This is 1 of 8 performance marketing tips shared by Cameron McAllister. View the full video here. 

Customer Journeys are cross-channel

Consumers don't buy after one well-placed ad. They usually are exposed to your brand across a variety of channels and marketing touch points before clicking the ad that drives them to your eCommerce site. Here's an imagined customer journey resulting in a conversion:

1. Consumer discovers your blog that was shared on Facebook
2. Consumer searches Google to learn more about the topic
3. Consumer is served a variety of retargeting ads through a variety of channels
4. Consumer finally clicks on an ad that takes them to your site
5. Consumer buys from you and goes on their merry way

With today's analytics tools, you likely see the last site this customer was on before clicking your ad. But there was so much more to that customer's journey that you might not have value attached to. 

For a larger discussion of this challenge, see Tip #5 [9:58] in the full video.

Attribution aside, Tip #1 is to help marketers guide consumers to the bottom of the funnel using cross-channel insights. So, how is can this be done?

Take lessons from cross-channel data

Nine times out of 10, when you are running a campaign, you're going to make some sort of impact on your audience’s behavior. You're going to influence how your targeted users then interact with you in a channel like paid search. So depending on the message that you're putting forward, that very well may influence what these users do next in a different place.

Are they going to go look for your brand on Google?

Are they doing research on Amazon?

How can you use one channel's findings to influence what you do next somewhere else?

If you can’t look at these channels’ search data in direct conjunction with your campaign data, it becomes difficult to pick up on any meaningful cross-channel trends.

Digital marketing grew up in silos

Each platform that helps marketers run campaigns generates their own reports. It's relatively easy to see how your social media, search, or display campaigns are doing when you're in the execution platforms. However, it is harder to understand how these campaigns actually work together to bring consumers further down the marketing funnel. Without an independent platform that shows all relevant data in one place, it is difficult to see how your Facebook campaigns influence search behavior. But when breaking down these channel silos, a true picture of campaign effectiveness and consumer behavior appears. 

Advice to generate cross-channel insights

Take a look in Google Analytics to see what search terms are bringing consumers to your site. Look at the search data to see what messages you're sending out via Display ads or social campaigns are coming back through Google search. Once you've identified any changes in search behavior resulting from your cross-channel campaigns, use these learnings to tweak the messaging you're using in other channels. 

In reality, any channel's findings can be used to improve another's messaging. If something's working on Facebook, try it out in programmatic display (or vice versa). If you see that consumers regularly search for your products using certain language, use that same lingo in your search or display ads. 

See how DemandJump's Cross-Channel Platform Works