It's just as simple as it sounds. It's running traffic from different sources to your website or business and acquiring customers through those channels, whether it's, Facebook, YouTube, Google, Snapchat, or Pinterest. There are so many different sources online right now that people are using, mainly search engines and social media platforms, as well as marketing.

That being said, the biggest mistake I see is businesses spending too much money on platforms which do not generate the highest conversions for them. I see most companies trying to get into Facebook, Snapchat, and Google, from a paid ad standpoint. What most people do is they run traffic from Facebook, Google and Snapchat, but they're tracking each source individually.

Each one of these platforms has their own individual attribution model, meaning they track their own traffic and not other platform's traffic as well. For example, if someone goes to Facebook, and sees your ad, and then seven days decide to go onto Google and search for your business, and then clicks one of your ads because they saw you on Facebook two weeks ago, Google and Facebook are going to credit themselves for that purchase. So the biggest mistake I think people make is not segmenting data.

The first thing is simply segmenting the data better through UTM code. They're called URL parameters and on each platform, they give you the ability to put tracking tags at the end of a link. For example, If you ever share something to a friend, and you share a link through a site, you'll see the text within the link which tells you which platform it has been shared from. Google Analytics allows you to manually put where each interaction with your site has originally come from, this way you can work out what campaign each customer is clicking.

Google Analytics is an absolute necessity in your business, especially if you're running e-commerce or even if you're a local business, I noticed all the local businesses we work with can know how busy they're going to be the next day based on their Google Analytics traffic. They're checking their Google Analytics traffic and seeing what's happening on their site and phone calls. This determines what the next 24 hours will look like and how to staff accordingly.

The number that you add up to, from looking at all your ad interactions on each platform, will be higher than what you will actually make in-store. This is because many platforms and multi-channels are contributing to the same conversions, they're each giving themselves 100% credit for the conversion. Whereas by using analytics, you can split to share the conversion credit, meaning if someone comes through Facebook and then makes a search on Google, later on, you can split that credit in half. This is good for a business owner to know and is important because you can specifically work out how much you are making from each ad type.

By understanding your customer journey and what is actually contributing, on Google Analytics, you can divide all kinds of data so that you know what each segment of your marketing is bringing in. This way you can better gauge which channels are being the most profitable for your business.

First of all, you want to understand the platform that you're working on. Even though it's the same brand, each platform you run an ad on requires a different look, the viewer has a completely different expectation of what their experience should look like on each specific channel.

I think Google is the easiest platform to run ads on, just because you only need to type words, graphics are not required. Number two would be Facebook, and Instagram, they are very easy to run ads on and to target audiences. You can also run photo and video ads. I 100% recommend you run video ads and photo ads. I've seen some of our biggest clients have much more success with photo ads and video ads.

Thirdly, I'd say Pinterest is a good platform to use as you can also run photo ads, however, it is more of a challenge as it takes a lot more time to get a sale from Pinterest as users are more likely planning rather than searching. Lastly, the one which I think is the hardest, Snapchat. You have to be very conscious of the content that you're creating as it has to fit a vertical video.

If you do want to expand into multi-channel, I highly recommend starting with the easiest options that are listed first and then working your way up to the more difficult ones.

Due to the conditions of 2020, everything moved online. Now more than ever, everyone is trying to sell stuff online from their homes and on Facebook which is a super competitive space as that's where everyone goes. For our business, connecting Google Ads with Google Merchant Center has been a game-changer. Surprisingly, from this, our business has achieved a greater rate of custom compared with the use of Facebook. From a multi-channel marketing perspective, you need to start embracing the thought of using multiple channels right now more than ever, because everyone's competing on the same platforms.

For us, the big game changers have been Google Ads and content. We decided to open a whole division in our business to primarily focus on content, as you can never have enough. Often companies waste so much money creating brand new pieces of content when they can easily adapt bits which already exist. I really urge businesses to prioritize the creative side within their business as multi-channel sources not only add value but also bring people together.