What is omnichannel marketing and why is it useful?

To understand your clients and give them what they want is essential to create strategies that allow you to collect data to customize every experience. Omnichannel marketing integrates the different channels used to engage with the clients -both physical and digital- and it goes even further by gathering data to personalize each experience.

What is omnichannel marketing and how is it different from multichannel marketing?

According to a study by Harvard Business Review, 73% of the clients use different channels to make a purchase. With an omnichannel marketing strategy your brand will be in multiple channels, both digital (website, social media, WhatsApp, etc.) and physical (shop, events, call centers, etc.). In this way, you will create a positive seamless experience for your customers from the time they search for a product to the time they buy it.

So, you are probably wondering… What is omnichannel marketing and what are its advantages over multichannel marketing? Here are the main differences between these two strategies.

Related article: Perhaps, what your company needs is a social media CRM strategy

Approach

The thing is, when you know what is omnichannel marketing, your brand is present in all the channels, physical and digital. All of them are connected in a way that the clients can go through them easily and seamlessly.

Messages

While in multichannel marketing the messages and user experience tend to be different across channels, the omnichannel marketing approach bets for a consistent experience.

Benefits of a omnichannel strategy

• A better user experience: since the focus of omnichannel marketing is the customer individual experience, the user experience improves. The easier the process is for your clients, the more satisfied they will be.
• Brand identity: a consistent and seamless strategy across channels allows customers to see your brand in the same way no matter what channel they choose or what device they use. This helps customers remember your brand and stay loyal to it.
• Increased revenue: related to the previous point, if a customer remembers your brand they are more likely to return to make another purchase. The creation of personalized content in the omnichannel strategy increases the likelihood that a customer will stay and, therefore, make more purchases.
• Data analysis: omnichannel strategy goes beyond the customer experience with your brand and also analyses the engagement data of the different channels to understand the client’s journey. This data will help you optimize and customize your campaigns.

How to create your omnichannel strategy?

Now you know what is omnichannel marketing and the benefits for your brand, now let’s talk about some tips to create your strategy.

Focus on your client

Segment and Personalize

Remember: personalization is the basis of a successful omnichannel strategy.

Before creating customized campaigns you have to segment the users in different categories according to their behavior. By doing this, you’ll be able to personalize the customer’s journey, create relevant content, and know when and how to contact your clients.

Be consistent

Analyze, test, and optimize

Analyzing the data is an important part of an omnichannel strategy. This analysis must include engagement in social media, marketing metrics, and sales metrics such as active customers, overall revenue, repeat purchase, units per transaction, etc.

Some business that know better than anyone what is omnichannel marketing

Are you ready to start an omnichannel marketing strategy? Here are three examples of businesses that have used it successfully to inspire you.

Disney

Pepperfry

Target

To sum up

Understanding what is omnichannel marketing will allow you to create messages and personalized campaigns to give a better user experience to your customers. Also, you can give a consistent identity to your brand so that your customers recognize you no matter the channel or the device, and even increase your revenue.