What is Omnichannel Marketing?
With communication technology moving so fast, is your company up to speed with all the channels you can engage with your customers? Customers are now expecting companies to be available on all the channels they use everyday. For marketers, this means fully embracing omnichannel as part of their current vision.
Omnichannel marketing can be described as the seamless integration of multiple marketing touchpoints both online and offline. The goal is to move consumers further down the sales funnel by focussing on improving customer experience and relations across marketing channels.
Each channel needs to works in tandem to create a unified experience. In other words, if a customer is shopping on a desktop, mobile app or in store, the purchasing experience should be consistent regardless of the platform.
When marketing channels are harnessed and work together, this can result in increased sales opportunities. An example of effective omnichannel marketing, could be when a customer receives retargeting ads after leaving the cart products they added in the app without completing their purchase.
Communication Business Avenue, has been helping some of the world’s largest companies to integrate call centre systems and digital communication tools for the past 16 years
The need for Omnichannel Solutions
Has your company been agile enough to scale to meet your customers’ ever changing needs and desires? Previously, it was enough just to offer goods, services, and support via phone, email or at brick and mortar locations but that is no longer the case. Today’s customers want a personalized experience between many communication channels. Your customer is tethered to a mobile phone at the very least and these devices open the door to many channels you can leverage for marketing, sales, and customer support. Popular channels today include mobile messaging, the mobile web, mobile apps, augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), smartwatches, and chatbots. Companies that were slow to adapt to changing customer channels have diminished or closed their doors. To be competitive and agile today you must have an omnichannel communication strategy.
Omnichannel vs Multichannel Experience
The Multichannel experience basically means more than one channel and can also be defined as having primarily static communication with channels that don’t change or adapt to the customer. The brand is at the center of this strategy. An example of this would be a local Mom & Pop pizza shop. To order a pizza you need to call or walk-in to place an order. Payment is always in-store at the register. Customers only have a few channels to communicate with the company and these channels don’t change or adapt to the customer.
The Omnichannel experience at its core means all the channels, an effortless, high-quality customer experience that adapts to how the customer wants to interact with the company, within and between many contact channels. Omnichannel personalization or data-driven marketing gives the customer a personalized experience. This can open a company to be more accessible to customers on familiar channels as opposed to just a few such as email and phone. This strategy incorporates all the ways a customer would prefer or could communicate with your company.
An omnichannel strategy also requires a level of integration not needed for multichannel strategies. For example the customer’s journey can take them from brand discovery, researching a product to a targeted ad on social media then to a messaging engagement and finally a purchase either via messaging, mobile web store or to a brick and mortar location. In the end, the experience is seamless and consistent through all the channels and product they want is available wherever they choose so the store and warehouse inventory is fully integrated into the omnichannel strategy.
Omnichannel Benefits
Adopting an omnichannel solution strategy has a number of benefits such as expanding your market reach, increase in sales and revenue, increased customer satisfaction, and more customer data to examine.
Expanded Market Reach
With an omnichannel marketing approach your company and products can be easier to find. Now your products and/or team is available where your customers are. They can research, shop, and purchase your products on multiple channels and in the channels they are most comfortable with. For example, expanding to a popular social media channel like Instagram can expand your brand awareness, customer base, and sales if your customers can shop and purchase in this channel. Yes, the omnichannel marketing approach can increase your reach which leads to the next benefit, increased sales and revenue
Increased Sales and Revenue
With your products and services on multiple touchpoints and channels your customers will have the freedom to shop and purchase in a way that is convenient for them. Great customer experiences create loyal brand promoters who will naturally help you expand your sale
Increased Customer Satisfaction
Since an omnichannel solution to marketing, sales and service focuses on the individual experience of the customer, the Customer Experience Score (CX) improves. This exceptional customer experience will translate to improved National Promoter Scores (NPS) and loyal repeat customers which can, on average, contribute to 40% of all revenue.
More Customer Data
With more channels serving your customers there is more available data that can be used to better understand your customers’ journey. And when you truly know your customers then you can better provide them with the experience they want. You can then tune your strategy to have the most impact,. wWhat demographic is best served by which channel, where to target campaigns in the future and how to best use your marketing budget.
Your Omnichannel Plan
When developing your omnichannel marketing strategy consider how your customers currently interact with you and consider expanding your accessibility. Your strategy should match your brand and marketing goals but the focus will be on your customer. For example, if you currently only sell your products in-store or online, can you expand your sales and marketing with messaging via channels like Apple Business Chat, Google Business Messaging, Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook? These channels can empower your customers with the ability to shop and purchase your products via familiar channels which increases your reach and sales. Your omnichannel support strategy should be just as accessible pulling a phone out of your pocket. Adding messaging to your omnichannel engagements can increase the speed of your support, reduce customer churn and raise your KPI scores such as customer effort.
Your omnichannel communications software should be able to provide all the channels your customers want to engage with as well as integrate well with your current CRM and support software. It should give you the option of including messaging with integrations to most SMS systems like Apple Business Chat (ABC), WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and more. You may need features such as voice & video, co-browse, annotation and PII masking or protection. It should also include conversational AI or chatbots, tools that can assist customers with purchases and issues resulting in a saving of both money and time.