Today, customers expect to receive the same service and brand experience whether they are going through their feed on Facebook, reading their e-mail, or shopping online.

How do you give your customers what they want and deliver a better experience? With omnichannel marketing.

What is Omnichannel Marketing?

Omnichannel marketing tens to provide users with s seamless marketing experience across all platforms, channels, and devices throughout the marketing funnel.

The aim of this type of marketing is to place the customer at the center of marketing strategies and provide a consistent, seamless experience.

Moreover, omnichannel marketing is growing in popularity with 67% of e-commerce companies saying that it is ‘very’ or ‘quite’ important to their business.

Though the implementation of omnichannel marketing can vary between businesses, it can be identified by key goals.

These are:

• personalized content and ads informed by past interactions with specific users
• consistent branding, tone, and vision across all platforms
• allowing users to continue their purchase path seamlessly, even when they switch platforms or devices

Difference between Multichannel and Omnichannel Marketing

Though omnichannel and multichannel marketing strategies make use of engaging consumers across multiple platforms, they are not interchangeable.

Multichannel tends to look at the specific channel and how the transaction will be completed there.

On the other hand, omnichannel looks that the customer experience may span a number of channels, and looks at how to create the best experience as consumers move between them.

Let’s take a deeper look into these two:

Multichannel Multichannel tends to be simple in intent, which is to distribute the content and ads across a number of channels.

Moreover, a multichannel strategy tends to make an organization available to consumers online, in print, in-store, etc.

The consumer can choose where to intend to interact with the brand, however, content and engagements within these different channels are often siloed.

With this, multichannel is more reflective of operations, reaching as many channels as appropriate.

While omnichannel tends to be more about overall customer experience.

Omnichannel On the other hand, omnichannel also makes brands accessible across online and offline channels.

However, it takes a step further to make sure there is integration and seamless experience across each platform.

As consumers tend to move across different devices and online and offline platforms, transitions are seamless and messages are informed by prior encounters.

Moreover, an omnichannel approach enables a business to truly take a consumer-centric approach that keeps the comprehensive customer journey its top priority.

Learn more about The 4Ps of Marketing: A Step-by-Step Guide here.

Benefits of Omnichannel Marketing

A number of benefits of Omnichannel Marketing are:

Improved User Experience As omnichannel marketing tends to center on the customer experience, it provides a better experience for customers no matter where they interact with the brand.

Better Brand Awareness It helps to create a consistent experience across various platforms.

These include in-stores, which makes it easier for customers to recognize your brand.

Improved Business Data Omnichannel tends to track interactions across different platforms, channels, and even on-person sales.

Moreover, this shows which campaigns and channels are most effective at driving leads and sales.

Increased Sales and Revenue Marketers that make use of three or more channels in one campaign tend to see a 287% higher purchase rate.

Thus, these campaigns tend to have a higher order rate.

Examples of Omnichannel Marketing

A lot of brands today realize customers tend to engage with them on multiple channels.

However, implementing an omnichannel strategy can feel overwhelming.

Let’s take a look at a few of them that are getting it right:

Starbucks It is more than just an in-person coffee shop and remote working haven.

Moreover, they also offer online ordering through their mobile rewards app.

Customers can upload money to the app, place curbside orders, and even claim rewards.

How do they improve their omnichannel with the app?

First, they offer rewards to app users which in turn encourages them to use the app.

The app regularly pushes special rewards like earning extra points for ordering in the next two days or trying a new drink.

When customers use the app, it allows Starbucks to brack in-store behavior, data they would not have access to otherwise.

Moreover, the app offers recommendations and promotes seasonal drinks that help to drive sales.

Disney Another pioneer in omnichannel marketing is Disney and the brand has expertly navigated combining in-person, online, and TV marketing for decades.

Moreover, the omnichannel marketing of the brand tends to stand out in its My Disney Experience platform for visiting their parks.

Users can use the tool via app or browser and buy tickets, book hotels, reserve restaurants, etc.

Once they arrive at the park, the built-in GPS helps them:

• to find locations in the park,
• see real-time wait times at rides,
• access the Disney MagicPass, a contactless version of the MaginBand.

The app also promotes discounts like 25% off hotel stays for its Disney+ subscribers.

They provide a seamless experience from online to in-person that helps the Disney adventure for customers even more magical.

Warby Parker This is a well-known eye-glass company that was first only available online.

In recent years, they began to leverage omnichannel marketing and are allowing consumers to order up to five pairs of glasses to try on at home, they have many brick-and-mortar stores.

However, they do not just create stores to sell more glasses, they are combining data from in-person interactions and online interactions as well.

How do they work? Customers can favorite frames on the app, which in-app associates tend to access to help them complete the purchase in person.

Moreover, users can try on glasses in the store and take a photo, which is tend converted into a link and sent to their e-mail to complete the purchase online.

Let’s discuss how you can fix orphan pages:

Map the Customer Journey

It is important to note that omnichannel helps to create a seamless customer journey.

To do this, you will need to understand the path your customers take while making a purchase.

When you create a customer journey map, it helps to understand better:

• where customers interact with your brand,
• provides insights into their pain points,
• makes it easier to create an effective strategy.

You can create a map by following the steps below:

1# Identify your customers First, identify who your customers are, where they live, and other demographic information.

Look into your CRM or use a current buyer persona.

2# Understand their Pain Points What tends to drive the customers to make a purchase?

Moreover, what challenges do they intend to solve?

3# Find out where they Hang Out What platforms are your customers using during the purchase process?

Track the path of Conversion Ho do most of your customers convert?

Keep in mind the path they use is unlikely to be straight.

They may visit your in-store and then convert online, or view your Instagram reels and then visit your store.

You will need to define the most common paths they take.

Once you create the customer journey map, you will need to look at your conversion tracking data to find areas where customers are dropping off.

Depending on how you track, that may be in Google Analytics or your sales platform, while customer surveys can also provide valuable insights.

Learn more about Instagram Ads here.

Create a Consistent Brand PResecnce

Creating a consistent brand presence is a small part of your omnichannel marketing strategy, however, it is crucial.

You will need to make sure all the platforms are making use of similar branding, tone, color, and marketing messages.

Next, take a look at customer surveys or you can create one and review it to find out where customers are not happy.

For instance, you may find that your website is too hard to use or your app has glitches.

Users may also open every email you send however, never engage on social media.

Once you understand where your message does not resonate, you can make plans to improve it.

Does your audience prefer a different platform or more helpful content?

Remember, your goal is to be consistent, not identical.

Increase Personalization

A report by Segment indicates that 71% of consumers tend to feel frustrated when their shopping experience is impersonal.

Even more striking, 91% of the customers are more likely to shop with brands that deliver personally relevant offers and recommendations.

Therefore, you cannot ignore personalization, it is increasingly popular and your customers expect it.

With omnichannel marketing, you can leverage the strategy more effectively.

Personalization is the key to a successful omnichannel strategy, however, it is about more than using your name tag in email marketing.

Rather, it leverages data about customers to deliver extra-relevant marketing messages a the right time.

Omnichannel personalization can vary by brand and industry, some examples are:

• a customer adds an item to their car, however, does not check out, you send an email with a link to their cart later, a discount, and a reminder to complete their purchase
• using segmentation, you email different product recommendations to the customer
• a customer tells an e-commerce chatbot about the types of cleaning products they are interested in, and later, a customized popup message promotes a special on the products that the customer is interested in

Thus, you can say that omnichannel personalization takes personalization to the next level by delivering a relevant message across platforms.

Leverage Technology to Automation Omnichannel

Omnichannel marketing requires you to gather and leverage data, and develop different funnel paths for different types of customers.

However, the problem is most marketing teams do not have time to manage this process manually.

Omnichannel marketing tools make it easier to gather and leverage data to build a better user experience.

Your stack can vary by channel, industry, and the size of your company, however, there are a few key platforms to consider:

Data Collection This strategy makes use of data to understand the paths of a customer and deliver a better experience.

If you do not have Google Analytics, now is the time.

Using a BI tool like Power BI or Google Data Studio to analyze data and create reports can help.

Marketing Automation Whether you intend to engage more on social media send scheduled emails or move users through the conversion process, you need a marketing automation tool to build an effective strategy.

Tools you are already using, like email marketing, CRMs, and social media management, have built0 automation features.

Chatbot Automation If you want to respond to your customers in the middle of the night, you can have a well-designed chatbot script to answer questions, deliver resources, and qualify leads.

Segmentation Platform One of the key benefits of omnichannel marketing is the ability to offer a more personalized experience.

To do that, you have to segment your audience, and depending on your industry, you will need to use dynamic landing pages or a tool to send more personalized emails, popups, and push notifications.

Test and Optimize your Omnichannel Campaigns

Building an omnichannel strategy is not a one-time thing.

In order to be effective, you will constantly test, reset, and tweak your strategy.

Moreover, over time, consumer behaviors change, and you will need to be ready.

With different segmentation tools that offer testing features, or with the help of Google’s Optimiz or Optmiziely to test audiences, content, landing pages, and even button color changes.

If you are, however, new to testing, you can feel overwhelmed at first.

However, with time, you will uncover data if you stick with it.

Testing an optimizing drive ROI, so you will be able to build a better campaign.

Conclusion

The Future of marketing is connected. Unlike Multichannel marketing, which aims to push out similar messages on multiple channels, omnichannel marketing focuses on bringing experiences together into a seamless experience that your customers will live.

Before you get started, make sure to understand what your customers are and look for marketing automation tools as they will help you to build a stronger omnichannel campaign.