• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, July 12, 2022

It is no secret that brands need to be active in several channels, and that they must all work together. But this is no easy task, judging by The State Of Multi-Channel Marketing, a study by Ascend2. 

Of the executives polled, 67% rate their firms as somewhat successful at multichannel marketing, but only 23% say they are very good at it, or best in class. And 10% are unsuccessful. 

Despite the high success rate, a mere 16% say their tech stack extensively allows them to measure multichannel initiatives across all channels. Another 52% state they can partially do it. But 22% admit they have very little capability, and 10% have none at all. 

There are many challenges: 

• Creating an effective strategy — 48%
• Insufficient budget/resources — 46%
• Data quality — 37%
• Data quantity — 27%
• Insufficient marketing attribution — 22%
• Siloed/conflicting data — 17%
• Disconnected technology stack — 12%

Challenges aside, the most essential elements of a successful multichannel strategy are:

• Accurate measurement of performance — 61%
• Integrated/unified marketing technology — 43%
• Dashboards/visualization of analytics — 39%
• Marketing automation—33%
• Optimized channel mix—31%
• Unified data — 27%

The most popular channels? The respondents feel that these will contribute most to business success over the next year:

- Social media — 55%

- Website/landing pages — 43%

- Email — 34%

- Content marketing — 33%

- Partnerships—24%

- Video marketing—22%

- Public relations — 21%

- Events — 20%

- Influencer marketing — 19%

- Display advertising — 19%

- Account-based marketing — 16%

- Mobile/SMS — 16%

That said, 59% of the respondents feel they are in the right number of channels. But 34% feel they are not in enough. And 7% complain they have too many.  

Are brands getting better at multichannel marketing? The poll shows their effectiveness is:

- Increasing significantly — 18%

- Increasing moderately — 68%

- Decreasing moderately — 11%

- Decreasing significantly — 3%

One area of improvement might be integration—33% strongly agree that integrated marketing channels enable better targeting of the right audience at the right time. In addition, 62% moderately agree, and 6% disagree, 2% strongly so. 

Ascend2 and its Research Partners surveyed 372 marketers during the week of June 15 - 24, 2022. Of these, 27% are active in B2B, 45% in B2C and 28% in B2B and B2C equally. In addition, 14% are in organizations with more than 500 employees, 24% in companies with 50 to 500, and 62% in firms with fewer than 50.