Mastering Omni-Channel Marketing: 4 Key Mistakes To Avoid

By Brian Kittelson , CEO

The objective of omnichannel marketing is to amplify unit conversion by offering a more personalized, convenient, and seamless shopping experience for consumers.? However, the path to executing an effective omnichannel marketing campaign is fraught with challenges and we’ve highlighted the top 4 common mistakes we see brands making today.? Understanding and avoiding these common mistakes will deliver more growth behind your omnichannel investment.

1)???? Lack of Understanding/Team Alignment On Required Behavior Change

One of the foundational errors in many campaigns is the absence of team consensus on the specific behavior change needed within the target audience.? Growing a brand can only be accomplished in one of three ways; 1) Get new consumers to buy your brand, 2) Encouraging existing consumers to purchase more frequently or 3) Convincing existing consumers to buy more units per occasion.? Creating a core consumer question that highlights the desired shift in your target’s behavior is essential to ensuring all parties who work on your omni plan are working toward the same objective.? Here are a couple examples of strong core consumer questions which help deliver the right messaging and mix strategies.

Large Cereal Brand:? What would motivate 1,000,000 non-user boomer men to buy 1 box of brand X per month over the next 6 months?

Large Tire Manufacturer:? What would motivate 625,000 light truck owners, with 40-50K miles on their Continental Terrain All Season tires to replace them with 4 new Brand Y tires?

Large Liquor Brand:? What would motivate 970,000 current millennial male consumers to make two additional trips per year to purchase brand Z and purchase 1 unit/trip.

2)??? Lack of Retail Media Consideration

Understanding the power of retail media is another common oversight.? This crucial element of omnichannel marketing allows brands to access the strongest 1st party data available along the purchase journey to amplify conversion.? Within retail media, brands can target and personalize their messages more effectively, enhancing visibility and amplifying conversion both online and offline, in partnership with retailers.? Unfortunately, many brand teams still don’t fully understand the strength of retail media or leave it to their shopper marketing teams to leverage, as needed, which can lead to a multi-channel strategy for your brand vs a seamless omnichannel plan, if the retail media perspective is not fully incorporated.? Challenge your media or shopper team to bring you up to speed on what leading retail media networks (Walmart Connect, Kroger Precision Marketing and Target’s Roundel) can do to drive brand awareness, amplify conversion, and strengthen retail partnerships.?

3)??? ?Creative Dead Ends

Brand teams often use multiple agencies to develop their omnichannel creative, but this also requires higher levels of creative coordination to ensure no creative ‘dead ends’ occur in the consumer journey.? For example, we still see digital ads in the marketplace directing consumers to a brand’s general website vs moving them further down the funnel to enable conversion.?? An effective solve to this is to create an omni campaign wall where all creative, across all tactics, is put on the wall to ensure your creative is providing a unified consumer experience and is working together to quickly move consumers from awareness to conversion.? The point of conversion should always be 1 click away, when possible, and never more than two.

4)?? Lack of a Dynamic Learning Plan

A critical yet often overlooked component of an effective omnichannel campaign is the learning plan.? This involves establishing a framework for ongoing evaluation and refinement of strategies based on consumer engagement.? Without this feedback loop, brands may continue to miss the mark, wasting valuable budgets on ineffective tactics and creative.? An effective learning plan is comprised on a two-tier evaluation framework; 1) Media Performance:? Directional indicators of reaching the right audience and engagement rates (CTR, CPC, CPCV, shares/likes, etc.) and 2) In-Market Performance: Near real time performance analytics focused on how tactics are impacting unit sales.? This near real time understanding allows brands to lift and shift support throughout the year maximizing the impact of their spending.? ?

Understanding these common mistakes is crucial for brands aiming to leverage the full potential of omnichannel marketing.? By aligning your broader team to the consumer behavior change needed to deliver your growth objective, embracing retail media as a critical element of your omni-mix, ensuring cohesive creative exists across the journey and adopting a robust learning plan, brands can enhance their marketing effectiveness and achieve sustainable growth.

Public Label is a new breed of agency pioneering new levels of growth for bold brands.? If you’re serious about amplifying growth through the development of truly impactful omni-plans, we’d love to talk!