With shopping habits rapidly evolving, it’s more important than ever for your multiple marketing channels to work together to engage consumers and ultimately lead them to purchase from you. Enter omnichannel marketing.
Even if customers are in your physical store, about 42 percent of in-store shoppers search for information online while browsing in-store. In addition, consumers reference up to 10 sources of information before making a purchasing decision.
As part of your digital marketing strategy, your brand likely already has various marketing channels. Omnichannel marketing is all about leveraging your multiple channels to deliver a seamless customer experience. This is where omnichannel goes beyond multi-channel marketing because multi-channel treats each channel as separate and independent. Omnichannel requires you to think through how each channel can complement another and work together to create a personalized experience for the consumer whether you’re connecting with them through desktop, mobile devices or brick-and-mortar stores.
For example, a customer could be direct messaging with your customer service representative on Facebook and then purchasing from your website. Or, you text a customer an offer to compel the completion of his or her purchase after abandoning the shopping cart on your website. You want to offer a seamless brand experience regardless of platform and preferred buying method.
Omnichannel shoppers spend between 50 percent and 300 percent more than traditional shoppers. In addition, omnichannel marketing campaigns generate a purchase rate that’s about 287 percent higher than single-channel campaigns. Companies that use omnichannel marketing also maintain about a 91 percent higher customer retention rate, year over year.
Clearly, your brand should not miss the opportunities that omnichannel marketing offer. The following five omnichannel marketing tips aim to help you grow your business across platforms.
Research and understand your target audience
To create a successful strategy in omnichannel marketing, you must understand who your audience is so that you can effectively build relationships with them across channels.
Who are they? Where are they from? What are their goals and challenges? Which devices are they using? What content do they love? Which platforms and/or channels do they use most?
Social media listening, customer feedback (through surveys and otherwise) and your data analytics tools (such as Google Analytics and social media metrics) can arm you with the information you need to make smart choices about how to best engage with your audience.
Then, you’ll want to use that information to segment your audience. This can include basic demographics, such as age, gender and so on. It also could be based on geographic location. There are many ways to segment your audience. Find out more.
Not sure who your target audience is exactly? Check out our seven tips.
Audit your technology
Depending on the software you’re using for your point of sale system (POS), customer relationship management system (CRM) and so on, it might be time for an upgrade.
If you’re systems do not or cannot integrate, that can be an issue that will hinder your omnichannel marketing tactics and performance.
DailyStory (which features email and SMS text marketing, segmentation, personalization, automation and much more) integrates with your favorite applications, such as Shopify, WordPress, Salesforce, etc. You also can connect to thousands of other applications using Zapier.
So, when someone joins your subscriber list, a welcome email can automatically send. Or, if a customer abandons his or cart on your website, an automated reminder can be sent to them via text or email. The sky is the limit.
Evaluate, choose your channels
If you’re new to digital marketing (perhaps your business just launched), omnichannel marketing can feel especially overwhelming.
Start simple. Start small. Then, build and grow from there.
Identify up to three channels and develop a campaign that will run for a set period of time. Consider the potential touchpoints you’ll have with your target audience on those chosen channels (hopefully the ones where your audience spends the most time). That way, you can stop hesitating, get something into action where you can then evaluate its performance and how you can improve for the next campaign.
Omnichannel marketing also involves customer service across multiple channels, so consider how you can best meet your customers where they are, whether that’s Facebook Messenger, email, live chat, Twitter DMs, etc.
Even if you have existing channels already in play, it’s never too late to evaluate what channels are working and which might actually be hurting your brand reputation (because you can spend enough resources on them to properly maintain). More isn’t always better. Quality over quantity always.
Optimize your content
Gone should be the days of copying and pasting the same social media post across platforms. Every platform (whether it’s a social media network, your blog, videos on YouTube, you name it) should be treated uniquely. This can be based on the features available, target audience there and platform expectations. For example, going live on video and answering customer questions on the fly about a new product or service is something you could easily do on Facebook or Instagram. But you wouldn’t do the same on TikTok, Twitter, a mass SMS text message or even your blog.
Consideration for every place you publish content should be in play as part of your content marketing strategy in general, but it’s especially important for omnichannel marketing.
Thinking through your content with the omnichannel lens, you want to offer:
- Engaging and personalized content that supports customers through each stage of their purchasing journey with you.
- Researched and information-filled solutions to help customers compare products or service and make decisions.
- A range of content that supports the needs of your targeted customer.
- Content that’s optimized for the channel and device that it’s beeing consumed on.
While you’re brainstorming, check out our seven tips to level up your overall content marketing.
Measure, measure, measure
Data is everything in omnichannel marketing. The only way you can improve and evolve your efforts is to track the performance of all omnichannel campaigns across platforms.
This isn’t just about reading an analytics reports. Consciously test tactics, request customer feedback and act on the information you’re learning as you move forward.
Typical key metrics to monitor can include email open rate, social media engagement, sales conversion rate and customer retention. But it really depends on the nature of your omnichannel marketing campaigns themselves.
Don’t forget to set goals at the beginning of each campaign. That way, you can have a better sense of whether your efforts are effectively growing your business.
In conclusion
If you’re not leveraging omnichannel marketing in some way as consumers and technology (and buying habits) continue to evolve, you’re missing out.
Think through how you can meet your target audience where they are and how those different channels can complement each other.
As you’re exploring the potential of omnichannel marketing, consider leveling up your overall digital marketing with DailyStory. Features include automating various marketing tasks, dynamic audience segmentation and more. Schedule your free demo with us today.
