Why Omni-Channel Marketing Is a Potential Goldmine!

Most brands today use multiple marketing channels to reach consumers.

But messaging across these channels isn’t always consistent.

You can have engaging social media campaigns, on-point email marketing, and a sleek website, but if they don’t work together, you’re not harnessing their full potential.

Say a customer falls in love with a jacket in your brick-and-mortar clothing store but can’t find the item in her size. She pulls out her smartphone, finds the jacket in the size she wants on your website, and makes the purchase.

But what if she can’t find the jacket on your site? She might search the internet and find a similar item on another site—and maybe even buy it while she’s standing in your store. Ouch!

This is just one of many scenarios, but you get the idea. Smartphones and one-click purchasing means your marketing channels needs to be interconnected to provide a seamless buyer experience.

Omni-Channel Marketing Provides a Seamless Consumer Experience

This is where omni-channel marketing comes in. It goes beyond multi-channel marketing alone to create a truly integrated experience—integrated meaning the customer has a consistent experience across platforms.

Data show that omni-channel marketing works. Omnisend conducted an analysis of more than 2 billion messages sent throughout 2018.¹ Here’s what they found:

• Campaigns that used three or more channels versus one saw three times more consumer engagement (18.96% versus 5.4%). This was true even when average engagement was accounted for across individual channels—meaning that consumers who interacted with omni-channel campaigns were more engaged with each channel used in the campaign.

• Ecommerce marketers using three or more channels retained almost twice as many customers (66.1% versus 34.8%) than single-channel campaign marketers. Why? Omni-channel consumers were exposed to more touchpoints, and there’s lots of data showing that customers need many touchpoints before they make a purchase.

• Customers who had an omni-channel experience spent 13% more than those who had a single-channel experience. Perhaps the most important aspect of omni-channel marketing is that it puts the customer—not your brand—at the center. Customers want to feel heard. They want to feel like they matter. And they’ll give their business to brands that treat them well, strive to meet their needs, and share their values.

How to Build an Omni-Channel Campaign

Before you can build your campaign, you need to assemble your crew.

Bring members of all relevant departments to the table to develop a strategy. This might include sales, marketing, product development, customer support, and PR.

Brainstorm your goals and objectives, then start planning how you’re going to make the transition. If completely overhauling your marketing strategy sounds overwhelming or isn’t feasible, start small.

Build a single, omni-channel campaign that focuses on meeting a customer need.

Here are some tips for building a campaign:

Know your customers

Creating buyer personas can help you do this. Buyer personas or identities are representations of your ideal customer based on market research data and data on your existing customers. Be detailed when creating personas. Consider all the following:

• Demographic information (age, gender, salary/combined household income, urban/suburban/rural, education level, family size, etc.)
• Buying habits
• Behavior patterns
• Preferences
• Motivations
• Goals (how can you help your customer reach them?)

Since only a handful of buyer personas account for most of the average company’s sales, you don’t need to agonize over creating a buyer persona for every possible customer or outlier.

You can start collecting buyer persona data by inviting customers to provide feedback and by using social listening tools and information from lead capture landing pages.

Discover which channels your customers use

You need to know which platforms your customers frequent and which devices they use in order to target the right channels for your campaign.

Where do they shop? Where do they go for information? Don’t waste time or resources on channels your customers don’t use.

Use “acquisitions” reports in Google Analytics to identify which channels are most popular among your customers.

For a more in-depth look at all the steps your customers take before they convert, set up “multi-channel funnel” reports. Analytics automatically detects some channels that send traffic to your site, including unpaid search and referrals from other websites.

You’ll need to set up tracking for Google ads and custom campaigns. Multi-channel funnel reports will track your customers’ buying journey for a month or more before they make the purchase. 

Understand the buyer’s experience

Once you understand which channels your customers are using on their buying journey, you can create targeted experiences for every stage of the process for each of your buyer personas.

A good way to understand their experience is to go through it yourself, from first click to final payment.

Click on ads -> Fill out forms -> Order a product from a landing page -> Download an eBook -> File a customer support claim. What pain points or issues did you find along the way?

Use the information you gather to refine and improve the user experience.

Integrate your online and offline presence

Remember our sad example of the woman who bought the jacket from your online competitor?

Don’t force her to do it again.

Customers today want and expect a seamless shopping experience, online and offline. They want to know if an item is in stock before they head to your store. Better yet, they want it waiting for them at customer service.

Big box giants like Home Depot and Nordstrom are leading the way in bridging the gap between online and offline.

They use local inventory ads to showcase their products and provide store information to nearby shoppers searching on Google. And then use Google Smart Shopping campaigns to make products easy to find and buy in Shopify.

To compete in today’s complex marketplace, you need to establish your presence on all the channels that matter to your target audience. And you need to make all your touchpoints shoppable.

Most importantly, you need to create seamless transitions between channels to ensure your customers have the best experience. In short, an omni-channel strategy is essential for marketing in 2020.

Get Help from the Pros

If you’re overwhelmed at the idea of launching a successful omni-channel marketing campaign, the pros at National Positions can help. Our digital marketing specialists have the expertise and industry-leading tools to help you build an integrated campaign that boosts conversions and builds customer loyalty.

Our unwavering focus on getting results for our clients has helped us build a reputation as a leading Southern California SEO agency. Call us today at (877) 866-6699 for help with PPC, SEO, and much more.