understanding the engagement or buying state your target user falls under
• Adapting your messaging to enhance its relevancy and ability to resonate with the individual or group of individuals with a common state.

Joining up messaging and content can generate significant benefits, allowing your sequence of messages to effectively tell a story and take a user on a journey. Sequential messaging and content repurposing combined have the ability to drive your B2B multi channel strategy forward to gain strong competitive advantage.

4. Data integration for unified reporting

Providing message consistency across channels is key to creating a resounding, clear message that is seen across multiple touchpoints for maximum effectiveness. However, all channels possess slightly varying metrics when it comes to reporting on performance, making it difficult to reliably measure, make comparisons and assess improvement areas. It’s no wonder ‘creating one accurate report that unifies data from different channels’ is the 2^nd biggest challenge for 35% of senior B2B marketers.

Investing in a centralized dashboard that can combine key metrics for a more unified and integrated overview can therefore go great lengths in ensuring cross channel alignment and accurate reporting. Data integration is key to being able to see the bigger picture and assess which channels are on track towards achieving your overarching goals and objectives. It will also become clear which channels are generating the desired reach of your target audiences, which are underperforming, and which are seeing the greatest ROI.

5. Channel integration with automation platform for seamless experience through demand gen journey

Mastering data integration is only part of the way to achieving a best-in-class B2B multi channel strategy. Nurturing buyers is essential for keeping your brand front of mind and delivering consistent messaging to build brand trust and loyalty.

Channel integration with your automation platform is key to achieving this. It works by consolidating data to provide an all-encompassing view of your buyers, allowing you to orchestrate cross channel messaging that delivers seamless multi channel experiences throughout the demand generation journey.

Spending time and efforts creating top nurture emails for instance, is only going to be effective when your channels align to what they are trying to achieve – driving buyers through the demand gen funnel.

6. Clear objective and KPI setting

If your objectives aren’t able to provide clarity, how is anyone in your organization able to understand what they are working towards? Objectives need to be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. Individual objectives should be in line with team, function and company objectives, all sharing a common goal.

The main objective of multi channel marketing is to reach your target audiences across multiple channels with consistent messaging that drives them to a purchase decision in favor of your brand.

Likewise, KPIs need to focus on what your objectives are aiming to achieve. They can include:

• Conversions
• Revenue growth
• Website traffic
• Cost per lead
• Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs)
• ROI

KPIs should again be measurable – linking back to the importance of unified reporting in order to accurately gauge channel and overall performance in line with your goals.

7. Regular communication and alignment of channel teams

A top 3 method of ensuring different channel teams are working towards the same agenda is ‘regular communication’, according to almost half (46%) of senior B2B marketers. Frequent communication to ensure channel messaging, content formats, and performance learnings are shared across channel teams is crucial to create transparency, consistency and true alignment.

The top method is ‘weekly reporting’ (46.5%), suggesting that regular monitoring and analysis of the current state of play is key in aligning channel agenda, which in turn will lead to a more synchronized channel experience.

8. Continuous monitoring, optimization and improvement

When it comes to B2B multi channel strategy, improvements and optimizations can always be made in the strive towards delivering the optimal, fully integrated and seamless cross channel experience.

Achieving multi channel success first time is somewhat unlikely due to the complexities discussed above. However, by continuously monitoring and improving your conversion paths and leveraging intelligent insight to better understand how your target audiences want to consume your content, you are in a strong position to serve up the right content, to the right people, on the right channel and with the right messaging.

Continuous monitoring and reporting will help you to maintain control and visibility. If one channel is underperforming, benchmark your competitors to see how they are approaching that particular channel, make improvements and continue to monitor until it’s performing well in line with your SMART objectives and KPIs.

Ready to Deliver a Best-in-Class B2B Multi Channel Strategy?

Challenges are continuously faced when it comes to achieving an all-encompassing multi channel experience across a broad range of key channels. However, half the battle is understanding what an effective B2B multi channel strategy needs to include. We’ve covered 8 key features that will help drive your multi channel approach forwards towards the ultimate goal of delivering a seamless cross channel experience. Ready to leverage our best practice in your own business?