Digital marketing has evolved rapidly over the past few years. While marketers must get acquainted with these concepts, they are usually perplexing to many of us. Today, we are going to discuss Omnichannel marketing.
With the ongoing growth of marketing techniques and changes in customer behavior, some marketers don’t heed this marketing strategy. However, many others regard it as a valuable approach for the organization. With the advancement of technology and change in customer behavior, it becomes essential for brands to pursue a holistic approach – an omnichannel experience. It is an approach to offering a unified experience to customers across all the touchpoints, which helps the brands stay at the top of their game.
Read this guide and follow the best practices mentioned below to execute this approach effectively. This article will cover omnichannel marketing, its benefits, use to the best extent, and more. To know more about such marketing and get the right assistance for implementing it to your own company, contact AdMedia. They will help you build a successful campaign.
What Does Omnichannel Marketing Mean?
Omnichannel marketing refers to the seamless integration of messaging, branding, and online and offline touchpoints recorded while a customer moves down the sales funnel. It addresses the consumer-centric view of the marketing method and helps customers interact with brands via many platforms, from social media to customer care hotlines.
In an omnichannel approach, channels collaborate with each other rather than working independently. Implementing such a marketing approach is to put customers on the top rather than the brand. It provides a personalized and seamless experience with a tailored message to each customer regardless of what point they are at in their customer journey. Such marketing ensures that the customers have a positive, consistent, and more impactful experience on each channel. All these efforts result in a smooth experience and promote client loyalty, brand visibility, sales, and revenue.
When it comes to this kind of marketing, the biggest misconception is that omnichannel marketing is similar to multichannel marketing. However, they are both very different.
Importance Of Omnichannel Marketing Approach
Omnichannel marketing holds great benefits that, if executed well, can yield better results. Here are some of the primary reasons why this approach should be adopted.
– Better User Experience: Omnichannel pays attention to the customer’s experience across different devices rather than the channel. This ensures a better customer experience. Since the continuous efforts are for providing personalized service to every member, it increases the value and trust of the customers in the brand.
– Offers Higher Purchase Rate: Compared to those dependent on just one channel of marketing, omnichannel marketers get over 250% higher purchase rate. Since customers have become accustomed to using numerous channels, this purchase rate is projected to increase further in the near future.
– Boosts Customer Loyalty: This is one of the best approaches for e-commerce marketers to retain their customers for a longer duration. As per recent studies, omnichannel marketing strategies tend to offer marketers a greater retention rate, as high as 90%, than those who typically use a single platform.
– Better Spend Rate: Customers are more likely to spend more time on omnichannel brands and make purchases. According to the statistics, brands who run marketing campaigns on at least three platforms prompt buyers to pay 13% more time.
– Better Attribution Data: Omnichannel approach is not just meant for customer’s experience; it also helps in data analytics. By keeping track of customer engagement over multiple platforms, brands can better understand the customer journey and determine which campaign works best for them.
– Improves Brand Recall: With so many brands in the market, brand recall is a significant factor in gaining success. Employing omnichannel strategies emphasizes consistency which acts as a reminder and eventually strengthens the brand recall.
Steps To Get Started With Omnichannel Marketing
With the availability of numerous marketing channels and every company focusing on omnichannel strategies, the customer journey has become highly intricate. This makes it essential to lay a good foundation before stepping ahead.
Now that you understand what omnichannel marketing is, it’s time to put this knowledge to good use. Here are the steps to build an effective marketing strategy.
Step 1: Walk In The Customer’s Shoe
Prioritizing customers is one of the major reasons behind the success of omnichannel strategies. Hence, evaluating the customer’s journey and understanding what works best for them is the first step. A marketer should look at all the touchpoints and gather necessary information like buyer persona, likes, dislikes, demographics, needs, behavior, goals, performances, etc. Also, try to learn how you can better serve the customers.
Step 2: Analyze The Data and Create A Framework
Once you are equipped with all the required data, you must get the whole team on board to analyze the data and create the framework. Having an outline will help in better responding and interacting with customers. Since this approach considers multiple channels, the framework is usually bigger and more complicated. With the right guidance and expertise of AdMedia, creating a framework can become much easier.
Step 3: Divide Your Customers Into Different Segments
The next step is to divide the customers into different categories per their purchase path. This is yet another important step to nail the omnichannel marketing approach. Your segmentation can be based on multiple factors, including demographics, location, age, gender, lifestyle choices, shopping habits, purchase history, campaign engagement, etc. Segmenting customers in different groups will make marketing a bit easier and help in taking it to the next level.
Step 4: Personalize Your Target Message
Personalization is one of the most important elements of the omnichannel approach. Once you are done laying the groundwork, the next step is to personalize the target message. Here, you are required to establish a 1:1 connection with the audience to get an accurate understanding of their needs. Then, adopt the right tool and data points to give personalized content. Carefully implement this step as it makes the customers feel valued.
Step 5: Test The Process Until Satisfied
Once it is in place, you are required to test out everything. Actively testing different messages, subject lines, times, etc., helps in knowing the approach and establishing what works the best. Also, test the segments and channels repeatedly until you get the best results. The insights you will get from testing will lead you to the perfect formula for attracting customers and marketing the product.
Popular Examples of Omnichannel Marketing
There are multiple e-commerce businesses that are major players in omnichannel marketing. Some of the brands already implementing outstanding marketing strategies are given below. Take a look.
DISNEY
Disney is one of the prime examples and definitely a champion of omnichannel marketing. It gets the experience right down to minute details. The user experience with Disney begins with their website that is beautifully designed for all devices. Also, their app is interesting and user-friendly that offers real-time information. They take the omnichannel experience to the next level by introducing the Magic Band Program, which can unlock hotel rooms, place orders, enter the park, take the rides, etc. It also helps in easily connecting with the Disney Photopass account.
STARBUCKS
The customer experience of Starbucks omnichannel marketing is exceptional, and this includes their rewards app. Starbucks offers a free reward card for making purchases. This card is unique because it can be easily checked or reloaded via mobile device, in-store, website, and app. Other than the card, the app can be used to check the menu, place orders, get push notifications, offers, etc. Also, every modification that a customer makes through the app will easily get updated to the website in no time.
SEPHORA
Being an online retailer, Sephora, the beauty giant, is well known for connecting online purchasers to their in-store visits. They use this approach of marketing to increase their offline visits. The brand offers several workshops and free makeup trials with in-store tablets that are installed to access the ‘Beauty Bag’ while enjoying the shopping. Customers can look up various items through tablets and even add them to their wishlist. This omnichannel approach of the brand helped increase its sales greatly.
UBER
Uber is a renowned mobility service provider that redefined a customer’s taxi experience by implementing innovative strategies. One of its major offerings includes its user-friendly app, by which a customer can manage their ride in multiple ways. A person can choose the vehicle of their choice and apply promo codes to enjoy greater discounts. Once the ride gets confirmed, the rider can share the location, get details of the driver, add a trip with friends, rate the driver, and add tips. Apart from this, food can also be ordered through the app. The rider can also text the driver for knowing or sharing the location.
OASIS
Oasis, a UK-based fashion retailer, offers a unified shopping experience that combines e-commerce websites, mobile apps, and brick and mortar stores. Their marketing approach includes the sales associates who are provided with iPads in the physical stores to serve customers with real-time, accurate information about products. Other than this, these iPads can also be used for making easy and quick payments. Besides the smart mobile marketing experience, OASIS omnichannel marketing also includes its Instagram strategy of user-generated content and beautiful posts of shoppable items.
These are the top five brands that have nailed the omnichannel marketing approach. If you are intrigued by these companies and want to achieve great results, you must get in touch with the experts at AdMedia. The brand is well-versed in letting your customers enjoy a unified and seamless experience every step of their way.
Our Final Verdict
With an omnichannel approach, a marketer can offer the customers a consistent experience across all the touchpoints. Read this guide and implement the strategies successfully. If you do this the right way, you will not only increase customer engagement but will also boost affinity for your brand. While it sounds overwhelming to have a strong presence over multiple channels and get all of them operating in sync, it might be done easily with appropriate assistance. If you are contemplating omnichannel marketing, you can reach out to AdMedia. They will help you lay the foundation and offer your customers a comfortable and personalized experience across all channels.