Any retail organization knows that capturing and holding the attention of consumers is becoming more and more challenging. Channel-hopping between e-commerce sites, brick-and-mortar store locations, and mobile and social shopping apps is just simply how people shop today.
If you want to win the sale, it’s important to streamline your customer journey and make it easy for people to buy from you in the quickest, most efficient manner. That requires an optimized omnichannel strategy.
In this post, we’ll discuss five important things to know in order to maximize your omnichannel marketing and catapult your brand to top-of-mind all the time.
What does Omnichannel mean?
Omnichannel simply means “all” channels. It’s the different ways consumers interact with a brand and its products, such as physical store locations, websites, mobile applications, social media, etc. It’s also the actual selling of a company’s products across multiple channels.
Knowing all the avenues in which you can exercise a customer touchpoint is the starting point for being able to deliver a tailored and seamless customer experience. Today’s consumer performs multiple rounds of research prior to making a buying decision. It can take several touches and marketing strategies to turn a browser into a buyer. The more integrated your channels are, the more chances you have to deliver content that is more likely to convert.
Why is an Omnichannel Strategy good for Marketing?
Having a 360-degree overview of all your marketing channels helps you uncover new ways to connect with your customers. Once you know where your customers are at different stages of the buying cycle, you can proactively align all your marketing and sales efforts, increase customer engagement, and improve the customer buying experience. This approach leads to higher customer satisfaction rates and repeat purchases.
Modern consumers, especially the younger generations, want to feel connected to and understood by the companies they buy from. Omnichannel marketing helps organizations personalize a buyer connection on the first touch and then nurture that relationship throughout the entire customer journey.
Educating your potential customer about the value of your product and brand while providing valuable and entertaining content along the process increases the chances that when they are ready to buy, they’ll buy from you and not your competitor. Omnichannel marketing gives you a competitive edge and higher conversion rates.
5 things to know in order to optimize your Omnichannel Strategy
Before you can effectively design an omnichannel approach for your business, you need to get crystal clear on your objectives. What are the specific goals of your strategy and how will you measure your success in achieving them? Are you looking to increase sales, raise brand visibility, engage more with customers? All of these and more? You have to know exactly where you’re headed before you can map out a route to get there.
Who is your ideal customer? How do you reach them? What are their pain points? Depending on your product or service, you may have several different customer personas across different channels. Each of these personas will need their own strategic plan.
Once you know your customers, you’ll know the channels they prefer. Some (like younger consumers) may prefer e-commerce or mobile shopping exclusively. Older consumers may only shop in physical store locations. And some will prefer a mixture of everything, including social media shopping. Think of every possible channel you can reach your audience and figure out how you can provide an amazing customer experience on each of them.
Your employees are an extension of your brand. They should be included as an integral part of your omnichannel strategy and should be trained accordingly. They’re the ones that will be providing the incredible experiences you want your customers to have. Hiring the right type of people, providing them with the proper training, and making sure they feel their contributions matter are the key components to your ultimate success.
Aim for continuous improvement by measuring the results of your omnichannel strategy. Pay attention to important KPIs. Survey your customers and employees about what’s working and what’s not. Test different programs and strategies and make it part of the company culture to constantly innovate.
Final thoughts
Having a great omnichannel marketing strategy requires a lot of planning, a lot of testing and measuring, and sometimes, a lot of luck. Unfortunately, there is no one-size fits all solution that covers every channel for every brand. Understanding, keeping track of, and building on buyer behavior across all channels is the key to omnichannel marketing success.
When you know your objectives, your customers, your channels, your employees, and your strengths and weaknesses, you can implement the right plan that reaches the right customer at the right time on the right channel.
