Planning your business’s exit strategy is a complex process – besides finding ways to make a profit or limit losses, you also need to find a buyer for your business that would fit your demands.
That’s why you need a marketing campaign – it will help you spread the word within your industry and reach out to potential buyers in an organic way.
But how to make sure that as many people as possible find out that your company is available for purchase?
Multi-channel marketing can be the right solution in this case.
A Brief Intro to Multi-Channel Marketing and Its Benefits
Multi-channel marketing is a strategy that involves communication with potential buyers through a combination of communication channels. For instance, it can involve social media marketing, email marketing, and some indirect means of communication, like a product catalog.
Multi-channel marketing has a variety of benefits for entrepreneurs who are selling their business:
- you get diverse data about your potential buyers since you’re using a variety of channels
- buyers can interact with you through the communication channels they find comfortable
- the use of multiple marketing channels helps you reach better engagement
The main goal of this strategy is to give your target audience multiple choices to communicate with you. As a result, you’ll also be able to reach a more diverse audience of buyers.
Is multi-channel marketing worth an investment?
It may seem that the more channels are involved in a marketing strategy, the more it will cost. And, for an entrepreneur who’s selling a business, high expenses are unacceptable. However, the statistics show that this marketing strategy is well worth your investment:
- 50% of marketers who use a multi-channel strategy say they usually or always hit their financial goals;
- companies that use multi-channel marketing experience 3 times higher campaign effectiveness rates;
- 72% of buyers say they prefer connecting with brands through multiple channels.
As you can see, multi-channel marketing has a high potential for the entrepreneurs who are selling their businesses.
But how do you use this strategy to find the right buyers for your venture?
Let’s take a look.
1. Build a Unified Buyer Persona for All Channels
A target buyer persona is an essential step in any marketing campaign. But since you’ll be using multiple channels that deliver diverse data, you might make the mistake of creating separate buyer personas for each individual channel.
However, it’s important to keep in mind that to do multi-channel marketing the right way, you need to create and maintain a consistent image of a buyer persona across all the channels you’ll be using.
The reason behind the unified approach to the buyer persona is simple – regardless of the channel, the buyer that approaches you should have the same interests and needs.
So, how to build a target buyer persona?
- Consider the niche first. Since you’re planning to sell your business, the preferred buyer should come from your niche. For instance, if you’re selling Italian learning courses, the buyer should preferably come from the same niche of teaching foreign languages. The choice of the niche will ultimately define all other points in a buyer persona.
- Study the demographics. In this regard, the most important point is where your ideal buyer is located. Exit strategies that involve multi-channel marketing are often focused on a specific geographical location. When drafting your buyer persona, choose a specific location that you will to target through multiple channels.
- Make a focus on the job position. The ideal buyer for your business should also be the person who makes an executive decision about company acquisitions. That’s why this point should also be added to the description of your buyer persona.
Keep in mind – your target buyer persona can change under different circumstances, for instance, if your exit strategy changes. But it should remain the same for all channels if you want to attract the buyer that fits your expectations.
2. Select the Top Channels for Targeting Potential Buyers
Once you have your target buyer persona ready, you can start choosing the channels for your marketing strategy. But don’t try to target all the channels at once just to expand your reach. It will not work because your target buyer persona probably doesn’t use all of them.
So, how do you pick the channels for your strategy?
Study the audience data on each respective channel that you’re interested in. For instance, if you are going to target your buyers through social media, check the Analytics tab to compare the audience demographics there with the demographics of your target buyer persona. Here’s how the audience analytics looks on LinkedIn:
In the image above, social data is showing that the majority of a company’s audience on LinkedIn has a job in engineering. There are also other metrics, like job position and management level, and if they match with the target buyer persona, LinkedIn can be added to the multi-channel marketing strategy.
3. Develop a Diverse Content Strategy
The last important point in multi-channel marketing for the entrepreneurs who are selling a business is the content that you develop for it. Since this marketing strategy presupposes a variety of communication means, the content for this strategy should also be diverse.
Depending on the channel, content types may include:
- a website banner
- a social media ad
- a blog post
- an email
- a post in an industry group on a social media platform
These are just a few examples of the content you can develop for your multi-channel marketing strategy to notify the potential buyers that you’re selling your venture.
When choosing the content, consider the channel where it will appear. To make sure that this content attracts your target buyer effectively, you can study the content preferences of your audience on each respective channel and tailor your choice accordingly. For instance, on social media, this data is available through the Analytics tab, and here’s how it looks on Facebook:
At this point, you also need to keep in mind that the message you’ll be sending via your content should be consistent on all the channels, regardless of the content type you choose. This is necessary to attract the right type of buyer for your business.
Conclusion
Multi-channel marketing has a lot of benefits for the entrepreneurs who are selling their business. This strategy allows you to expand your search for the ideal buyer by targeting different means of communication.
Of course, to get all the benefits from this marketing strategy, you need to do it right. Make sure you have a unified buyer persona for all the channels, choose only those platforms where your ideal buyer is more likely to find you, and target them with the right content to attract their attention.
Hopefully, our tips and recommendations will help you use multi-channel marketing to successfully complete your exit strategy and make a profit from selling your business.
About the author: Ryan is a passionate blogger and writer who likes sharing his thoughts and. Now he works as a content editor and internet researcher, you can check his website. He likes to travel and explore new countries.
