9 Common Cross-Platform Marketing Mistakes to Avoid

April 11, 2023

Cross-channel or cross-platform advertising has been a popular approach since the beginning. It refers to using multiple channels as a successful strategy for bettering a product's customer experience.

There are many mistakes you want to avoid in cross-channel marketing. To learn more about the most important ones, read on!
 

1. Delivering inconsistent messages

Consistent messaging is an integral part of your company's marketing strategy. However, a significant number of businesses make the mistake of constantly trying to deliver inconsistent messages, leading to a loss of effectiveness and understanding.

Making your content available on different channels is a great way to leverage all your potential markets. Search engines and social networks are an essential part of how people find you in today's climate.

So, to be really successful, marketing and advertising campaigns must reflect the ideology and personality of the company it represents across all platforms.

It's crucial to consistently showcase your brand identity when reaching out to your audience across social media. Not doing so can result in low retention rates on all channels.

It's essential to take a clear stance when communicating with prospects, leads, customers, partners, investors, etc.
 

2. Running similar offers and promos on different channels

black iphone 4 on brown wooden tableYou might have noticed that the way you experience Facebook is different from how you experience Instagram. This is also the case with your audience, who may react to what they see on various platforms.

If one offer succeeds on TikTok but not on Facebook, it may be a matter of how you're advertising the offer. Try finetuning your bid to target users according to the atmosphere and algorithm of each social network.

To make the most of your content, it's essential to be responsive, determine what your different audiences are interested in, and tailor your offers and approaches accordingly.

If you find out that your sales strategy for Facebook isn’t converting, don’t worry too much. You can reassign it to some other conversion actions like a lead generation form or even a phone call. This might yield better results.

You can also reassign the materials to another platform and see what happens. Well, understanding your different audiences and their needs is key to success.
 

3. Having the same KPIs for all your channels

A cross-channel strategy is a must for reaching different platforms and focusing on each one to optimize your content performance on each platform.

Facebook will have a different potential customer reaction than LinkedIn, and neither might look like Twitter.

If you know that a Facebook lead typically has a lower conversion rate, your acceptable CPA will also be lower. On the back, you can say, "LinkedIn leads have been so good that I would pay double the average cost per acquisition!"

Return On Ad Spend and Life-Time Value are similar concepts that may be important, so it is good to define them for each channel.

Promoting your social media profiles can be difficult. It’s essential to know the Key Performance Indicators and Returns On Investment of each marketing channel you focus on and keep an eye on them regularly.
 

4. Being too rigid with budgets

Clients often tell us they have $50k this month, and they need to spend $20k on Facebook advertising, $25k on Google PPC marketing, and $5k on LinkedIn promotions. We don't wholly agree with this approach.

One downside to being organized with your SMM budgets is that it can be challenging to adjust to sudden changes in traffic and engagement. If you do not adapt to each platform’s current trends, you might lose out on opportunities and lose valuable viewership.

Say you have a budget of $50,000 and you want to advertise on some channels—Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn. Pay attention to how each platform performs weekly concerning the average - adjust accordingly and hold off for some time if a channel is not performing well.

Remember, though, too many tasks can lead to missing important deadlines, so it's important to cross-check the plan and adjust as needed. Be open to new ideas and listen to feedback, especially if there’s a looming threat or crisis.
 

5. Having inconsistent targeted audiences

Retargeting is a powerful tactic. Once you have enough information about your target audience, it is easy to increase engagement through different mediums.

You can use retargeting to reach users on any platform; however, the chosen tactics will typically be the same across platforms.

With past visitor targeting, you can extend your marketing efforts to only target those who are very likely to convert. This can lead to quality optimization and decrease marketing expenses.

There may be exceptions to this, but we recommend you avoid excluding target audiences from a campaign on one platform and hope they will see your message across multiple platforms.

But sometimes, you need to exclude a target audience from your campaign on one platform. We recommend that you do so across all of them.

Ensure the right people are receiving your message on all platforms. You may be wasting money on those who shouldn’t be in your audience if you ignore how your objective is delivered.
 

6. Avoiding Google Analytics for tracking

Marketing through multiple channels often sets the company up to receive a string of conversions, but it can be challenging to understand what drives these conversions when they occur.

We can’t know exactly which channels are driving our sales without testing them. That's why it's essential to use all of the different channels you can find so that you can identify your most profitable ones.

One potential concern with cross-platform social marketing is that some platforms may sometimes take more credit than they are entitled to.

Google Analytics—one of the most common and straightforward solutions when looking to track your online business—is at a higher pedestal than any other when it comes to analytics tracking across different social platforms.
 

7. Ignoring non-converters

We all want conversions to happen with every marketing effort, but it’s not always a given that they will occur conventionally.

Consider that there are usually different channels involved when people contact your brand, so don’t overlook the importance of other indicators.

Be mindful of what channels contribute to your bottom line and plan your marketing accordingly. It's important to consider what media and campaigns make a difference and how many conversions they generate.
 

8. Not using results on one platform to enrich others

It's vital that leads and prospects are tracked and that they can be found when needed.

You want an experience tailored to the lead each time they come in contact with your business - this is done by summarizing and showing what you've learned about them in a customized information package.

One of the easiest things to miss when using online marketing is transferring data collected from one channel over to another. These two modes should be mirror images of each other, strengthening both.

Setting up software integrations to help with all these might seem expensive at first, but it will ultimately save you money.
 

9. Lacking a clear insight on performance

A marketing report can be a powerful resource. But when you receive it on its own, the picture might be incomplete, causing some issues with decision making and taking action you may need to do to pivot independently when and where necessary.

Businesses should conduct a cross-channel marketing analysis using a reporting solution that allows them to see all the different channels they are currently using.

By putting them all in one place, the company can easily track its progress and improve its strategy.
 

Conclusion

When cross-marketing is done productively, it will provide a seamless experience for your business by syncing marketing platforms, effortlessly connecting data to enrich other apps in your stack, and providing a plain-sailing view of your brand to your customers and team members.

⟵ Back to blog