Nowadays, consumers need to be hit from all angles.  It is essential to your marketing efforts to embrace a multi-channel and cross-media approach.  And, if you are able to apply the right principles, cross-media marketing can actually become more cost-effective than single-channel. It works like this: with cross-channel marketing, your social media, print, direct mail, and mobile advertisements are all part of the same campaign.  This provides you an opportunity to develop a laser-sharp focus that is hard to attain outside of cross-media marketing, and this focus can wind up saving you a whole lot of money.

When you first sit down with a spreadsheet and look at the cost of expanding from a single-channel marketing plan to cross-media marketing, it might seem a little overwhelming.  Your advertising budget seems to multiply given that you are going to incorporate many channels into one single campaign. However, this is not necessarily the case.  First and foremost, some channels (such as social media profiles) can be executed for no direct costs.  Other channels that do have associated fees, such as a direct mailer, will receive more ROI in the long-run if the campaign it is part of is cross-media.  Thus, the increased spend will be offset.  In addition, using many channels within one campaign eliminates the need to develop brand new content for each medium.  Instead, you can simply re-purpose existing content within the same campaign across many channels.

As marketers, we ultimately have two goals when it comes to launching a cross-media campaign:

1. Bring the overall cost down
2. Make sure that we’re getting the most out of every leg of the campaign

Here are a few tactics we can put to use in accomplishing these goals:

• Use free channels as much as possible.  Social media advertising is free, and more effective than a lot of paid advertising space.
• Shop around for vendors and suppliers.
• Connect everything to everything.  For example, use QR codes to send readers of print materials to your website, and invite website visitors to follow you on Twitter.  Get every penny’s worth out of every channel by linking them together.
• Maintain focus, and refine it based on metrics and reporting.
• Re-purpose, re-use, and refine content as you go, so you don’t spend too many human capital hours working up new content for each and every leg of the campaign.

Remember, you should start out with as much data you can possibly gather on your key target demographic, and know that the more time you spend pushing your cross-media campaign, the more you will learn about your demographic.  Refine your campaign and put those numbers to work.  Research and refinement are two keys to success with cross-media campaigns.

In truth, for its risk-reward rate, cross-media marketing is one of the most cost-effective ways to advertise.  The trick is simply to make the most of it!