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Let’s face it. Nowadays, modern consumers are impulsive, unpredictable and multidimensional. They have infinite ways to shop and limited time and attention span. They bounce back and forth around multiple channels, digital and offline.
At the same time though, they expect brands to provide them with a seamless and delightful experience, wherever they are. So, instead of adopting a silo mentality, thinking of physical, online and mobile channels as separate entities, brands need to adopt and promote a more holistic approach, the omnichannel approach.
What is omnichannel marketing?
Consider this example: You are on Facebook and you just spotted a product that you really like. You visited the eshop and added it to your shopping cart. Right there and then, something distracts you and you leave the site, without making a purchase. After returning to the site, you discover that the product is still in your shopping cart. Just before checkout, your phone battery dies. You quickly shift to your laptop, visit the website and complete your purchase.
In a nutshell, this is how omni-channel works and how today’s customers consume.
Omnichannel focuses on delivering a consistent, seamless and personalized experience to your customer across channels and devices, putting them at the center of your business.
To achieve that, you need to integrate your digital channels and unify your teams.
Omnichannel marketing is quickly becoming a necessity, taking a central role in discussions regarding customer experience. With customer expectations increasing, relevance in content across touchpoints is make or break for businesses, large and small.
Even so, is omnichannel strategy really worth it? We will let the numbers speak for themselves:
- Marketers with an omnichannel channel strategy in place, witness a 250% higher engagement rate than those using single-channel marketing.
- The average order value was 13% more when marketers used the omnichannel strategy.
- 90% more customer retention with an omnichannel strategy.
Getting started with omnichannel
Think mobile
It might strike you as odd, but the first step in moving towards an omnichannel experience is creating a mobile experience. The statistics come to prove our point, 72% of mobile users say it’s important that websites are mobile-friendly.
So, make your site mobile-friendly, with large visuals and simplified navigation to help mobile users quickly find what they are looking for. As omnichannel marketing marries both offline and online channels, it’s of utmost importance that your website is ready to perform across different devices.
After all, nobody likes to pinch and zoom. With customers accessing your site on all channels and devices, it needs to work smoothly no matter the screen size.
Deep knowledge of the customer
Omnichannel is all about prioritizing your customers. They should be at the forefront of your attention as you begin crafting your omnichannel strategy.
And in order for you to focus on them, you will need to know them intimately. You have to understand who they are, their goals and the challenges they face.
Invite customer feedback, use social listening tools, and use lead capture landing pages to learn more about them. Find out how customers behave across all your channels, how much time they spend on each platform, and map their journey
Analyze the data, and segment based on common behavior patterns. Identify the right touchpoints, strengthen and connect them in order to make it a seamless and personalized experience for your customers.
Think of context
Ok, yes “content is king” but it is nothing without context.
With empowered consumers connecting across an array of devices in a variety of situations, the way you will win is by being relevant to the moment. You will need to design your strategy based on each channel’s unique strengths and role in the customer journey in order to offer usable context-specific experiences.
Sending the right message to the right users, at the time when they are most active on the channel helps you to best engage with them. So make sure that the context of your message is relevant to the user and send it to them at the time they are most active, and on the channel, they engage with the most.
Internal coordination
According to reports the major roadblock to omni-channel implementation is siloed organizational structure. From sales to marketing, and product development to customer service, departments still operate somewhat independently of each other in many organizations.
However, omnichannel marketing requires that the whole business is on board with an omnichannel strategy. In order to become a customer-centric organization that engages with customers, you will need to smash internal silos. Restructuring traditional roles can help put the responsibility for the customer experience on more than one or two departments, allowing each team to understand how they fit into the omni-channel puzzle. That, in turn, sets clear expectations and streamlines communication between teams.
Provide omnichannel customer support
The importance of customer support and its significance on the customer journey is critical. One-third of customers would consider switching companies after just one bad customer experience.
As you make your first steps towards an omnichannel marketing strategy, make sure your brand can also handle omnichannel customer support, using email and social media messaging and others.
Your support staff should be on board with your omnichannel strategy, in order to provide friendly and warm support. It’s important to have a playbook for different scenarios and circumstances that might arise, to deliver a consistent experience across support touchpoints.
Invest in a fully integrated marketing technology stack
In order to successfully create an omnichannel marketing campaign, you will need a great marketing stack that will assist in tracking your goals, analyzing both your ongoing and previous campaign results, and run your campaigns with ease.
You’ll need a mix of both online and offline tools that will assist you in your omnichannel strategy. Here are some tools you may consider investing in:
- Content management system
- Email marketing software
- Social media scheduling and analytics software
- Customer relationship management software
- Marketing automation platform
When choosing tools for your tech stack, it’s important they work well with you and interact well with one another. An all-in-one marketing automation solution key in this, as it can manage the entire customer experience from end-to-end. WayMore allows for the free-flowing exchange of data between different tools and systems and aligns all your efforts across channels and teams.
Pave your way for omni-success
Omnichannel marketing is quickly becoming a critical component of marketing strategies and is taking a central role in discussions regarding customer experience. As customer expectations increase, the need for relevance in content and across touchpoints is make or break for businesses, large and small.
Omnichannel marketing will help you improve your customer experience, sales and business performance. By being omnipresent on the channels that your customers are using, and onboarding your whole business to create an omnichannel experience, you will give your customers a level of service that will get you ahead of the competition.
With WayMore you will be able to create effective omnichannel marketing strategies that will not only create a positive customer experience but also grow your business.
