Does your eCommerce business have an omnichannel marketing strategy yet? It’s quite possible that your company has a multichannel strategy, but not an omnichannel one.
Companies like Oasis, Starbucks, and Disney are taking advantage of these strategies – you need to be, too. Here’s a rundown of what the phrase means, and how your eCommerce company can take advantage as soon as possible.
What is an Omni-Channel Marketing Strategy?
An omni-channel marketing strategy is all about the customer experience (CX). With it, your brand can focus on using all of your marketing channels to create a unified CX, and this includes traditional marketing methods as well as digital.
The right, proven approach means that your marketing messages will adjust to your customers’ needs and behaviors, giving a truly personalized experience to your audience. It might sound simple, but it’s effective.
Is This Different From Multichannel Marketing?
Although similar, omnichannel strategies take your marketing to a whole new level. Multichannel marketing strategies tend to be more static, with one message staying the same across the board.
Omni-channel strategies instead adjust to the customer, rather than your brand, and changes across the channels. If your customer displays a certain behavior on your text marketing side of things, your email marketing to that customer should adapt as well. It’s a comprehensive approach that gets down to your customers’ core needs.
Why Is This Strategy Central to eCommerce?
The customer experience is absolutely central to eCommerce and your business’s success, and omnichannel marketing allows you to take it a whole step further than many brands are doing, allowing you to stand out among the crowd.
Did you know your company can stand to generate 60% higher profits than competitors by focusing more on CX?
Yet, if your audience thinks you’re indifferent to them, they’re going to go elsewhere. A whopping 68% of customers will actually go to competitors for this reason.
Customer retention is central to your business strategy and it can help to keep costs down and profits up. An omnichannel marketing strategy will make the most of personalization and work to keep repeat customers and those who are most valuable to you.
How Do You Implement an Omnichannel Marketing Strategy?
Now that you know the importance of an omnichannel marketing strategy, how do you use it best? Here are a few ways to make the most of this new strategy:
Inform Your Team
Your marketing team needs to be on board with the new strategy. It may be quite the shift from your old tactics, so your team will have to be up to speed on the new messaging and data approaches. A strong foundation will make the difference here.
Know Your Audience
As with any marketing strategy, your business absolutely has to know the audience you’re marketing to. Buyer personas can be particularly helpful for omni-channel approaches and they should be fleshed out beyond what you already have. The buyer’s journey should also be central here to help define your audience and to develop the rest of the strategy.
You will probably have to dive deeper into the data than you ever have before. Segmentation and matching your content to the buyer’s journey is central to success here.
Change Up The Customer Experience
It’s quite possible that you will have to completely redo your CX here. You’ll need to know exactly how your current CX works and what can be improved to be geared towards an omnichannel strategy.
Feedback, surveys, employee opinions, audits, and data can all be extremely beneficial during this stage. You’ll find the gaps in check-out, UX, and customer support through these methods and discover where improvements can be made.
Target Correctly with Your Messages
Your business is probably on quite a few channels, but that doesn’t mean you have to use every single form of communication known to man to make an omnichannel marketing strategy. You’ll want to instead focus on the platforms your customers are using the most and where you’re actually getting customers from.
Data is going to come in handy here, as is automation. You’ll want to know where your efforts are going to have a maximum impact and when you can send the appropriate, personalized messages.
Review Your Work
Marketers are familiar with testing. And just like any other strategy, omnichannel marketing will only work with testing and review of the data. Reviewing segmentation, tracking data, and auditing the customer experience will all come together to elevate your strategy. You will constantly have to tweak your approach to keep up with current trends and customers’ wants and needs.
Are You Ready for an Omnichannel Marketing Strategy?
Your customers are looking for personalized marketing experiences – are you delivering it to them? An omnichannel marketing strategy could be just what your brand needs to get ahead of the competition.
Are you looking to fill the gaps in your marketing team and have someone on your side who is familiar with omnichannel strategies? If so, we can help. Find out about our recruiting services to help elevate your brand and marketing.