What are the best practices for cross-platform advertising?

1 Define your objectives

Before you start planning your cross-platform campaign, you need to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve and how you will measure your success. Do you want to raise awareness, generate leads, drive sales, or foster loyalty? What are the key performance indicators (KPIs) that will reflect your objectives, such as reach, impressions, clicks, conversions, or retention? How will you attribute the results to each channel and platform? Having a well-defined and realistic set of objectives and metrics will help you align your cross-platform strategy and evaluate your performance.

2 Know your audience

Another essential step for cross-platform advertising is to understand your target audience and their behavior, preferences, and needs. You can use various tools and methods to collect and analyze data about your audience, such as surveys, interviews, focus groups, social media listening, web analytics, or CRM systems. You can also segment your audience into different groups based on their demographics, psychographics, interests, or behaviors. This will help you tailor your messages and offers to each segment and choose the most relevant and effective channels and platforms to reach them.

3 Create a consistent brand identity

One of the main challenges of cross-platform advertising is to maintain a consistent and coherent brand identity across all the channels and platforms you use. This means that you need to ensure that your visual, verbal, and emotional elements are aligned and recognizable in every touchpoint. For example, you should use the same logo, colors, fonts, tone of voice, and values in your TV ads, online banners, social media posts, and mobile apps. This will help you build trust, recognition, and loyalty among your audience and differentiate yourself from your competitors.

4 Adapt your content to each channel

While consistency is important, you also need to adapt your content to each channel and platform you use, taking into account their specific features, formats, and best practices. For example, you might need to adjust the length, style, and format of your videos for TV, YouTube, Facebook, or Instagram. You might also need to use different types of content for different stages of the customer journey, such as awareness, consideration, or purchase. You should also test and optimize your content based on the feedback and data you receive from each channel and platform.

5 Integrate your platforms and partners

Another key aspect of cross-platform advertising is to integrate your platforms and partners, so that you can manage and coordinate your campaign more efficiently and effectively. This means that you need to use tools and systems that allow you to plan, execute, monitor, and measure your cross-platform campaign from a single dashboard. You also need to communicate and collaborate with your internal and external partners, such as creative agencies, media agencies, publishers, or influencers, to ensure that they are aligned with your objectives, strategy, and brand identity.

6 Learn and improve

Finally, you need to learn and improve from your cross-platform advertising experience, by analyzing the data and insights you collect from each channel and platform. You should compare the performance of your campaign against your objectives and KPIs, as well as against your competitors and industry benchmarks. You should also identify the strengths and weaknesses of your campaign, as well as the opportunities and threats for improvement. You should use this information to refine your cross-platform strategy and tactics, and to inform your future decisions and actions.