Multichannel Multimedia Marketing

Advanced Digital Marketing

Ashish Kumar
ashish.kumar@rmit.edu.au

School of Economics, Finance & Marketing, RMIT University

Agenda

  • Channels and Media in Digital Environment

  • Multichannel Strategy

  • Multimedia Strategy

  • Challenges of Multichannel Multimedia Strategy

  • Omnichannel Strategy

  • Platform Strategy

  • Audit of Multichannel Multimedia Marketing Strategy

Channels and Media in Digital Environment

Complex Marketing Environment

Marketing Mix Strategy

  1. Channels: One of the 4Ps of marketing is Place. Place is an important marketing mix as this is the way of distributing the Product to the consumers. Channel is key element of place strategy. It is also called distribution channel.

  1. Media: One of the 4Ps of marketing is Promotion. Promotion is an important marketing mix as this is the way of communicating to the consumers about Product and Price. Various types of marketing media are key elements of promotion strategy.

The Blurring of Place & Promotion

In the digital age, place and promotion have converged—where you sell is now inseparable from how you promote, as social commerce and influencer marketing blur the boundaries between distribution channels and promotional tactics.

Examples:

  • Social Commerce: Instagram Shopping, TikTok Shop, and Facebook Marketplace demonstrate how promotional platforms (social media) have become direct sales channels, merging place and promotion.

  • Omnichannel Retailing: Digital transformation has blurred traditional marketing mix boundaries.

  • Influencer Marketing: Influencers simultaneously promote products and serve as distribution points through affiliate links and direct shopping features.

  • Amazon’s Dual Role: Functions as both a marketplace (place) and advertising platform (promotion), with sponsored products appearing in search results.

  • Pop-up Stores & Experiential Retail: Physical locations designed primarily for brand experience and promotion rather than traditional sales.

Digital Business Environment

In today’s digital marketing environment, firms adopt multiple channels to distribute their product, and multiple media to communicate with their customers.

Multichannel Multimedia Marketing

Adoption of multiple channels and multiple media by the firms in their marketing mix strategy is called Multichannel Multimedia Marketing Strategy.

Benefit: Customers have more ways to buy the product from the firms, and also they have multiple ways to engage with the firms during their purchase journey. Firms can reach potentially bigger market and provide better customer experience.

Challenge: For firms, first, they need more resources to adopt this strategy, and second, they need to coordinate their marketing mix strategies across channels and media. For consumers, they need a seamless experience across channels and media.

Why MCMM Marketing?

  • Can simultaneous advertising on multiple online channels increase purchase propensities when targeting individual users?

    • If so, is there a difference in the effects, depending on the sequence of the channels in the user journey of individual consumers?

  • Do these effects vary across existing and new customers?

  • How do synergies between channels amplify message retention and brand recall compared to single-channel approaches?

    • Does cross-channel reinforcement create a cumulative effect that exceeds the sum of individual channel impacts?

  • What is the optimal resource allocation across channels to maximize ROI while minimizing audience fatigue and ad redundancy?

    • Can we identify diminishing returns thresholds where additional channel exposure becomes counterproductive?

Cost-Benefit Analysis

Channel Strategy

  • Single channel strategy: Firms adopting a single channel only to distribute their products and services.
  • Multiple channel strategy: Firms that adopt more than one channel to distribute their offerings; however, there is no strategic coordination across the channels.
    • Example: Such strategies are vanishing.
  • Multichannel strategy: Firms that combine multiple distributional channels and promotional media in their marketing mix strategy.
    • Example: Most of the big retailers today follow this strategy.
  • Omnichannel strategy: An extension of the multichannel strategy with a primary focus on providing seamless customers experience across channels and media.

Multichannel vs. Omnichannel

Multimedia Strategy

We can classify various kinds of marketing media into three broad categories:

  1. Traditional media: Traditional media constitute those media channels that existed before the advent of the Internet. For example, radio, television, newspaper, magazine, catalog, telemarketing, messaging, letters, print, billboards, cinema, public relations. The majority of the traditional media are asynchronous, mass communication (i.e., one to many) channels, and take in the form of a monologue.

  2. New media: Starting from the mid-1990s with the widespread adoption of the Internet, some of the emerging marketing media became more synchronous, interactive, personalized, rich in multimedia contents, real-time, and gave an ability to users to self-disclose and self-present deeply. For example, most forms of online ads (search-SEO and SEM, and display-banner ads, landing page, and pop-ups), email, instant messaging, remarketing using online cookie-based technology, video ads. These are called new media.

  3. Social media: Social media is a part of the new media. Because of its significance, it is in itself a category.

Reflect

  • Discuss whether economic multichannel goals are not more important than psychographic goals, and also consider the connection between the two.
    • Hint: Transactional vs. Relational Marketing Goals.
  • Debate whether the opportunities of multichannel systems are not significantly greater than the risks and take into account which are the most significant risks for the use of multichannel systems.

Multichannel Strategy

Universe of Marketing

  1. Marketplace: Three dimensional stores where the exchange is carried out. It is also called offline marketing.

  2. Marketspace: Two dimensional web stores where the exchange is carried out. It is also called online marketing.

  3. Uspace: The marketplace characterized by ubiquitous (it means market is accessible from everywhere), universal (it means market is accessible from any devices), unique (it means customers are provided with tailored information), and unison (it means seamless integration across devices, channels, media, and locations to provide consistent customer experience). A smaller version of Uspace marketplace is omnichannel marketing.

\[Marketpalce \rightarrow Marketspace \rightarrow Uspace\]

Formats of Multichannel Strategy

Most of the firms adopt at least two channels as a part of their multichannel strategy.

  1. Traditional channel: This is also called offline channel, brick and mortar store, or simply physical stores.

  2. Online channels: This is also called click channel or websites or web store.

In today’s technology-driven world, the role of channel has increased from merely distributing the products and services to becoming a strategic tool for firms to provide a superior shopping experience for always on customers.

Important

A channel should not only influence the consumers wanting to purchase, but it should also have an impact on consumers’ preference for the purchase.

Thus, channels help in generating profits by increasing demand and decreasing costs.

Benefits of Multichannel Strategy

  • Channel as a tool for superior customer experience.

    • Showrooming: Research product offline and make purchase online.
    • Webrooming: Research product online and make purchase offline.
    • Mobilerooming: Research product on mobile apps before purchase.

  • Channel as a tool for managing the better customer relationships and increasing customer lifetime value.

  • Channel as a tool for reaching new customers.

  • Channel as a tool for reaching existing customers in different usage contexts.

  • Channel as a tool for personalizing.

  • Channel as a tool for improved inventory management.

  • Channel as a tool for contextual and geographical targeting.

Online Channel

  • Opportunities
    • No Physical Space
    • Use of Click through data to analyze browsing behavior
    • Customization
    • Cost Effective
    • Easy Integration with other Media/Channel
  • Challenges
    • Virtual space
    • Price competition
    • Integrated marketing strategy
    • Mode of payment and security
    • Delivery

Design of Website for Selling

A website should take into consideration of consumer purchase behavior

  • Pre-purchase decisions

    • Need Recognition
    • Information Search
    • Information Evaluation

  • Purchase Decision

  • Post-Purchase Behavior

    • Bonding
    • Advocating

Consumer Choices in Multichannel

  • Whether to buy: Consumers’ choice decision of whether to buy or not to satisfy a need. It is also called purchase incidence.

  • What to buy: Consumers’ choice decision to select a brand for that particular purchase incidence. It is also called brand choice.

  • How much to buy: Consumers’ decision of quantity choice. It is also called quantity choice.

  • Where to buy: Consumers’ decision of selecting a channel for purchase. It is also called channel choice.

  • When to buy: Consumers’ decision to time a purchase. It is also called inter-purchase time.

A Framework

Channel Choice Decision

  • Utility from instrumental elements of the shopping process:

    • Economic goal: Consumers’ goal of searching for the lowest price that maximizes their utility.
    • Self-affirmation: Ability of consumers’ to show their thrifty behavior and shopping expertise.
    • Symbolic meaning: Shopping may have symbolic meaning sometimes, e.g., gift and wedding dress purchase.

  • Utility from the purchased product:

  • Utility from non-instrumental elements of the shopping process:

    • Social influence and experiential impact: Social interaction (e.g., talking to salespeople) and experiential consideration (e.g., ability to touch and smell products) influence consumers’ channel choice decision.
    • Invocation of channel script or schema: Shopping can be a process of experiencing a routine habit or performing a ritual.

Who are Multichannel Shopper?

Insights: Technical Expertise

Insights: Shopping Enjoyment

Metrics of Buyer Response

Capturing Value in Purchase:

  1. Brand Choice
  2. Channel Choice
  3. Purchase Timing
  4. Purchase Frequency
  5. Purchase Order or Quantity Decision
  6. Customer Value
    • Recency, Frequency, and Monetary (RFM) value

These metrics will help firms for behavioral targeting based on:

  1. Benefits sought
  2. Purchase occasion
  3. Usage frequency
  4. Usage status

Mutlchannel Funnel Strategy



  • Attract and Acquire

  • Engage and Convert

  • Retain and Grow

Reflect

Mapping your significant purchase in a mutltichannel marketing environment

  • Step 1 (Individual):
    • What did you buy?
    • List ALL touchpoints/channels you used (online/offline)
    • Identify: Where did you research? Where did you purchase? Why?
  • Step 2 (Pair & Share):
    • Compare your journey with a partner
    • Classify behaviors: Were you showrooming, webrooming, or mobilerooming?
    • Discuss: What drove your channel choice at each stage?
  • Step 3 (Discussion):
    • Which channels dominated the Attract, Engage, and Retain stages?
    • How did your technical expertise and shopping enjoyment influence your choices?
    • Would you classify yourself as a multichannel shopper? Why or why not?

Reflection Question: If you were the brand/retailer, how could they have improved your experience across channels?

Multimedia Strategy

Marketing Comm Effectiveness

  • Marketing communication act as a signal for consumers. This signal conveys:

    • product price
    • product attributes
    • product quality

  • Marketing media have substantial carryover effects lasting over time. Thus, they could potentially influence consumers’ future purchase behavior.

  • Marketing media positively influence cross-channel sales. Thus, it is effective in a multichannel strategy.

  • Marketing media help in building a healthy customer-firm relationship.

  • Marketing media have a greater level of interaction with other marketing mix.

Important

Effective advertising separates your brand from all others in the mind of consumers.

Marketing Comm: Caution

Marketing media or advertising may influence consumers’ price sensitivity.

In terms of the effect of advertising on price elasticity, two different economic theories offer alternative explanations.

On the one hand, information theory argues that availability of information through advertising messages may lead to increased competition, thereby making price elasticities more negative.

Price comparison websites like PriceGrabber or Google Shopping provide extensive product information and competitive pricing across retailers. This transparency makes consumers more aware of price differences, increasing their price sensitivity. If Brand A’s laptop is advertised at $1,200 while Brand B offers similar specs at $1,000, informed consumers are more likely to switch, making demand more elastic.

On the other hand, market power theory claims price elasticities to be less negative based on product differentiation brought about by advertising.

Apple’s advertising focuses on design, ecosystem integration, and brand prestige rather than price. Through consistent brand messaging, Apple has created strong differentiation. Even when competitors offer similar technical specifications at lower prices (e.g., Samsung or OnePlus phones), Apple customers remain less price-sensitive and willing to pay premium prices. The advertising has reduced price elasticity by building brand loyalty and perceived uniqueness.

Mixing Multimedia

  • Traditional Media
    • Traditional media are still relevant. They have significant positive interaction with new and social media in influencing consumer behavior.
  • New Media
    • New media has become an essential strategy in personalization, reaching the right customers at the right time with the right message. However, some of the new media decays faster. For example, emails tend to decay fastest. Thus, new media have a lower lingering effects.
  • Social Media
    • Social media is an essential vehicle for electronic word of mouth (eWoM). Social media also helps in viral marketing.
  • All three media have been found to have significant interaction effects with the marketing mix (price and promotion).

Customer Touhcpoints

Customer touchpoints (CTP) are interface provided by the firm to its customers for interaction. The more channels a multichannel system has, the more complex the CTPs become to manage because all channels must be coordinated.

  • customer information points (CIPs): to provide information to the customer

  • customer communication points (CCPs): to communicate with the customer

  • customer points of sale (CPSs): to sell the company’s offerings

  • customer service points (CSPs): to provid- ing pre-sales and, above all, after-sales service

  • Customer to Customer Reference Points (CCRPs): It refers to the relationships between consumers.

Media Planning

  • Business Objective

  • Media Scheduling

  • Media Targeting

  • Media Selection

Business Objective

  • Marketing media positively influence two key business objectives
    • Sales related
      • Immediate revenue generation and conversion rates
      • Customer acquisition cost (CAC) optimization
      • Market share growth and competitive positioning
      • Short-term ROI and transactional metrics
    • Relationship related
      • Brand awareness, equity, and long-term loyalty
      • Customer lifetime value (CLV) maximization
      • Engagement, trust-building, and community development
      • Retention rates and advocacy/word-of-mouth amplification

Media Scheduling

Marketing budgets are limited. Therefore, managing a limited marketing budget in the most profitable way is essential. In this regard, media scheduling is an important decision that constitutes:

  1. When to advertise: The time decision
  2. How much to advertise: The duration/space decision

Following are the various types of media scheduling:

  • Continuous: Advertising runs for all periods of time with the same amount.
  • Burst Campaign: There are some periods where advertising runs with the same amount, and others where it is shutdown.
  • Pulse Campaign: It is a mix of burst and continuous. A variable amount of advertising is run in all periods.

Pulsing is the best media scheduling type for all three types of media: traditional, new, and social.

Media Targeting

Media targeting refers to selecting segments of consumers who will receive a marketing message. This is an important decision to minimized the wasted efforts as John Wanamaker famously said:

Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.

In a multichannel marketing environment, there are three major consumer segments:

  1. Pure offline consumers: Those who shop at physical stores primarily.
  2. Pure offline consumers: Those who shop at online stores mostly.
  3. Multichannel consumers: Those who use both online and offline channels for shopping.

Multichannel customers bring maximum profit to the firms.

Media Selection

The third media decision that is very important is related to media selection. Again, given a limited budget, firms have to decide among three types of media, namely, traditional, new, and social.

In this regard, firms follow two types of strategies:

  1. Concentration: Using the same kind of media.

  2. Dispersion: Using different types of media.

Even though dispersion is the best media selection strategy, many B2B firms prefer concentration strategies depending on the characteristics of their clientele.

Metrics: Traditional Media

\[ GRP = Reach \times Frequency \]

Gross rating point (GRP) is a traditional metric to measure the effectiveness of traditional media.

How many people saw the ad (reach) and how many times they saw it (frequency).

Example: If an ad reached 60% of the target audience with a frequency of 3, then GRP = 60 x 3 = 180.

Metrics: Online Media

  • CPM (Cost per Thousand): Cost of 1000 ad impressions.
    • \(CPM = \frac{\text{Cost of Media Buy}}{\text{Number of Impression}} \times 1000\)
    • Example: If the cost of media buy is $5000 for 1,000,000 impressions, then CPM = (5000/1,000,000) x 1000 = $5.
  • CPC (Cost per Click): Cost of each click on the ad.
    • \(CPC = \frac{\text{Cost of Media Buy}}{\text{Number of Clicks}}\)
    • Example: If the cost of media buy is $5000 for 2000 clicks, then CPC = 5000/2000 = $2.5
    • Related metric is cost per action (CPA)

Attribution of Online Media

Reflect

Scenario: You’re a marketing manager for a new sustainable sneaker brand launching next month.

  • Choose ONE business objective: Sales-focused OR Relationship-focused

  • Based on your choice, select:

    • Media scheduling: Continuous, Burst, or Pulse?
    • Media targeting: Pure offline, Pure online, or Multichannel shoppers?
    • Media selection: Concentration (one media type) or Dispersion (mix)?

  • Debate: Will your advertising increase price sensitivity (Information Theory) or decrease it (Market Power Theory)? Why?

  • Calculate: If your budget is $10,000 and you want 500,000 impressions, what’s your CPM?

“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted…” - How would YOUR strategy minimize waste?

Challenges of Multichannel Multimedia Strategy

Customer-Centric Approach

Multichannel strategy should follow a customer-centric approach where decisions related to channel and media should mainly focus on customer experience. Such an approach will ultimately lead to improved firms’ bottom line (i.e., sales and profit).

Operational Challenges

Multichannel Environment

  • Effect of online sales on offline
  • Effect of offline marketing on online sales

Multiple Communication Media

  • Is there a synergy between different communication media?
  • What kinds of interactions exist within and across communication media
    • Carryover effect of various kinds of media
  • Attribution problem - what is the influence of media on sales?
    • Influence of catalogs on in-store sales

Marketing Environment

  • How to manage price and promotion across different channels and media?
  • The marketing environment becomes very much dynamic in nature.
  • How multichannel strategies affect consumer behavior?

Data and Measurement Challenges

Multiple layers of data that need to be carefully collected, integrated, cleaned, processed, and analyzed to gather marketing insights.

Omnichannel Strategy

Marketing Funnel: Then & Now

Traditional Funnel

Modern Funnel

Customer Purchase Journey

Instead of focusing on traditional marketing funnel, marketers now focus on customer purchase journey (CPJ). CPJ has the following characteristics:

  1. CPJ is dynamic in nature.
  2. CPJ journey is more accessible to marketers.
  3. CPJ is always on as customers are always exposed to touch points.

Therefore, in such an environment, for better customer service marketers need to:

  1. Go to customers instead of them coming to firms, i.e., meet customers where they are (in the channel of their choice).
  2. Personalize the customer experience across channels and several touch points.
  3. Provide integrated brand experience (or brand story) across various channels and media.
  4. Respect the customers, recognize their need, and act in real time.

Omnichannel Marketing

  1. A broader view of the channel
    • Search, display, e-mail, affiliates, and referral websites: All are separate channels within the online medium as they can facilitate one- or two-way communication or interaction.
    • Within the context of mobile, a branded app is considered as a channel.
    • Devices such as desktops, laptop, and mobile are considered as channels.
  2. Different channels and touch points are used constantly, interchangeably, and simultaneously by both customers and firms to facilitate the customers’ purchase experience.

Important

Omnichannel management is the synergistic management of the numerous available channels and customer touchpoints, in such a way that the customer experience across channels and the performance over channels is optimized. (Verhoef, Kannan, and Inman (2015))

Managing Customer Experience

Providing superior customer experience requires a better understanding of CPJ. Channels and touch points become merely means to achieve that end.

Customer Calls a Utility Company

Platform Strategy

Platform

Definition

Platform, in general, connect individuals and organizations for a common purpose or to share a common resource. Platforms help in innovation by bringing them together in ways not otherwise possible. (Cusumano, Gawer, and Yoffie (2019))

Types of Platforms

Why Choose Platform Strategy

Transaction Cost Economics: Transaction is the process of delivering goods and services from a provider to a user. Transaction cost is the cost of such a transaction.

The market can be made efficient by optimizing transaction costs also apart from minimizing the cost of production and maximizing the value to the customers.

Three Elements of Platforms

  1. Triangulation: The platform should match the buyer to the seller or vice versa.
    • Information about identity and location, and agreeing on terms, including price.
  2. Transfer: The platform should facilitate transactions at a minimum cost.
    • A way of transferring payment and goods that is immediate and as invisible as possible
  3. Trust: There should be a trust between the transacting party.
    • A way of outsourcing assurance of honesty and performance of the terms of the contract.

Adopting Platform

Many firms, especially new ones, will not build (or may not have resources to build) their own distribution channels, either online or offline.

Instead, they will adopt platforms for such purposes. The main reason is platforms help in reducing the transaction cost by solving three problems: triangulation, transfer, and trust.

The basic tenet of any platform is network effects. Network effects are positive feedback loops that emerge and can get stronger with the rising number of users or complements. Network effects make the platform increasingly valuable by attracting increasing numbers of users and complementors.

However, firms should be cautious as the rules of the platform could change anytime, and they may face a problem with market accessibility in case they lack their own distribution channels.

Quick Commerce

  • Quick commerce (or q-commerce) is an emerging trend in the retail industry that focuses on delivering products to customers in a very short time frame, often within minutes of placing an order.

  • Quick commerce transforms platforms from transaction facilitators to instant gratification engines, redefining customer expectations in the digital economy.

  • Transaction Cost Optimization:

    • Reduced search costs (app-based discovery)
    • Minimized delivery time (dark stores vs. warehouses)
    • Lower coordination costs (automated dispatch)

Example

The Swiggy-Zomato Evolution:

  • Started as food delivery platforms (2014-2015)
  • Swiggy Instamart & Zomato Blinkit (acquired 2022): Pivoted to quick commerce
  • Promise: Groceries, essentials, medicines in 10-15 minutes
  • Swiggy’s IPO (Nov 2024): ₹11,327 crore, valuation ~$11.3B
  • Zomato’s market cap: ₹2.2 lakh crore (Oct 2024)

Reduced Transaction Costs for Retailers

  • Search Costs: Platform handles customer acquisition & marketing
  • Inventory Costs: Shared dark store1 infrastructure
  • Delivery Costs: Optimized logistics through platform’s fleet
  • Technology Costs: No need to build own delivery app

Digital Payment Systems

Digital Payment Systems are technology-enabled platforms that facilitate electronic transactions between buyers and sellers, eliminating the need for physical cash or traditional banking intermediaries. They leverage mobile technology, APIs, and data analytics to provide seamless, instant, and secure payment experiences.

  • Digital Wallets: Mobile apps storing payment credentials
  • Buy Now, Pay Later: Short-term financing at point of sale

Platform Economics in Action:

  • Triangulation: Instant verification of buyer-seller identity
  • Transfer: Real-time money movement, no physical exchange
  • Trust: Platform guarantees, fraud protection, dispute resolution

A Success Story: UPI

Unified Payments Interface (UPI):

  • Launched in 2016 by NPCI (National Payments Corporation of India)
  • Instant bank-to-bank transfers via mobile
  • Free for consumers, minimal cost for merchants
  • Interoperable across all banks and apps

Growth Trajectory:

  • 2016: 0.02 billion transactions
  • 2020: 22 billion transactions
  • 2024: 131 billion transactions (10x growth in 4 years)
  • Transaction value: ₹200 trillion ($2.4 trillion)

Source: NCPI

Reflect

Quick Commerce vs. Traditional E-commerce

You need to buy groceries for tonight’s dinner. Compare your options:


Factor Traditional E-commerce
(Amazon/BigBasket) 		Quick Commerce
(Blinkit/Instamart)
Delivery time
Product selection
Price
Transaction costs saved
When would you choose this?


  • What transaction costs does quick commerce optimize that traditional e-commerce doesn’t?
  • What are the trade-offs? (Hint: Think about product variety, pricing, sustainability)
  • Can traditional retailers survive without adopting platforms? Why or why not?

Platforms don’t just connect buyers and sellers—they fundamentally restructure transaction costs, making previously impossible exchanges economically viable.

Audit of Multichannel Multimedia Marketing Strategy

3+3 Audit and Evaluation System

Assessment Areas

  • Design: Design deals with those aspects related to the development and the intended aims of the multichannel system

  • Process: The process assessment area covers the aspects of the multichannel approach related to the technical and organizational realization in logical continuation of the design assessment areas.

  • Outcome: The outcome assessment area deals with the performance of the multichannel marketing provision as well as the fulfillment of supply-driven and demand-driven success factors.

Thank You!

🙏

Q&A