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Omnichannel strategy is now becoming common, it is no longer just a blueprint to follow. Instead, customers around the world are saying that they expect an “Amazon-like” buying experience — even from smaller companies. It’s not enough for businesses to just create a website and offer standard customer service; today’s businesses have to be exceptional just to remain competitive.
What is omnichannel marketing?
Omnichannel marketing focuses on connecting the company's entire customer data at one place and providing a unified buying experience in shops, on social, website, email, mobile etc. Thus, enabling customers to move seamlessly between these channels without encountering any dead ends.
This creates very good lead nurturing and with a user engagement approach where the company offers support on its website as well as through mediums like Facebook Messenger, live chat, email, and phone.
Why omnichannel marketing?
Did you know, there might be as many as 60 touchpoints with a consumer before making a sale? This makes it impossible for you as marketers to keep track of which touchpoints are most important. Where is your consumer shopping? Online? Offline? On Social Media? How do you combine all these platforms in your marketing strategy?
This is a magic wand that empowers you with the ability to quickly tailor your marketing campaigns without losing insights, data, or purchase points. Benefit from a seamless purchase journey for consumers, every step of the way.
Benefits of omnichannel marketing
Improve customer retention
Want your customers to stay with you? Give them the controls and let them steer the way with the omnichannel experience. It is key for a retailer to look at long-term goals, as critically important. Reports show that 55% of leading Indian retailers implement an omnichannel strategy to improve the lifetime of a customer while only 28% of the others agree.
Optimized Customer Acquisition
Reach new customer segments with an omnichannel strategy. All retailers hold this particular goal as a KPI and look at constantly increasing this number. The key to the growth of every business is to attain a steady increase in the number of new customers.
Better Operational Efficiency
An omnichannel strategy will also benefit your business in terms of better operational efficiency while reducing costs. Employ an omnichannel strategy and collect a customer's data only once and not at every touchpoint. This also gives you a holistic overview, and that means you don't have to create and implement strategies for different channels!
Greater Sales
Does your business need a revenue boost? Greater sales are the answer to your problems. According to studies, 10% of your online sales come from omnichannel customers when compared to single-channel customers. As a result, leading retailers are focussing on long-term growth, thus, deeming omnichannel strategy benefits as beings strategic and structural.
Better Inventory Turnover
Gone are those days when you lose business over your products being sold out. With omnichannel marketing, you have the advantage of keeping a watch on your inventory and serving your customers from anywhere. You can now optimize stock levels and develop smarter replenishment practices.
Tips for creating an omnichannel strategy
The primary focus of an omnichannel marketing strategy is knowing your customer well. It is not limited to identifying the age, gender, and geography of the customer. You need to pay close attention to how your customer behaves online and how they make a purchasing decision. Analyze how they interact with your brand and what channels do they use to connect with you. By knowing your customer well, you will be able to personalize their journey in a better way.
Focus on personalised communication
Don't send generic bulk emails to customers. Customers get many many messages from different brands and they have a very small attention span. Personal communication is very crutial in such scenarios. Sending generic marketing emails can have very low performance for your marketing efforts. Customers expect brands to understand their needs and priorities. Any good omnichannel strategy should start with personalising the customer experience by leveraging data through CRM systems and in-store technology.
Don't let customers forget you
Make sure customers remember your brand when they need to make purchase. Timely communications are very important to make sure your brand visiblity is there. For example you can send newsletters, info contents about the products etc. Depending on re-purchase needs of your brand's product, you should do pro-active communication making sure when customer is in need of the product, they remember your brand.
Leverage automations
Make sure you have automations in place to send automated messages based on the purchasing stage of the customer. For this, you can divide the customers into different lifecycle stages and have automated communication strategies. For example, you can have a segment of customers who, if they don't purchase after 3 months, an automation will target them with appropriate discounts or offers depending on your conversion preferences.
Conclusion
As customer expectations continue to rise, brands that can come up with creative ways to build an omnichannel strategy will win over their customers and thrive well in the future. Those that don’t will end up wandering in a labyrinth of disconnected silos, empty shelves, and disappointed shoppers. The time to act is now.
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