As technology advances, it becomes increasingly integrated into our daily lives. The distinction between what we do online and in real life is becoming less clear. As people’s behavior changes, marketers, salespeople, and customer support reps will need to adapt. Instead of thinking in terms of a desktop experience, a mobile experience, a tablet experience, and an Apple Watch experience, we need to pursue a single, holistic approach: an omni-channel experience that customers can use whenever they want.
Omni-Channel
Omni-channel is an approach in which a company gives access to its products, offers, and support services to customers or prospects on all channels, platforms, and devices.
A company offers support through Facebook Messenger, live chat, email, and phone instead of only offering support on its desktop website.
Adopting an omni-channel approach in your marketing, sales, and service strategies have plenty of benefits. The advantages include:
Greater Reach
Having an omni-channel retail, marketing, or service strategy in place means you will be able to reach your customers no matter where they are. They will no longer have to search to find you. Your team or your products are only a click, an email, a direct message, or a phone call away.
Increased Profits
When your target customers are ready to buy, they will have an easier time if your product is available on multiple platforms and channels. This also makes it more likely that they will purchase from you again or renew their subscriptions, providing you with a steadier stream of revenue.
Boosted Customer Satisfaction
If your customers feel like they can easily reach your customer service or sales teams, they will be happier in the long term. It’s also important to make sure they can purchase your product easily, regardless of their device or preferred platform. Customer satisfaction is key to reducing customer churn and keeping them coming back to you.
Omni-channel experience is creating a seamless experience for customers regardless of how they are interacting with your business whether it is in-person, online, or through a mobile app.
The omni-channel experience is creating a seamless customer experience no matter how or where they reach out. This includes providing the same level of service and marketing regardless of the platform or method used.
The customer experience should be seamless, regardless of how the customer is shopping – online from a desktop or mobile device, by telephone, or in a brick-and-mortar store.
An omni-channel experience is created when there is a deep integration between the channels and platforms your business is on. This results in a consistent experience for the customer no matter how they interact with your business.
Omni-Channel Marketing
Omni-channel marketing is a way for businesses to reach their customers using a consistent message and branding across all channels, devices, and platforms. This type of marketing ensures that customers will see a relevant offer from the company no matter where they are.
If marketing teams use the strengths of each communication channel together, it is called omni-channel marketing. This is more effective at delivering a brand message and can reach potential customers at the right time, leading to more conversions.
However, your website might be made to look completely different. Omni-channel marketing takes into account the customers’ perspectives and interests to ensure that the company’s marketing messages are consistent. For example, on Instagram and Facebook, you might only target users with a certain interest and create content that appeals to them specifically. However, your website might look completely different.
Omni-channel marketing shouldn’t be done without a plan. Brands should create an organized omni-channel marketing strategy to make sure they’re giving content to their prospective buyers at the perfect time.
continue reading to find out how to start integrating an omni-channel experience into your company, as well as some brands that are already doing so.
Omnichannel marketing describes a company’s presence across multiple channels, both online and offline, with the goal of providing a positive, cohesive customer experience.
It’s important to note that 67% of customers say bad customer experience is the main reason they churn. So if you want to win and keep customers, you need to take your omnichannel marketing strategy seriously and make sure it provides positive experiences throughout the customer journey.
Why You Need It
Harvard Business Review, along with a major US retail company, conducted a 14-month study to understand the shopping behavior of customers. They interviewed 46,000 shoppers and found the following:
- 7% of the customers were only-online shoppers
- 20% of them were store-only shoppers
- A whopping 73% of them used multiple channels throughout their shopping journey
The study found that the more channels the customers used, the more valuable they proved to be to the retailers. The customers who used more than one channel spent 9% more in the store than the ones who used a single channel.
The writing was clear – it was time for retailers to rethink their customer journeys and start providing positive experiences across multiple touchpoints if they wanted to acquire, engage, and retain customers.
As new marketing channels are emerging, it is time for retailers to shift their focus from traditional marketing to omnichannel marketing strategies.
Omnichannel marketing means providing a seamless customer experience across all channels. This includes creating an app that allows customers to order and pay for coffee in advance so they don’t have to wait in line. Starbucks did this and saw an increase in revenue as a result.
How to Create a Perfect Omnichannel Experience?
In order to create a perfect omnichannel experience, it is important to have a deep understanding of your customer. This means closely observing the platforms your customers frequently use to shop, their purchasing behavior, the challenges they face while shopping, how they interact with the brand across each touchpoint, and the devices they use to shop. This data will help identify the right touchpoints and focus on strengthening them and connecting them to make it a seamless and tailor-made experience for your customers.
How to Build a Perfect Omnichannel Marketing Strategy?
Disney has created a perfect omnichannel marketing strategy to improve people’s experience at their theme parks. Their website, mobile apps, and Magicbands and cards make it easier for visitors to book their stay, check ride timings, book tickets, etc. without having to stand in a long queue.
Here’s what you can do:
- Plan the experience of the customer – Understand their channels, and their behavior across all channels, and create a detailed plan on how you want the experience to flow across all the touchpoints.
- Use data as a base while strategizing – With the help of CRM data, social listening data, and customers’ online search behavior, you will know how your customer behaves and can accordingly create a solution to address their challenges. You can even reduce the churn by using the data in the right way.
- Segment the users and personalize the journey – Once you analyze the data, you can easily segment users into different categories based on common behavior patterns. This will help you to create personalized journeys for each type of customer.
- Get the context right – The most crucial part of an omnichannel marketing strategy is the context. Sending the wrong message to the wrong audience at the wrong time will dissuade your users from engaging with you. Ensure that the context of your message is relevant to the user and send it to the user at the time they are most active, and on the channel, they engage with the most.
- Select the right marketing automation tools – Use the right marketing tools to implement your strategy right from the time of conceptualization to implementation. Do a thorough analysis before selecting the right one.
- Make your organization customer-centric – This is an important step. Because unless your employees are not trained to offer a consistent experience to the customers, no amount of strategy or marketing tool will help.
Now that you know what omnichannel marketing is and how you can create a perfect strategy, let’s look at how you can implement it in your organization.
How to Build an Omni-Channel Marketing Campaign
An omni-channel marketing strategy is one in which the same message, visuals, and positioning statements are used across all channels, platforms, and devices. This creates a cohesive brand experience for customers by ensuring that your brand is always presented in the same way, no matter what platform they are using.
An omni-channel marketing campaign will have a positive impact on your sales and service departments. This is because customers will see that you are present on all the channels and platforms they are using and will expect a similar level of service.
Start with the basics: Your website and social media channels
It takes time to create an omni-channel experience. You don’t need to be on every platform right away; you’ll get there eventually. Start with your website and social media channels and get those down before moving on to other platforms. Make sure you’re posting regularly and responding to users who reach out to you through those channels.
If you don’t answer Facebook messages but instead focus on Instagram, people will notice and think your brand is unprofessional.
Create an App if Needed
If you sell consumer products or offer a SaaS tool, you may benefit from creating an app.
If you want to create an app for your small business, you can hire a freelance developer to do it. Make sure you have a good reason for offering an app, and think through all the features it should have. For more tips on how to make a successful app, read this article.
Seek to Solve for the Customer Every Step of the Way
When creating a new channel as part of your omni-channel strategy, make sure it solves customer needs at every step.
An omni-channel strategy is not only about increasing visibility for your company or boosting sales. It is also about providing your customers with a seamless, problem-free experience. Your messaging and engagement with customers on each channel should be focused on meeting their needs and solving their problems.
Is Omnichannel Marketing Worth the Effort?
Omnichannel marketing is the process of creating a cohesive experience for the customer across all channels. Understandably, marketers might question whether this process is worth the effort. Here are some statistics to show the importance of omnichannel marketing.
Omnichannel marketing results in 250% more engagement than single-channel marketing.
Omnichannel marketing resulted in an average order value that was 13% higher.
Customer retention was 90% more with an omnichannel strategy.
Although omnichannel marketing requires your team to have a lot of expertise and go through a lot of data, it will only help you create a positive customer experience. A happy customer is all you need to keep them coming back.
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