Multichannel Strategy for Outreach – Importance & Benefits
Getting your product or service in front of decision-makers is considered the most challenging for most business teams. And your multichannel strategy for outreach should address this core challenge.
Those who work in recruitment, marketing, or sales may often need to reach their target audience through various channels.
Sending messages through multiple channels can double or 3x your chances of winning more deals.
Businesses adopting a multichannel strategy experience a substantial 287% surge in customer engagement. Additionally, a notable 71% of consumers anticipate brands to engage with them through their preferred channels, emphasizing the importance of personalized communication strategies.
A multichannel strategy for outreach can give your business a competitive edge over your peers. It shows your adaptability, customer-centricity, and commitment to enhance engagement.
It enables your business to adapt to evolving technology trends and consumer behaviors, keeping you ahead of the competition.
In this masterclass module, we’ll evaluate the benefits of having a multichannel outreach strategy for your business and understand how it can help you engage better with your audience group.
What is a multichannel outreach strategy?
Simply put, multichannel outreach is the practice of simultaneously engaging with an audience through various communication channels such as email, social media, SMS, Calls and social texting apps like WhatsApp etc.
The goal is to create a seamless and integrated experience for the target audience and connect on the platforms they are most active. This approach enhances communication effectiveness, improves engagement, and allows businesses to connect with their audience in diverse ways.
Advantages of a multichannel strategy for outreach
Now, let’s see some of the most significant benefits of having a multichannel strategy for your sales outreach:
Better reach
The most apparent advantage of multichannel outreach lies in its capacity to connect with a wider audience. Most of us have a diverse digital presence, not confined to a single platform.
With that in mind, leveraging various channels for outreach can enhance the likelihood of your message catching the attention of potential prospects.
Enhanced engagement
Getting your message out is important, but fostering engagement is even more crucial. Using different channels allows you to craft a more personalized and captivating message for your audience.
Instead of bombarding prospects with numerous emails, engaging with them across various channels increases the chances of getting a response.
Better targeting
With multiple channels, you can target specific demographics or segments within your audience. Different persona’s are active on different channels.
When reaching out to a CEO, getting him over the call is challenging (if you have work phone number) , but an email or a LinkedIn or WhatsApp message can easily bypass gatekeepers.
Moreover, each channel offers a unique communication style, allowing you to personalize your outreach to match the recipient’s preferences.
Actionable insights
If you plan to use a multichannel outreach platform similar to SmartReach.io then multichannel data insights offer valuable information on prospect preferences, behaviors, and engagement patterns.
Using these data sets, your business can gain comprehensive insights into audience interactions to refine strategies for optimal engagement.
You’d be able to gain a deeper understanding of customer needs, preferences, and the effectiveness of various communication approaches. This way, your businesses can make informed decisions to enhance the overall customer experience and tailor multichannel outreach for maximum impact.
Challenges
Despite having many benefits, a multichannel strategy for outreach has its own limitations. The complexity of managing various communication channels simultaneously is a very common set of challenges. Maintaining consistent messaging across channels is another drawback. Let us see these in detail:
Resource limitations
Effectively handling various channels can be difficult in terms of time and resources, particularly without a dedicated team or supporting tools.
Without meticulous planning of your multichannel strategy, there’s a risk of pursuing every new channel without reaping positive outcomes. Utilizing capacity planning software can streamline your multichannel strategy, ensuring resources are optimally allocated, and your outreach efforts are more effective. Careful consideration and strategic planning are vital to avoid falling into the trap of inefficiency and diminishing returns.
Managing consistent messaging
Executing a multichannel campaign requires a holistic approach, distinct from managing individual single-channel campaigns. Each communication channel should align seamlessly, forming a cohesive and complementary unit. Ignoring this can lead to confusion among your audience.
Risk of oversaturation
Depending solely on a single channel is a poor strategy, but avoiding an excess of channels is equally crucial, as this can lead to oversaturation. In some instances, too much of a good thing can backfire.
Sending an overwhelming number of messages or utilizing excessive channels poses the risk of overwhelming your audience and potentially alienating them from your brand.
Measuring the success
Your outreach becomes challenging when managing multiple channels simultaneously. Accurately measuring the impact and identifying the most effective channels is difficult.
While one channel may seem to be receiving better responses, other channels may remain elusive. The complexity of having a diverse range of channels makes it difficult to assess the success of your multichannel outreach efforts.
Use cases for a multichannel outreach
Use Case 1:
Sales Outreach – Used by Sales Teams
A sales team utilizes a multichannel outreach strategy to connect with potential customers, nurture leads, and close deals. The goal is to create a predictable sales pipeline
The sales development team build prospect list and run cold outreach campaigns via multiple channels like cold email, LinkedIn and cold calls. At times, they use WhatsApp and text for reminders or engagement. The idea is to to introduce their products or services and get a meeting booked.
After taking an handoff of sales qualified leads (SQLs) from sales development; Account executives then use multichannel to constantly engage with these SQLs
They send follow-up emails to provide information and answer questions.
They can also make phone calls to communicate and understand the leads’ level of interest directly.
Interact on social media to build rapport, invite them to webinars or events, use direct messaging for personalized communication, and share relevant content to showcase expertise.
With a multichannel outreach strategy, sales teams can reach prospects through their preferred communication channels, increase engagement, and drive more sales conversions.
Use Case 2:
Recruitment – Used by Recruiters
Using a new recruiting technique called passive hiring, recruiters are saving hours wasted on surfing unqualified applications.
Here, recruiters search LinkedIn for the profile they are hiring, and then, using prospect finder tools, they extract the candidate’s contact information email address, LinkedIn profile URL, job title, current company, location, and other relevant data in minutes
Then start an outreach campaign trying to connect with these prospective candidates over email, LinkedIn, or calls to inform them about the job opening. This way they are connecting with candidates that have the highest probability to convert.
After this, recruiters conduct phone or video interviews to assess candidates’ fitment. Some recruiters use text messaging to communicate with candidates, schedule interviews, and follow up on application status.
Using a multichannel outreach strategy, recruiters can reach candidates through their preferred communication channels, increase visibility for job openings, and ultimately attract top talent to their organization.
Use Case 3:
Backlinking Outreach – Used by SEO experts
SEO specialists utilize a multichannel outreach strategy for backlinking to improve a website’s search engine ranking and visibility.
They utilize an approach to identify authoritative websites featuring resource pages or lists pertinent to their industry. And then use prospect-finding tools and make a list with email addresses, phone numbers and LinkedIn profiles. They create personalized outreach emails targeting website owners, bloggers, and influencers, showcasing their content or resources.
Using a multichannel approach, they can amplify their backlinking outreach efforts by complementing email outreach with social media engagement and direct messaging.
This diversified strategy increases the chances of establishing mutually beneficial partnerships, expanding brand visibility, and driving traffic to their own content or resources.