In today’s digital economy, shopping is becoming a personalized experience for everyone. Whether you’re browsing the shelves of your favorite store or searching for products on an eCommerce store, you often notice that the same brands appear everywhere.
Even in a broader context, most consumer purchase decisions today are driven by interconnected marketing. You see online advertisements for a product, receive emails from them, and even see them on your favorite streaming website.
So, how are brands connecting with consumers at every stage of their journey?
The answer is Omnichannel marketing. It helps brands connect different marketing channels and deliver uniform experiences across all mediums. By having a clear understanding of your customer behaviors, you can deliver personalized content and improve your conversion.
That is why, In today’s guide, we will break down Omnichannel marketing and understand how you can use it to improve your customer experience.
What is Omnichannel Marketing?
Omnichannel marketing is a marketing approach that includes the creation of a cohesive customer experience across digital endpoints. In simple terms, Omnichannel marketing focuses on delivering a uniform experience for customers regardless of how they’re engaging with your brand.
This marketing strategy is like constantly reminding your customers about your brand on different channels. This constant reminder can be an effective tool to build brand equity with your customers and improve conversion.
Let’s assume that you have a business that sells T-shirts. With an effective omnichannel marketing strategy, your customers can search for their favorite t-shirts on social media, explore the selection in your store, and receive a coupon to buy their favorite pair. This strategy delivers a customer-first experience across multiple marketing channels and devices.
Importance of Omnichannel Marketing
Omnichannel marketing has introduced a completely new paradigm in the world of marketing. This format truly factors in all the advantages of the digital medium and brings them together to deliver a unified brand experience.
The key factor in omnichannel marketing is personalization. Delivering unique customer experiences allows the brand to develop equity with customers and gain an advantage over other companies delivering a generic brand experience.
Here’s why you need to make omnichannel marketing a central part of your brand experience.
Tailored Engagement – Customers today want to interact with brands that deliver personalized experiences. They want to feel like you remember them and the things that are important to them. For example, if you’re sending Happy Birthday emails with discount codes that customers would not get otherwise, they will be much more likely to engage with your brand.
Increased Brand Reach – Creating a connected narrative across all your social channels goes a long way in increasing your reach. When customers constantly see your products across different forms of media, they are much more likely to get curious and interact with your brand. They will also have a particular familiarity with your brand before they actually make a purchase decision.
Competitive Advantage – In the current digital environment, every brand is making an effort to grab consumer attention. This means that paid ad spending is not enough to attract customers. You need to provide a value-added experience that separates you from your competition and makes you the obvious choice for your customers.
Data-driven Marketing – Maintaining a consistent approach across different channels allows you to have better data integration and understanding of consumer behavior. You can use that data to streamline your processes and improve your retargeting approaches. The result is an increase in revenue and repeat customer sales.
Increased Customer Satisfaction – A smooth sales experience from discovery down to the final purchase naturally has a positive impact on customer satisfaction. If your customers feel like they discovered your products on their own and got the best deal possible during purchase, they will be much more likely to be satisfied with their purchase in comparison to a pushy sales approach.
Examples of Omnichannel Marketing
Omnichannel marketing has become a fundamental element in both Business-to-Business (B2B) and Business-to-Consumer (B2C) models. It has become an essential aspect of marketing for all leading companies.
Let’s explore some of the biggest examples of how companies are deploying omnichannel marketing to enhance their sales and connect with consumers.
Nike
Omnichannel marketing is a fundamental facet of Nike’s marketing strategy. The brand extends its experience to customers across different content platforms, including digital communities and experiences.
The company’s Run Club and SNKRS applications facilitate running groups, meetups, and events. The company has also launched an application to provide personalized workout and fitness advice to consumers. This has resulted in an experience that extends far beyond apparel and shoe lines and becomes an essential part of the day-to-day life of consumers.
Sephora
Sephora embraces omnichannel marketing as a way to deliver personalized interactions to consumers. The company’s application includes push notifications, in-app communication, and simple ways for customers to schedule consultations.
This technology ties in directly with the company’s in-store configuration. Employees can have access to customer favorites and suggest products that they might have an affinity for. The loyalty program is also a major element of the brand’s omnichannel strategy.
The efforts have been highly productive for Sephora. The company shared that the customers visiting the website within 24 hours were three times more likely to purchase from the brand.
Best Buy
While Best Buy largely focuses on commerce, it has enhanced its in-store experiences by creating a diverse range of offerings for customers. Users explore options like smart home technologies and get free advisory services.
The Best Buy smartphone application also allows customers to shop from catalogs or pick up products from the store. The entire experience is made even better with 24/7 customer support from the company’s Geek Squad. The omnichannel marketing approach was a massive success for the company, with memberships climbing from 200,000 in 2018 to over 2 million within just a year.
How to Leverage Omnichannel Marketing for Your Business – Step-by-Step Guide
Omnichannel marketing is not just a tool for large organizations. It can help businesses of all scales with improved customer interactions and better branding performance. The key is to focus on the broader customer experience instead of staying limited to each marketing channel.
Here are some steps you can follow to create an omnichannel experience for your brand,
1. Data Collection
The first step of any successful marketing strategy is to have a clear understanding of your customers. You need to develop frameworks to collect data across all levels of the customer journey. This data will be a valuable tool in allowing you to understand the preferences of your target market.
You need to understand things like:
- What devices are your customers using?
- What products and features are they looking for?
- What brands have they interacted with before?
You need to make sure that you have the tools in place to collect relevant data from both online and offline channels. This can be done through a personalized framework and data management solution that allows you to evaluate customer interactions through different touchpoints as well as compare those interactions against benchmarks defined by holistic data.
2. Mapping Customer Journey and Data Analysis
Collecting relevant data is only the initial step in understanding your customers. You need to translate this data into trends and actionable insight to get proper value. The best way is to create an analytics platform that can analyze the data in real time and give you insight into trends so you can change your course accordingly. The same data can also be used to create a map of your customer journey.
Your customer journey is a breakdown of the steps the customers take before reaching the final decision. The map features a breakdown of the individual’s interests and all the interactions they’ve made with your brand. Once you understand that, you can leverage that data to create targeted campaigns for customers. It is also essential to factor in macro factors like economic conditions and trends before finalizing the targeting strategy.
3. Consistent Branding
More than anything else, your customers recognize your brand with your branding materials. You need to develop clear brand guidelines to ensure that your content is consistent across each channel.
Include things like:
- Image creation guidelines
- Brand values
- Content voice/tone
- Usability guidelines
This will ensure that your customers have a consistent brand experience and recognize your content everywhere.
4. Optimizing Performance
It is important to understand that launching your omnichannel marketing strategy is only the first part of the equation. You need to continuously test and optimize the performance of your omnichannel strategy to get the best value. This will enable your marketing team to determine ways to improve campaign spending, creative messaging, and other key variables.
The best way to optimize and test is to create different scenarios with variable ad spending, target audiences, and performance metrics so you can figure out a plan that will help you maximize your ROI and improve future decisions.
Key Takeaways
An effective omnichannel marketing strategy will allow your brand to reach customers regardless of what medium they are using. Through an effective strategy, you can deliver a consistent customer experience that factors in their preferences and previous interactions to foster positive relationships. This will have a significant positive impact on your engagement, ROI, and customer retention.
Today, it is easier than ever before for organizations to deliver an omnichannel experience for customers. By partnering with Sunan Designs, you can get an end-to-end omnichannel deployment that covers all the core elements of your marketing strategy. Our experienced team handles the development of content and helps you with strategic deployment and analysis as well.
What are your thoughts on Omnichannel marketing?
Let us know in the comments below!
