Importance of Creating an "Omnichannel Marketing Strategy"

The Definition of Omnichannel Marketing?

Omnichannel marketing can be defined as a marketing strategy that focuses on delivering a seamless experience and a consistent message across all available channels (i.e. SMS, email, PPC ads, SEO, etc.)

How Does Omnichannel Work??

An omnichannel approach different marketing architecture and has been gaining steam in the past few years. Customers in every industry and business, including yours, now have much more complex journeys until they finally buy something.

According to?research, a third of online purchasing journeys involve multiple devices, regardless of sector or country.

Therefore, the strategy has attracted a lot of attention as the “next big thing” in marketing. In this article, we’ll go through the basics of omnichannel marketing, its differences from multichannel marketing, and propose several strategies that you can implement in your own business.

Omnichannel vs Multichannel Example

The end goal of omnichannel marketing is to bring everything together. All marketing is supposed to be treated as one combined entity. Since the focus is shifted away from very particular, channel-related metrics toward the shopping experience, the strategy is essentially turning the company towards a customer-centric?multi-channel marketing solution.

On the other hand, multi-channel marketing spans several different channels. However, each channel has its own goals, strategy, metrics, and model track instead of being treated as one entity.

While being the classic way to do marketing, the multichannel approach does have its drawbacks. For example, the user experience will often be uneven and unequal across channels, which can cause confusion or frustration.

How to implement omnichannel marketing? The arrangement may be harder to achieve as it attempts to combine every piece of the user journey and make it seamless.

However, it brings with it tremendous benefits. Omnichannel marketing usually earns twice or even thrice as much engagement from users*. As a result, such a boost in engagement supports a surge in sales.

Additionally, whenever three or more channels are used for marketing, the retention rate is 90% higher when compared to a single channel.?Finally, customers who have longer user journeys and buy from both the physical and online store bring up to three times the total lifetime customer value*!

All in all,?omnichannel automation?is probably one of the most effective strategies out there. That’s why you should start considering integration with omnichannel marketing fields.?

4 Omnichannel Marketing Strategies Examples

If it was easy, everyone would be doing omnichannel marketing at the blink of an eye. Unfortunately, it can be complicated when compared to other marketing strategies. However, there are several key steps that can be taken to ensure success.

1. Omnichannel Marketing Needs a Cultural Shift

Like with any large changes across the company, omnichannel marketing needs a cultural shift with it. Many departments will have to start working together more than ever to ensure proper marketing management.

Everyone in the organization needs to move towards two key ideas: data sharing and?omnichannel customer engagement. Data sharing is necessary between departments because it’s the building block of the entire omnichannel content strategy.?

If one department starts hoarding information, that’s it for your strategy, as data paints the proper picture of your customer. Thus, everyone in your company must be willing to share?retail marketing?information.

Additionally, a customer-centric switch will be necessary. Omnichannel marketing thrives on providing a smooth and continuous experience for the customers of your brand at all times, driving?brand loyalty.

Therefore, everyone, from eCommerce marketers to developers, will need to start thinking less about getting KPI numbers as high as possible and more about combining the entire experience.

Of course, measuring success will still be required. However, with omnichannel marketing in place, you shouldn’t be placing short-term boosts in metrics if they would damage the longer-term overall user experience associated with your brand.

2. Get All The Data

Omnichannel isn’t that different from most other modern marketing purposes. Data is an integral part of the entire process, just like with anything else. However, there should be a minor switch in focus.

Most companies overemphasize internal data that are collected through tools like Google Analytics. While it’s certainly extremely important, in omnichannel marketing basic internal data just won’t cut it anymore.

One of the best sources of information on the customer experience is, of course, the customer themselves. Thus, for?omnichannel advertising, collecting external data (e.g. customer reviews, comments, ratings, etc.) is critical.

In fact, some businesses have started rewarding customers with small bonuses for leaving consistent feedback. That way, you could improve the user experience and gather consistent and in-depth feedback about how your customers feel.

Additionally, it’s highly recommended to go through the user journey yourself. Simply imagine yourself (or have a quality assurance specialist do it) being a customer and go through the motions of buying something. You will likely notice at least a few areas that could be improved.

3. Target and Personalize Omni-channel Campaigns

As mentioned previously that mass messaging is a great way to get everyone to?unsubscribe?and get nothing out of your marketing efforts. Without targeting and personalization, omnichannel marketing campaigns couldn’t even exist.

If you’ve followed step #2, you should be getting tons of data about your customers, your business, and everything in between. Putting that data to good use is not only about upgrading your website or emails. It’s also about painting a better picture and profile of each customer.

To effectively profile your customers, you can separate them into minor segments according to certain features. Usually, these features can include demographics (e.g. age, gender, location, etc.), campaign and?email engagement?(e.g. what was interacted with and for how long), and shopping behavior.

Here’s a brief sneak peek of customer data managed (I got this from an open forum). Remember that data from email and?SMS marketing?campaigns are stored conveniently in the exact location.

All of these details would allow you to send more personalized messages and target the customer through many channels. A great example of an extremely targeted approach to omnichannel is to collect abandoned cart data and match it as accurately as possible with advertisements in other channels.

Of course, retargeting people who left without adding anything to carts with ads work just as well.

4. Always Test Omni-channels Marketing

Omni-channel marketing is still rather new. It has been enabled only in the last several years as access to granular data has become more prominent. While it already seems to be a great marketing approach, no one knows how to do it perfectly right.

That means you will need to experiment and find out what works for your business. You will have to go through a lot of “boring” work, such as website audits for user experience. However, since there’s no template for omnichannel marketing, testing and measuring are your best bet.

Thus, like with any other marketing effort, gather as much data as possible and include strong communications. Then set everything aside and start analyzing – what did your customers respond best (or worst) to? Could it be just statistical variance or are there other reasons? Answering questions like these will allow you to get the most out of omnichannel marketing.

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