A Brief Intro to Omnichannel Marketing

June 6, 2022

Omnichannel marketing is a term you might have heard being used in your industry but it’s possible you might not know exactly what it means. That’s okay! We’re here to talk about what it really is as well as what the benefits of using this approach are. 

 

With omnichannel marketing, customers are able to have a shopping experience catered to them because they encounter brands on their own terms. The goal is for customers to be able to have a seamless user experience throughout the entire purchasing funnel while receiving a consistent brand experience the entire time.

What is Omnichannel Marketing

Omnichannel is the process of giving customers access to all of their products and offers on all channels and platforms to enable a more positive customer experience and nurture leads. Each channel works together to seamlessly create a consistent voice for the brand and provide a shopping experience that follows the customer. 

A few quick examples of this would be a customer receiving an email about an item they abandoned in their online shopping cart or a customer receiving a text message of a promotion or discount while shopping in the store. 

Benefits of Omnichannel Marketing

Despite being much harder to do, most companies will agree that implementing an omnichannel approach would lead to the best results. Customers are becoming more selective with which brands they engage with due to being sent high volumes of messages from a variety of brands, so having an integrated omnichannel customer experience can help set your company apart from the rest.

Improved Customer Satisfaction

With the focus being on the customer and their ability to have a consistent experience across all devices and channels, customer loyalty and engagement usually grow alongside an improved experience. Customers are naturally happier if they feel you’ve provided them with multiple ways to contact your business or purchase their product from their preferred device or platform. As a result, they’re more likely to look to your brand for what they need in the future.

Increased Revenue

As the number of methods a potential customer can access your products increases, your revenue is also bound to increase. Customers are able to engage with your brand across multiple channels and with each step of the buyer’s journey being more personalized, they’re more likely to go through with their purchase. The loyalty that you gain from your customers will help boost revenue as they continue to come back to purchase from your brand again and again.

Stronger Brand Identity

By successfully integrating all of your channels, you allow for your brand voice to be cohesive and distinct. This is especially true as you cultivate your image based on what your target audience also values. As a result, your targeted messaging will help your customers feel more connected to your brand and what you stand for.

Creating an Omnichannel Marketing Campaign

Despite being much harder to do, most companies will agree that implementing an omnichannel approach would lead to the best results. Customers are becoming more selective with which brands they engage with due to being sent high volumes of messages from a variety of brands, so having an integrated omnichannel customer experience can help set your company apart from the rest.

Step 1:

We recommend integrating your website and social media channels first and engaging with your customers regularly on these platforms. The key here is to make sure that you’re engaging with your audience on all your active social media accounts because it would be unprofessional and inconsistent of your brand if you neglected any of them. 

 

Step 2:

If what you’re doing could benefit from an app, this step may be more reasonable for you. Deciding to build an app is an investment and you want to make sure that there’s functionality behind it for your customers before putting in time and money into it.

 

Step 3:

After a while, you’ll want to start implementing newer channels with the goal of solving potential problems a customer may encounter. The main goal for the omnichannel approach is to ensure that your customers have an easy and hassle-free experience regardless of the method that they choose to interact with your brand.

 

Step 4:

It’s key that your messaging is the same throughout every channel now. Sure, you may have more personalized messages catering to each customer but consistency is also very important to the customer. For example, it would be very unprofessional if you had ads that were offering different discount rates on different platforms. Feel free to work around your brand voice and come up with creative ways to share the same message!

 

Step 5:

Incorporate a call to action (CTA) whenever appropriate and make sure that the CTA doesn’t feel out of place. Remember that the CTA should only help to move the customer seamlessly across the funnel and continue to better their experience rather than pushing your own company’s objectives.

Examples of Omnichannel Marketing

Now that you know much more about omnichannel marketing and how it could benefit your business, we’ll briefly take a look at some examples of how other companies are incorporating this approach to their business.

  • Online and in-store integration where customer location data can be used with store inventory to help customers find the closest location to pick up their product
  • Apps that make it easier for the customer to find what they need in store or make it more convenient to pick up an order placed online
  • Making it possible for customers to continue their shopping experience on several devices

We hope this has been helpful in your understanding of omnichannel marketing and in your decision of whether or not to incorporate this into your brand growth. The timeline for properly integrating every channel that you have might take a while but the optimized customer experience that it provides is something that would likely be profitable for your business in the long run.