For a long time now marketers have been discussing multichannel and omnichannel and all the challenges that go with the orchestration of marketing messages. Today, with the challenges of the economic crisis following the pandemic, we are seeing how consumers and businesses have been affected by the change in their daily habits. Consumers are shopping online, working professionals are distributed and collaborating remotely, increasing the importance of digital channels in their respective journeys.
Despite the enormous rise in the demand for online services, in the post-COVID-19 world, marketers should be wary of ignoring the holistic, end-to-end view of the purchase. Most user journeys will always involve offline touchpoints, especially for some consumer segments who are already returning to their usual habits.
In this article we will try to outline an effective approach to an omnichannel marketing program for companies that want to improve their overall digital (and offline) performance.
Any smart marketer’s goal is to target consumers with the right message in the right place and at the right time in order to improve brand awareness and perception, maximize sales and deliver excellent customer experience. With the proliferation of digital channels and devices it is becoming increasingly difficult for companies to perform these tasks and achieve their goals.
We believe the solution to this problem is omnichannel marketing – an approach to sales and marketing that seeks to provide a seamless customer experience regardless of the channel, device, online or offline or the combination of those.
Multichannel vs omnichannel
Before we go into details of omnichannel marketing we first need to differentiate the term omnichannel marketing from multichannel marketing because they often get confused. Multichannel marketing delivers marketing messages over multiple channels which commonly include website, social media, email, advertising, mobile, physical (TV, print etc.). These channels exist independent from one another, often having separate strategies and goals. This approach often creates confusing and impersonal experience because of the lack of integration and can be very frustrating for the consumer.
Omnichannel marketing focuses on delivering a consistent, personal experience for the end user across all channels and devices. The guiding principle is that it is consumer-focused instead of channel focused. And that is what makes all the difference. Although the guiding principle is simple enough, this is not effortless. Achieving constant engagement with the consumer across all devices and channels is not an easy task. And that is precisely why very few companies are good at it.
Why should you focus on omnichannel marketing strategy?
As we have already established, omnichannel marketing aims to provide seamless, personalized customer experience across all channels and devices. The product you are seeing on your mobile device will be presented in the same way on social media, in-store, in a newsletter and on the website. The message is consistent, device-agnostic and customized according to your preferences and behavior.
There are distinct advantages for brands as well:
- Majority of offline purchased are preceded and influenced by digital engagement, which means more engagement opportunities
- Average consumer uses multiple channels before purchasing
- Consistent message over multiple channels increases conversion rates
- Average order value is higher per order for consumers that use multiple channels vs single channel
- Consumers using multiple channels to interact with brands are more loyal as they have more engagement and personalized experience
How is omnichannel experience delivered?
Successful omnichannel strategies can only be delivered through technology. The advances in the marketing technology are helping brands to accurately target consumers with personalized messaging and are enabling communication and engagement in all phases of the customer journey. Despite the necessity for the investment in marketing technology, strategy and customer experience come first. Without the full knowledge of your customers, their needs, motivation, preferences and their journeys, investment into expensive state-of-the art technology will fail and may bury whatever chances there were on delivering company-wide commitment to excellent consumer experience. Also, it is worth mentioning, that despite what complexity lies “beneath the hood” customers prefer simplified user experience. And that is understandable. We are all bombarded daily by marketing messages, new products, sales pitches, options. It is easy to get overwhelmed and move on.
Creating an omnichannel marketing strategy
In order to develop a comprehensive omnichannel marketing plan, key strategies and tactics here are some best practices to consider:
1. Get to know your customers
To provide a truly valuable omnichannel customer experience take the customer journey. Walk a mile in your customer shoes. Gain insight into who they are and what they want to accomplish. Identify major milestones, roadblocks and opportunities to reduce stress, friction and improve satisfaction. There are various ways to collect info about your customers such as customer feedback forms, social listening, research, sales data, interview etc. Once you have collected the data and are confident your insight is sound and meaningful, organize a customer journey mapping workshop. We find it is a useful tool to capture customer experience across multiple touchpoints.
2. Get data
The biggest obstacle to creating omnichannel experience is the capture and use of data about your customers. Every step in the customer journey is an opportunity to capture data for future analysis. Segment your customers by utilizing the data you have collected. Create buyer personas and identify their goals, motivations, channel and content preferences. Organize your customer data into the so-called “golden record”- a single source of truth about your customer which contains everything you know about them and is always kept up-to-date.
3. Create content
The most challenging task of any marketing strategy is creating meaningful content. Today, a lot of organizations understand the need for creating content which has resulted in overproduction of content, a lot of it of poor quality and useless for the end user. In order to create meaningful, useful messages you must first know your goal: is it to sell, upsell or cross-sell or is it to promote a new product, educate or provide service? Next step is to understand the buying cycle of your customer, their goals and their content and channel preferences. In order to manage this complexity brands have to dedicate serious resources to creating, managing, distributing and measuring the impact of content.
4. Listen and learn
Customer experience is never “fixed”. It is an ongoing, never ending process of continuous improvement. You should monitor your communication and sales channels for insights and friction and be ready to react fast. Your organization should be organized and motivated to react in an agile manner and foster the culture of empathy for the user as well as ability to change often and fast.
5. Engage the entire company
One of the major obstacles to implementing an omnichannel marketing strategy is siloed organization. Despite what we know about the need to have a company-wide focus on delivering on customer needs, most organizations still exist in the old siloed organizational structure. Traditional roles need to be redefined and insights about customers need to be leveraged across the organization including marketing, sales, customer service, product development and others.
6. Use marketing technology
Omnichannel marketing relies heavily on technology. Key components are customer golden records, single-sign on and a CRM platform. Marketing technology landscape is expanding rapidly. Depending on what your needs are, there are various options, the most used being:
- Customer relationship management software (CRM)
- Integrated customer service tools
- Marketing automation platform
- Content management system
- Collaboration tools
- Analytical and BI tools
Is it worth the trouble?
Transitioning to an omnichannel strategy can be expensive, time consuming and frustrating for the organization. However, if done properly, it provides wonderful opportunities for establishing long-lasting, meaningful relationships with consumers and may offer your business the opportunity to deliver unique and sustainable competitive advantage. More and more companies are going into this directions and many of our clients are actively working on developing omnichannel strategies and are experiences massive improvements in their sales results and customer satisfaction ratings.
We would love to hear what you think about this topic, so please get back to us with comments, thoughts and personal experiences.
Have you begun drafting your omnichannel strategy? Are you planning it? What challenges do you face on your path to a seamless cross-channel experience?
