The Facebook & Instagram outage highlighted the need for multi-channel marketing. If you tried to post a picture or video to Instagram or Facebook last week, odds are it didn't go well. On October 4, 2021, users were unable to use major social media giants Facebook and Instagram, nor the biggest messaging platform WhatsApp.
While the reason for the massive outage wasn’t disclosed by Facebook, the company did apologize for the inconvenience. The issue lasted many hours before being fixed. It did, however, serve as a timely reminder to marketers that establishing a multi-channel marketing plan is essential for brand protection.
So, what can companies take away from this entire incident? Simply put, the importance of multi-channel marketing. In this blog, we’ll go over the benefits of investing in multi-channel marketing.
See also: The Best Sentiment Analysis Tools for Social Media
Benefits of multi-channel marketing
1. An Comprehensive Communication Strategy
When your company is required to react to something unexpected, you seldom receive much of a heads-up. That is why you must prepare ahead of time whether an event will alter the way you interact with your clients, prospects, and staff. Before responding, organizations should ensure that they have taken the time to prepare for unforeseen occurrences and have anticipated their effect as much as possible. Planning ahead puts your company in the greatest position to deal with the aftermath, which is frequently more damaging than the problem itself.
2. Always Have The Ability To Engage With Your Audiences
Yes, configuration problems that took down Facebook-owned services may happen to anybody. You may attest to this if you've ever used DownDetector to figure out why Mailchimp has crashed once again. However, you still have ownership over your email database and may advertise to it.
You can't contact your followers if a social network goes down, shuts down, or outlives its usefulness, whether you have 10 or 10 million. And, although an email platform may dismiss you as a customer if you don't follow its rules, it's more clear than a social network, which can shut down your account at any time with no redress, thus isolating you from your friends and followers.
Your presence on social media may help your business reach a larger audience of prospective subscribers. But, one of your primary goals should be to transform your fans and supporters into members. Therefore, if the social network goes down or you incur a loss, you can get in touch with them.
3. Don’t Need To Depend On Just One Platform
If this outage taught us anything, it's that you shouldn't put all of your eggs in one basket whenever it comes to marketing. 74 percent of companies that use a multichannel approach see an increase in sales. Furthermore, 64% expect increased consumer loyalty.
Increased messaging not only results in a more unified identity from the top of the funnel all the way to the bottom, but it also ensures you won't miss out in the case of a social media blackout! The finest content planning tools used collectively are the single most effective method to save time when conducting multi-channel content marketing.
4. Email Is Still A Force To Be Reckoned With
If nothing else, the Facebook/Instagram/WhatsApp outage served to highlight the many reasons why email remains the dominant digital marketing medium. Here are a few things to keep in mind:
- Everyone on the internet has an email address
- It's one of the few push channels, so you don't have to wait for the customer to visit your website, social channel, or search
- It is one of just two global digital channels available, the other being SMS.
- Except for the brand, no one owns the email
- It's quick and adaptable. It is possible to transmit many various kinds of information, and it works
Too many websites devote significant real estate to social media platforms while giving email just a portion of that space - frequently simply a form field with little opportunity to pitch visitors on the advantages of subscribing, and almost as often buried in the small print at the end of the website's main page. Given the importance of email in generating revenue, traffic, and interaction for a business, it makes more sense to delegate these choices to the email team or at least give them a voice in the process.
How Brands With Multi-Channel Marketing Reacted To The Outage
The benefit of using a multi-channel marketing strategy is that you may make light of the issue via your other channels. And that's exactly what many people did when Twitter exploded (and nearly caused its own issues due to overcrowding), sharing their humorous encounters of each and every marketer's worst fear.
This amazing reactionary thread alone had over 4 million likes, demonstrating that it's not only about having a strong strategy, but also understanding what to do when things go wrong!
For starters, it demonstrates that you have your finger on the pulse. You are aware of what is going on in the world and have an opinion about it. Even if the material isn't great, your viewers will appreciate you recognizing what's going on and showing a human side. In these cases, speed takes precedence over quality (as long as it is consistent with your brand's tone of voice and attitude). If it does not function as expected? You just remove it!
We anticipate that, as a result of this upheaval, many more companies will be paying careful attention to emerging channels and establishing a presence there in preparation for the unexpected.
The email team can easily laugh at social media marketers who seemed to have a terrible, awful, no-good, extremely poor day on Monday. To have the same effect on email, the whole internet would have to shut down. But we also have to feel sorry for all the small business owners who established their companies on a platform they didn't control, with followers they couldn't reach, and who lost money every time the site went down.
Social media is fantastic for increasing reach and exposure... as well as expanding your email list! But let us also remember – and remind budget decision-makers – that social media as well as email function best when they collaborate, and that email conversion and income benefits social media as well. Subscribe to Whitepapers.online for more marketing tips and the impact of technology on marketing efforts.
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