Today’s business owners often feel as though they need to be everywhere at once. The claims “If you’re not on TikTok…” or “If you’re not on Instagram…” that you’re missing out on potential customers ring strong. Being omnipresent online is easier said than done!
Therein lies the Multichannel approach – a sales system for getting your brand in front of more prospective customers across a wide variety of channels.
But this doesn’t mean you have to painstakingly attend to every platform. There are strategies for maintaining multiple touch points without manual effort.
In this guide, you’ll learn what Multichannel Selling is, but, more importantly, how to leverage it effectively (and economically) to draw in more customers.
What is Multichannel Selling?
Multichannel selling refers to the strategy of engaging with potential customers through multiple distinct sales channels – simultaneously. Rather than relying on a single avenue (such as direct sales or print marketing), B2B companies adopting multichannel selling diversify their approach across various platforms.
How it works
Multichannel selling acknowledges that different decision-makers prefer to engage and purchase through different channels.
For instance, some may prefer direct interactions with sales representatives, while others may favor online platforms or marketplaces.
The general process goes as follows:
- Channel Selection: The business selects relevant sales channels based on its target audience and market. These channels can include direct sales teams, e-commerce platforms, marketplaces, social media platforms, industry-specific trade shows, and more.
- Integrated Strategy: Develop an integrated strategy that encompasses all sales channels. This involves defining the role of each channel in the customer journey, setting specific goals for each, and ensuring they complement each other rather than compete.
- Collateral and Messaging: Maintain consistent messaging (and branding) across all channels to reinforce the brand identity and values. This helps build trust and recognition among potential customers.
- Seamless Experience: Deliver a seamless and positive customer experience across all channels, including ease of navigation, clear communication, responsive customer service, and personalized interactions.
- Analytics and Monitoring: Monitor marketing and sales performance across all channels, noting what’s working well and what isn’t. Optimize and adjust the strategy based on customer feedback and channel effectiveness.
What Channels are Involved in Multichannel Selling?
As the name implies, Multichannel Selling takes place across multiple channels and platforms. But which ones? While this can vary depending on your particular business, below are the most common ones:
Your own website
A company’s own website serves as a central hub for showcasing products/services, providing detailed information, and facilitating direct transactions. Your website grants you full control over your branding, customer experience, and sales process.
Online marketplaces
Platforms like Amazon Business, Alibaba, or eBay Business offer B2B businesses opportunities to list and sell products in a marketplace environment. This allows you to leverage the marketplace’s existing traffic and customer base.
Comparison websites
Comparison websites or blogs specialize in comparing products across different brands or providers. Participating in comparison portals can increase your visibility and attract customers who are actively researching and comparing various options.
Mobile apps
With the rise of mobile shopping apps and platforms, B2B businesses can reach customers directly on their smartphones or tablets. Some examples include a mobile version of your online marketplace, or specialized B2B mobile apps.
Social media
Platforms like LinkedIn, X (Twitter), and Facebook can be used to connect with customers, share industry insights, promote products/services, and engage in direct communication. Social media also supports targeted advertising through paid ads.
Tips for Effective Multichannel Sales
If you want to give the illusion that your business is everywhere at once (without the manual effort to do so), you’re in the right place! At Superhuman Prospecting, we’re all about helping B2B businesses become more efficient, economical, and effective with their marketing and sales.
Read on for our expert tips on how to leverage multichannel sales and automate your prospecting process.
1. Know your customer
As with any type of marketing, multichannel marketing first starts with knowing your audience. You simply won’t be able to choose the right platform, message, or sales approach without knowing what makes your customers tick (unless you just go by trial and error).
We recommend building out a clearly-defined Buyer Persona that encapsulates what your prospective customers struggle with and care about. You can expand this persona to include target demographics, behavior, and even the channels they use to search for products/services.
By creating detailed customer personas and conducting market research, you can tailor your marketing and messaging to resonate with potential buyers across different channels.
For example, presume you represent a software-as-a-service (SaaS) company targeting small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs). By knowing your customers’ challenges – such as scalability issues with current systems – you can begin to craft targeted messaging on your website and/or provide in-depth case studies on LinkedIn to showcase successful implementations.
To gain these insights, use CRM tools to monitor customer interactions across the various channels. This data can be used to inform personalized marketing campaigns, enhance your customer service, fine-tune your sales collateral, and improve overall customer experience.
2. Choose your channels
Once you’ve really nailed down your target audience – what they want and where they search – you can start selecting the particular channels you want to sell on.
You’ll want to identify channels where your customers are most active and where your competitors are most present. For B2B companies, these typically include the brand’s website, online marketplaces, forums, and social media platforms (particularly, LinkedIn).
Many sales engagement tools, like Klenty, integrate with your CRM, email management system, calling system, and even LinkedIn to send messages to prospects. For example, you could generate a new lead list, send out an email campaign, and automate follow-up messages via SMS or LinkedIn.
There are no “right” answers when it comes to the best sales channels for a B2B company; it really depends on your target audience, your offer, and your capabilities. Just don’t be afraid to adjust your strategy based on channel effectiveness or customer preferences.
3. Optimize for mobile experience
Nearly 60% of all online searches are conducted via a mobile device. With that, not creating a mobile-friendly experience would be a HUGE miss for your business.
Your prospective customers are likely using smartphones or tablets to research brands, compare products, review pricing, read case studies, and so much more. It’s essential that you optimize your website and online marketplace listings to accommodate these types of searches.
This includes maintaining a fast website load and rendering speed, and implementing a mobile-friendly design. It also means implementing User Experience (UX) best practices according to Google’s guidelines.
You can use tools like PageSpeed Insights to assess and improve your website’s mobile performance. Beyond that, implement mobile-specific marketing strategies, such as SMS campaigns or mobile app integrations, to engage with customers on the go.
4. Automate your sales processes
As stated, it takes a lot of manual effort to be everywhere at once – which isn’t sustainable! A smarter, more effective solution is to implement automation through the use of sales and marketing automation tools.
Most crossover will occur within your CRM, where you can gain a bird’s eye view of your system and processes. Then, integration with your chosen marketing platforms (such as social media, email management system, etc.) can often pick up the rest.
For instance, many B2B businesses use CRM automation to track customer interactions, send personalized follow-up emails (based on user behavior), book meetings, and schedule reminders for sales teams. This ensures timely engagement and, ultimately, increases your close rate.
Automation allows you to be on more platforms at once without manual posting, follow-up, analytics review, or management. You can easily automate your email marketing and lead nurturing campaigns, track interactions, and deliver personalized content at scale.
5. Be consistent with your content
Whether it’s blog posts, case studies, whitepapers, or social media updates, maintaining a consistent brand narrative works to build trust and rapport with your audience. If you’re going to sell across multiple platforms, your message needs to be locked in.
This starts with creating content that’s in alignment with your target customers’ Buyer’s Journey. For example, where do they go online (and what type of content do they search for) when they are at the start of their search? What type of content/message do they need when they are considering their options? And what type of content will help close the deal?
Next, your messaging should not only “sound like you” but also clearly communicate the features and value of your offering. No matter what platform you’re on, your messaging should be recognizable, consistent, and indicative of your brand’s values.
For example, say you run a cybersecurity firm. Perhaps your prerogative is to communicate your 1) industry expertise and 2) trust among existing customers. You can do this by posting insightful articles on your blog, sharing helpful content on LinkedIn, and customer success stories on other social media channels.
It can be helpful to create a content calendar that’s aligned with your multichannel strategy. Plan your content around a few key pillars, the stages of the Buyer’s Journey, and the content types that work best for a particular platform.
6. Integrate with email marketing
Once you’ve got prospects to “bite”, you gotta keep ‘em on the line. Where multichannel marketing is used to generate new leads, email nurturance is what warms them up for the sale.
Integration with your email marketing platform is essential. Not only does this allow you to capture essential information – name, company, email address, etc. – it also allows you to build a list that you own, without being dependent on a third party marketing platform.
ActiveCampaign is a popular email marketing and automation platform that integrates with many CRM tools, allowing you to track subscriber behavior, personalize your campaigns to user interests, segment your audience, and more. And with its omnichannel marketing tools, you can reach more prospects than ever across a wide range of platforms.
Integrating your email marketing platform with a multichannel sales approach will allow you to deliver targeted content that appeals to your most viable prospects, regardless of where they’re searching online.
7. Analyze and optimize for performance
If you’ve been a fan of our blog for a while, you know we’re all about the data. It’s one thing to run campaigns and see the fruits of your labor; it’s another to actively optimize for performance to maximize your results.
Few B2B organizations take the time to dig into their analytics, take stock of what’s working, and toss out what isn’t. And we get it — analytics can be confusing! But once you’re over that learning curve, your campaigns will be better for it!
At Superhuman Prospecting, we closely monitor performance and tailor campaigns according to what’s working for your particular audience. Whether that’s open rates on email campaigns, response rates to cold calling, or percentage of appointments booked, we measure success against real, quantifiable metrics.
Whether you work with a lead generation service or not, we recommend you do the same. For instance, analyze your conversion rates across your different channels (website, marketplace listings, social media ads). And then allocate more resources to the most effective platforms.
Best Multichannel Sales Software Tools for Businesses
With so many multichannel sales software tools available, we strongly recommend researching a few to find what works best for your business. That said, there are several that are “best in class” that provide many of the features that B2B businesses are looking for. Try these on for size for a more efficient multichannel sales process.
HubSpot
HubSpot is a comprehensive inbound marketing and sales platform designed to help businesses attract visitors, convert leads, and close customers. It offers a range of tools including CRM, marketing automation, email marketing, social media management, and analytics.
HubSpot’s multichannel capabilities enable businesses to integrate and manage customer interactions across various channels seamlessly, driving personalized engagement and improving sales efficiency.
Cognism
Cognism is a B2B sales intelligence tool that provides access to a global database of over 400 million business profiles and contacts. It uses AI-driven technology to help sales teams prospect more effectively by identifying ideal customer profiles, enriching lead data, and delivering actionable insights.
Cognism’s multichannel approach allows users to engage prospects through personalized email campaigns, outbound calling, and social selling, enabling efficient lead generation and conversion.
Leadfeeder
Leadfeeder is a lead generation tool that identifies website visitors and provides insights into their behavior, even if they don’t fill out a contact form. It integrates with Google Analytics to track visitor activity and identifies potential leads based on their interactions with your site.
Leadfeeder helps B2B businesses prioritize and engage with high-potential leads through detailed visitor profiles and real-time notifications, facilitating targeted outreach and improving conversion rates.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator
LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a sales tool specifically designed for B2B professionals to leverage LinkedIn’s vast network for prospecting and lead generation. It provides advanced search filters to identify ideal prospects based on industry, company size, job role, and more.
Sales Navigator enables users to nurture relationships through personalized outreach, track engagement with leads, and stay informed about relevant news and updates. It integrates seamlessly with CRM systems and other sales tools to streamline the sales process and maximize productivity.
Hootsuite
Hootsuite is a social media management platform that allows businesses to manage and schedule posts across multiple social networks from a single dashboard. It supports popular platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube.
Hootsuite helps B2B businesses maintain a consistent social media presence, engage with followers, monitor conversations, and measure social media performance through analytics. It enables effective social selling strategies by facilitating content sharing, interaction tracking, and campaign management.
Attract More Customers (in Less Time) with Superhuman
B2B sales is not for the faint of heart, especially if you’re looking to scale and implement a multichannel approach. Even if you have resources in-house, trying to be active (and effective) on every platform is a huge undertaking. That’s where we come in.
At Superhuman Prospecting, we offer both inbound and outbound services to help your business acquire more leads, no matter where your prospective customers are online. Our data-refined system is efficient at generating high-quality leads, without manual effort from your sales team. We book the call, they close the deal!
Looking to streamline your multichannel sales system? Contact us for a free quote today.
