Why your brand needs to be channel agnostic (and how to achieve it)

The modern customer journey is channel agnostic. Search isn’t the gateway to online experiences that it once was - consumers now move between a variety of channels and platforms between inspiration and purchase. Brands need to build visibility where their target audiences are active and deliver messages that motivate action. As the consumer journey becomes more complex, channel-agnostic marketing is key to building interactions that drive sales.

What is channel-agnostic marketing?

Channel-agnostic marketing implements strategies without favouring or relying on any particular channel. In a digital landscape where 90% of consumers prefer omnichannel experiences, marketers need to reach target audiences on the right channels, at the right moments. Crucially, 75% of omnichannel customers want consistent experiences across channels.

As customer journeys become more complex, channel-agnostic marketing integrates multiple channels into a cohesive funnel. To achieve this, a successful channel-agnostic strategy needs to do three key things:

1. Pinpoint the channels and platforms target audiences use throughout the customer cycle

2. Identify the purpose of each channel at key stages (research, comparison, purchase, etc.)

3. Deliver messages across each platform that progress target audiences to the next stage of the customer cycle

Google dominated the online experience for many years, but times are changing. Now, Google itself says 93% of consumers are “increasingly channel agnostic”, taking an average of six or more actions before buying a product.

Today’s consumers use a growing variety of channels and platforms throughout the customer journey. They start on different channels, end on different channels and move between a variety of channels and platforms in between:

• 84% use search engines to learn more about businesses, products, services, etc.

• 94% of customers use websites other than Google, Bing, Facebook and Apple as part of their search

• 88% use social media to learn more about businesses, products, services, etc.

• 50% of all product searches start on Amazon (vs 31.5% on Google)

• Gen Z turning to Instagram and TikTok to search for local businesses

• 71% say reviews influence their decision to trust a brand

• Over 41% say they’re likely to use AI tools like ChatGPT to research potential purchases 

Channel-agnostic marketing helps you reach target audiences throughout the customer cycle, as they move between different channels and platforms.

Why is it important to be channel agnostic?

Consumer interactions with brands are spreading out across a growing variety of channels. If you don’t respond with a channel-agnostic strategy, then you’re missing out on discovery, conversions, retention and other key actions. Ultimately, you can’t maximise visibility, leads or conversions if you’re not active on the right channels. More importantly, you can’t nurture leads through the buying cycle if they slip through gaps in your channel coverage.

In other words, channel agnosticism is the foundation of modern marketing. It’s a necessity, not a best practice as the consumer journey spreads across more channels and platforms. Beyond the marketing fundamentals, channel agnosticism can also protect your strategy in several key ways:

• Reach channel agnostics throughout the customer cycle – lead, conversion, purchase, retention, loyalty, etc.

• Reach channel-agnostics and platform loyalists – some consumers are more agnostic than others (eg: regular Amazon customers).

• Less reliance on individual channels/platforms, limiting the hit of any performance drops, channel changes, etc.

• Reduce vulnerability to channel/platform changes – eg: algorithm updates, rising CPMs, platform bans/boycotts, etc.

• Reduce vulnerability to consumer trends – eg: Gen Z seeking out Amazon alternatives or concerns about Elon Musk’s activity on X.

• Greater agility to adapt to emerging platforms when the next TikTok or Etsy comes along.

• Greater agility to adapt creative strategies as consumer demographics evolve – eg: prioritising TikTok as Gen Z matures.

• Redistribute budgets to top-performing channels as results naturally fluctuate.

• Greater insights from all key channels give you a more complete picture of the customer cycle and consumer trends.

A channel-agnostic approach increases agility, allowing marketers and advertisers to adapt to changes faster, turning new challenges into opportunities. It helps you move along with consumer trends as they evolve, instead of always playing catch-up. By reducing your reliance on any given channel or platform, agnosticism also makes you less vulnerable to any disruption.

Crucially, incorporating performance data from multiple channels provides greater insights to inform creative decisions. You can constantly adjust budgets to prioritise top-performing channels and use insights from one channel to inform decisions on another.

As an example, we recently tested some UGC creatives, originally used for Meta and TikTok campaigns, in Demand Gen campaigns for YouTube.

After seeing strong performance across TikTok and Meta products, we decided to test the same creatives on the world’s biggest video platform. In this channel-agnostic experiment, conversion rates increased by 196% and total conversions by 2.5x.

How to implement a channel-agnostic marketing strategy

Channel agnosticism is a big change for many companies, especially if you’re used to prioritising specific channels or platforms. However, your target customers are already channel agnostic. You simply can’t reach them all – where and when it matters – unless you’re equally agnostic. This doesn’t mean you have to start launching campaigns across every channel and platform right away. As long as you’ve got the core channels covered, you can scale your agnostic strategy over time:

• Prioritise top-performing channels and platforms, redirecting budget towards them to maximise ROI.

• Produce creatives that work across multiple channels – for example, we find our top-performing TikTok creatives generally perform well across Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and other video-centric campaigns.

• Take full advantage of channel-agnostic data to pull insights from the whole customer cycle and inform strategic decisions.

• Constantly optimise your customer retention strategy across channels to maximise customer value and long-term ROI.

• Test new channels and forecast results to show their value and secure additional funding.

• Free up time and resources with automation tools – email marketing software, social media scheduling, AI support bots, ChatGPT, AI ad campaigns, etc.

• Outsource what you can’t automate to prioritise the most important activities in-house.

Given the scale of channel-agnostic marketing, you have a lot of potential bottlenecks to deal with. How do you manage so many channels, run enough campaigns, produce all those creatives, etc? Efficiency makes all the difference and you’ll need to find the right balance between in-house activity, automation and outsourcing to maximise results.