If you’re a marketer, you’ve probably heard the term omnichannel marketing. This buzzword phrase has been circulating the Internet, with marketers and retailers scrambling to provide an omnichannel experience for customers.
But what does this phrase actually mean? What does omnichannel marketing look like in practice? And is this really something your business should focus on?
Allow us to help you out and answer those questions.
Keep reading to learn what you need to know about why omnichannel marketing is so important and how to access the resources you need to scale up with a strong omnichannel strategy.
What Is Omnichannel Marketing?
To make things simple, omnichannel marketing is really just a strategy to enhance the customer journey.
This customer-centric type of marketing, however, integrates many different elements like branding, messaging, online, and offline touchpoints as the customers move throughout the funnel and the customer buying journey.
Basically, omnichannel (a word that means “all channels”) encompasses any place where you might interact with a customer, whether that’s your brick-and-mortar store, an SMS text message, or even a marketing email.
The goal is to provide your customers and leads with an integrated shopping experience — one that’s cohesive across a variety of channels.
Today, consumers are used to shopping on many different platforms and have come to expect an omnichannel experience. That means that by focusing on omnichannel marketing, you’re giving your customers exactly what they want.
In a minute, we’ll look at some statistics backing this up to show you just how effective an omnichannel strategy can be.
But first, let’s break down the difference between omnichannel marketing and multi-channel marketing — two terms that are commonly confused.
Difference Between Omnichannel and Multi-Channel Marketing
There are so many different ways to market to people, it’s hard to keep track of everything. But that’s why we’ve created this blog post — to make life a bit easier for you.
Take a look at the nuances between omnichannel and multichannel marketing:
- Omnichannel marketing = a cohesive marketing strategy consisting of different messages tailored to several different platforms (sometimes viewed as a more advanced version of multi-channel marketing)
- Multi-channel marketing = a marketing strategy where several different platforms work in isolation
The main difference between omnichannel and multichannel is that multi-channel marketing focuses on the brand, while omnichannel marketing focuses on the customer.
As you can imagine, this customer-centric approach is usually the better route to go.
At the end of the day, both types of marketing have the same goal: leveraging multiple communication channels to reach your customers.
With omnichannel marketing, however, all of the channels you use work together, seeking to reach your audience at the right place and right time with the right message.
That approach is typically much more effective long-term to boost metrics like brand awareness and conversions.
Benefits of Omnichannel Marketing
There’s clearly a big advantage to brands that use an omnichannel marketing strategy.
Since this form of marketing is highly customer-centric, it creates a better user experience throughout the customer journey as people get the same experience across all of your channels.
And when you do a good job of catering to your customer’s wants and needs, they’ll be more likely to do business with you and to stay loyal over time.
With omnichannel, it’s easier for customers to convert. Your goal is to provide people with an effortless buying experience across all channels.
And the easier and more convenient you make the buying process and the overall customer experience, the more likely a customer is to make a purchase.
Omnichannel marketing also helps you create a more cohesive brand strategy across multiple channels.
You’ll be utilizing several channels, but focusing on creating a comprehensive experience across each one.
This will boost brand awareness and ensure that your brand is easy to identify and recognize no matter where you are.
Still not convinced? Take a look at the numbers that back up the benefits of an omnichannel experience.
10 Omnichannel Marketing Statistics
- Today’s shoppers demand omnichannel retail experiences, yet 60% of marketers still rely only on single-channel customer engagement. (Source)
The takeaway from this statistic is clear: If you offer an omnichannel marketing experience, you will be in the small number of brands providing what your customers actually want — making them more likely to shop with you.
- Companies with an extremely strong omnichannel customer engagement strategy get to retain an average of 89% of their customers, compared to 33% of customers for companies with weak omnichannel customer engagement strategies. (Source)
Translation: if you cultivate a strong omnichannel marketing strategy, your customer retention numbers will go up.
- 62% of consumers who engage their favorite brands on 10+ channels make weekly purchases. (Source)
Omnichannel marketing might seem like more work, but it’s critical to meet your customers where they are.
And if done right, you set yourself up for a better chance at experiencing a boost in sales.
- 73% of consumers shop on more than one channel. (Source)
Whether it’s on Instagram or in-store, your customers are already creating their own omnichannel experiences. So help them find those experiences and create an environment to make them stay.
Don’t be afraid to go where they are (hint: they’re everywhere) and get your brand in front of them.
- 23X higher rates of customer satisfaction are experienced by companies with omnichannel strategies. (Source)
For many companies, omnichannel marketing is just the thing to help customer satisfaction rates get over a hump. And higher customer satisfaction leads to higher customer retention and a better chance for those customers to recommend your brand to more people and generate more sales.
- Omnichannel strategies drive an 80% higher rate of incremental store visits. (Source)
Have you been trying to boost store visits? Expanding your omnichannel strategies could be just the thing to get your numbers up.
- Marketing campaigns funneled through three or more channels earned a 287% higher purchase rate than campaigns funneled through a single channel. (Source)
Need we really go on? Don’t get stuck with just one channel. Diversify your marketing, and you’ll see more interest and more purchases from your customers.
- Companies with strong omnichannel customer engagement see a 9.5% year-over-year increase in annual revenue, compared to 3.4% for companies with weak omnichannel customer engagement. (Source)
Remember that customer satisfaction stat we brought up a second ago? Here’s the proof omnichannel marketing can do more than you might think for your overall revenue.
- In B2B, buyers spend less than 20% of their buying journey speaking with potential suppliers. (Source)
Whether you’re a B2C or a B2B company, you need more than just one interaction to engage a customer and create a good, memorable customer experience.
- Almost three-fourths of all consumers — 71% — want a consistent experience across all channels, but only 29% say they actually get it. (Source)
This final statistic drives home what we’ve already seen. Consumers are asking for an omnichannel experience, but not enough marketers are providing one.
Conclusion: If you focus on building a robust omnichannel marketing strategy, you’ll be setting yourself up for success with your customers long-term.
Top Omnichannel Marketing Channels
Okay, so you know what omnichannel marketing is, and you know why it’s important. But how do you actually get started with this tactic?
First, let’s break down the best omnichannel marketing channels you should be familiar with and have a presence on so you can best figure out where your customers spend their time.
This will help you create the best story and experience for them, generating more sales for you.
Website & Blog
Your website is the most obvious channel to use in omnichannel marketing since your website is probably where most of your conversions happen.
Use high-quality product photos and strategic copy in your store to encourage visitors to make a purchase.
You can also use your website as a part of your content marketing strategy by sharing SEO friendly blog posts to help your website rank as high as possible in online searches, establish your brand as an authority, and serve as an opt-in opportunity for clients to learn even more about why they need your brand in their life.
Social Media
In today’s day and age, you absolutely cannot overlook social media as part of your omnichannel marketing. Some of the most popular social media sites and apps today are:
- TikTok
- YouTube
You may choose to focus on some social platforms more than others based on the demographic of your target audience.
A brand marketing to teenagers, for example, won’t see much success on LinkedIn.
From having the opportunity to create an extra storefront on some platforms to having some of the easiest and fastest access to your customers to answer their questions, talk to them and build trust, social media is one of the best omnichannel platforms you can utilize for growth.
Regular marketing emails sent to your email list can include product promotions or simply share company updates. Email marketing is highly versatile and also has an astronomical ROI — email generates $42 for every $1 spent.
Email is also a great place to get personal with your customers and make them feel valued and excited to come back to your brand.
Tailor your body copy to include their name, segment your list to share a mass message to a certain audience, or set up a reminder for your customer to finish the order they started yesterday.
Mobile Marketing & Digital Advertising
Mobile marketing has a few different areas of focus.
One option is to create mobile-friendly ads that are responsive and look good on a mobile screen to help more people find your business (or remind them to come back).
Investing in paid ads does have the potential to increase brand awareness by 80%., after all.
Sending promotional SMS messages straight to your customers’ phone numbers is also a recent and popular way to connect with your audience on their phones.
And because it seems like there’s an app for everything, you could even create your own mobile app to further improve the customer experience.
How to Create and Implement a Successful Omnichannel and Lead Generation Marketing Strategy
Ready to create a successful omnichannel strategy that will improve your overall marketing success? Here’s a step-by-step guide to help you get started.
Step 1: Data Collection
Before you can determine whether something new is successful, you first need to take stock of what your current metrics are.
From there, you’ll be able to establish realistic metrics that you will shoot for with your omnichannel strategy.
When it comes to digital marketing, there are a variety of different metrics you can track. We recommend starting with at least the following:
- Qualified leads. Knowing whether someone is a qualified lead will help you better be able to continue passing them down the funnel.
- Brand awareness. Brand awareness measures how easily consumers can recognize your brand.
- Engagement. Your engagement rate will tell you whether people are resonating with your content.
- Conversion rates. Your conversion rate is your number of website visitors who convert and become a customer by making a purchase (or by completing some other desired goal).
- Customer acquisition cost (CAC). This metric measures how much you spend to acquire new customers.
- Return on investment (ROI). Your ROI will indicate which tactics work (and are worth investing in) and which ones don’t.
- Customer lifetime value. Customer lifetime value is defined as your total profit from a single customer based over the entire course of your relationship.
There are several routes of data collection for marketers. You can utilize social media analytics tools, or send out a survey to customers and leads. Or use online tracking. Social media monitoring works well, too.
Once you have the data in hand, you can analyze it to get the information you need.
Step 2: Outline Your Customer Buying Journey
To be successful in your journey to omnichannel marketing, you need to know where your customers are. You need to know what they like in those spots. And, you need to know what kind of content they’re most likely to consume.
With a little detective work, you can find out where your target audience hangs out online.
Look at where your competitors focus their energy. Consider your audience’s demographic. Or go straight to the source and ask them, surveying your customers to find out their favorite social channels.
You can also create a customer journey “map” that acts as a mockup, indicating the journey your ideal customer is most likely to take. Essentially, you want to write out the steps involved in one of your leads becoming one of your customers.
List out all the places or ways that someone might come across you online, and any actions that person might take as they move toward conversion.
Step 3: Establish Brand Guidelines
Brand guidelines are essential for the success of any omnichannel strategy. These guidelines will help keep things consistent across different platforms for a cohesive story, making it easy for people to recognize your brand no matter where they are.
Your brand voice plays a big role here. Maybe you want to be known as professional and knowledgeable, or clever and fun.
Based on your mission statement and core values, hone in on a few key adjectives that describe your brand’s voice and personality.
Some brand guidelines or style guides define a list of words to use and a list of words not to use in marketing copy.
It’s also important to think about design elements, such as the color palette and fonts you want to use online. There’s a lot more that goes into brand guidelines, but these tips will get you started on the right path.
Remember to make your guidelines accessible to everyone on your team who is involved with your omnichannel marketing strategy — including non-employees like freelancers, influencers, or people involved in affiliate marketing.
Step 4: Map Out Your Channels and Messaging
The final step is putting it all together. You’ve done the work to understand the data, your customers, and their likely journey to your brand/product.
You’ve also gathered your assets, putting time and thought into how your brand will present itself across different channels. Now it’s time to put pen to paper on what you want to say and where.
Not every omnichannel campaign will target the same channels. Choose which platforms you want to focus on by considering your target audience and what kind of campaign you’re creating.
For example, a long-form YouTube video will either need to be trimmed down for certain other channels; turned into written content; or you might choose to skip that channel altogether.
This step is also where the fun part comes in: actually creating content! Now is the time when you get to write emails, design infographics for Instagram, come up with witty copy for Facebook ads, and more.
If the thought of producing all this content overwhelms you, consider outsourcing and working with a freelancer or agency who can lend a hand.
Omnichannel Success Story: How to Triple Sales in Two Months
Curious whether omnichannel marketing actually works?
Take a look at this omnichannel marketing example case study from one of our clients, a premium hemp-extract CBD company.
We helped them create an omnichannel campaign that tripled their sales in just two months. Yeah, you read that right. TWO. MONTHS.
Pain Point and Solution Needed
Nonnie’s Nectar, a premium hemp-extract CBD company, wasn’t seeing the level of sales they knew they could experience with the right team of experts to execute the right marketing plan.
They knew increased web traffic could help increase sales but didn’t have the time, resources, or expertise to figure out how to increase traffic on their own.
Additionally, the brand also was hoping to establish recurring revenue through a steady stream of repeat buyers, but they didn’t know the best way to establish that retention rate and high level of customer satisfaction with the entire brand (not just the amazing products).
Omnichannel Services Used
Based on these goals, we outlined an omnichannel marketing strategy that included specific messaging and goals for branding, content, social media, paid ads, and email.
We created relevant, valuable, and optimized content with the customer journey in mind. We used this content on the company’s homepage and product pages to encourage users to purchase.
Additionally, a new post-purchase sequence we created kept the audience warmed up to become repeat buyers in the future.
Results
The results of this campaign were massive for Nonnie’s Nectar team.
The company tripled its sales in just 60 days and saw a 20% increase in website traffic.
The biggest number of all: Nonnie’s Nectar had an 85% increase in-store conversions. Plus, add-to-cart purchases went up by 40.1% based on our user interface and experience changes.
Oh, and one more thing: revenue YoY saw a 200% increase.
It seems crazy, we know. But maybe these results shouldn’t come as a surprise.
After all, we already know how beneficial and effective omnichannel marketing is. It’s only logical that when done right, an omnichannel marketing campaign will produce major fruit.
Getting Started with Omnichannel Marketing
Truth is, Omnichannel marketing is a must for any business that wants to succeed.
But it does take careful time, planning, and execution to pull it all off right. So if your team is ready to take this information and run, amazing! We can’t wait to see you on all platforms with a cohesive message.
If this all seems like a lot of work for you and your team, though, we totally understand!
An agency you can trust could be your saving grace if you simply don’t have the resources, time, or expertise to pull all of this together on your own.
Wondering how to choose the right marketing agency?
To start, seek one out that promotes collaboration — instead of doing the work for you, they want to work side-by-side with you long-term, listening to your goals and suggestions.
They should have a strategic, results-oriented mindset. And they should be credible and trustworthy.
Here at Brandetize, we love helping clients develop effective omnichannel marketing strategies and succeed with their marketing goals.
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