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Cross-platform advertising is a lot like omnichannel marketing in that it operates multiple channels to interact with customers; only cross-platform puts more focus on unifying brand messages given to your target audience per channel of their buyer journey. This marketing method is arguably one of the most beneficial to a business' marketing plans for grabbing consumer attention, staying top of mind, and brand awareness.
Here's how you can grow your financial institution with a cross-platform marketing strategy.
Know Your Audience Before Cross-Channel Marketing
When it comes to advertising, the most important advice you can get is to know your audience. If you don't, you'll never reap the benefits of personalization and strong relationships that drive customer loyalty and repeat purchases. The same goes for cross-channel marketing. You can begin by creating buyer personas for your target audience.
A buyer persona represents your audience, using as much detail as possible and continuously updated when you retrieve new data. It should have a name, age, job description, hobbies, likes and dislikes, interests, and as much information as you can collect. The buyer persona is meant to represent a group of people in your target market, allowing you to better pinpoint and personalize your messaging to customers — which is why you need multiple. We suggest starting with a few (two or three) if you're new to it and then developing more later if you need to.
Understand who your audience consists of
Understanding who your audience consists of begins with doing the following:
- Know what problems your audience needs to solve
- And how your brand solves them
- Know demographics, behaviors, needs
- Learn where your audience is to choose channels to market to them
- Learn from current customer behaviors/needs
Choose Your Marketing Channels
One of the biggest mistakes marketers make today is getting on every channel they can or not getting on enough. The problem is that too many advertisers aren't choosing the channels where their audience is most likely to be targeted, but instead going where they hear "most people are." The secret to success on a financial marketing strategy in cross-platform advertising is to be selective with channels. You don't need to be on all channels, just a few.
With this in mind, decide which channels will be best to engage with your audience and follow them to those platforms. This way, you are putting your messaging efforts only on platforms that will:
- Reach and resonate with the right audience
- Build customer loyalty and encourage repeat purchases
- Be read by consumers who are already engaged on the platform
- Allow you to interact and communicate, creating meaningful bonds
Engage on Social Media
Speaking of marketing channels where your target audience is, social media is important to cross-platform advertising. As long as you're choosing only platforms where most of your audience is, you'll be sure to create the unified and meaningful experiences your customers crave from your brand. You don't need to be on every platform to make a difference — you don't even need to be on the most popular social platform if your audience isn't.
Take, for instance, Instagram. It's an excellent platform for brands like real estate and photography where visual appeals play a significant part in sales - but if you're looking to target older generations, Instagram may not be for you. According to Statista, "Over two-thirds of total Instagram audiences were aged 34 years and younger" as of July 2021. As a financial institution, however, this may be a good place to reach a younger audience.
When done correctly, you'll benefit from:
- Interacting and engaging with your audience
- Increasing brand awareness
- More conversions
Communicate with Email Marketing
Email marketing can also be tied into cross-platform advertising, further unifying your marketing channel communications with your target audience. You can do this by advertising on social media and sending email blasts to tie the channels together. This way, you can reach consumers on both social media and email, driving traffic to your website or social media via email.
Most email consumers in the U.S. check their email account more than ten times a day, and this is their favorite channel to receive updates from brands they love. This means that you can count on your audience receiving your email messages throughout the day, as long as you're regularly weeding out uninterested recipients (you only want interested and engaged customers in your email list).
Make Your Website Interactive
Finally, there's your website. It's one of your major components of cross-platform marketing, upholding your business's reputation for professionalism and legitimacy. The online world is full of many scams, and customers know it. Having an up-to-date and polished website eliminates those doubts and brings more credibility and trust to your brand.
Making it interactive, however, will make it much more beneficial for your brand, offering:
- Better customer experiences
- Improved customer service
- Lead prospects to other channels
- More value to your audience
Just make sure you optimize for mobile! Not only is mobile expected to account for more than half of all ad spend within the next year, but most people have a better opinion of brands when they offer a good mobile experience on their websites.
Work with a Media Partner
Working with a media partner can make cross-platform advertising a cinch, especially when making your website interactive and your customer experiences memorable. They provide your team with the knowledge and expertise needed to ensure you're planning and executing your financial marketing strategy to its full potential.
