Omnichannel Marketing: The Winning Strategy For Modern Businesses
The beauty of the business environment is that there is a constant change ushered in by technological evolution. One of the most drastic and beneficial changes in business has come in the form of online marketing of services and products. E-commerce has become the blue-eyed boy of the retail industry globally and nowadays one can purchase almost everything and every type of service online.
The marketing landscape in the post-pandemic world has an even bigger role for digital marketing as the majority of the consumers are spending most of their time indoors, working remotely and consuming internet content throughout their waking hours. In the new normal, businesses need to establish strong digital ties with their customers and provide them with optimized user experience. The better a brand’s marketing approach and access is, the greater will be its impression on the customers. Today, companies are using an amalgamation of digital and physical channels to market their products including emails, social media, chat apps, websites, mobile advertising, and so on.
Omnichannel Marketing
A major characteristic of today’s buyers is that they seamlessly slip from one channel to another. For instance, one might receive an email newsletter about a product, take a look at it on the company’s website, check the product reviews on an ecommerce website and eventually purchase it using an app, and schedule a pickup from a store. With high speed internet access being easy and prevalent in most parts of the world, users get access to content and services across devices and platforms as we can see in this example. As a marketer, one might not know which channel a customer might choose next, but, one thing that all modern digital marketers know is that they need to have a strong and helpful presence on all channels. This ability to maintain a quality presence on all the available channels and meeting the customers wherever they are, is known as Omnichannel Marketing.
The idea is to deliver a standardized, helpful and seamless brand experience throughout all the channels used. This allows the customer the freedom to move from one platform to another, across devices and time, but, get the same easy experience everywhere. This kind of omnichannel marketing strategy is the key to business success today.
Difference Between Omnichannel & Multichannel Marketing
A lot of people tend to mistake multichannel marketing with omnichannel marketing, but the two are quite distinct as the terms themselves suggest. Omnichannel marketing implies a brand’s presence on all available channels whereas multichannel marketing refers to a presence on more than one channel. The biggest differentiator between the two practices is that in multichannel marketing, the customer has to choose one between a given set of channels whereas in omnichannel marketing, the choice doesn’t matter as the brand will be present on whichever platform the customer uses.
Omnichannel marketing makes the experience immersive and personalized for the customers and offers consistency even when the customer moves between channels or devices. Let’s say someone put a product in his cart on an ecommerce portal using his laptop, but forgot to checkout. Later in the day, he/she sees the ‘checkout pending’ notification on the phone and uses the phone app to complete the transaction. In such an approach, there is a complete integration and the customer doesn’t face any inconvenience or limitation during the journey. Such a positive and seamless experience fosters trust and loyalty and the customer is more likely to do business with such a brand and not one where he/she would need to go to a specific channel to get the process completed. Not only that, such happy customers are likely to suggest the brand to their friends and family.
A number of the major brands have nailed omnichannel marketing successfully. For instance, Disney offers a standardized and pleasant experience over their theme parks, physical stores, ecommerce outlets etc. Whichever channel you choose, the product quality, branding, and brand messaging remains the same.
The online furniture brand Pepperfry is among the prominent users of omnichannel digital marketing. Apart from their online store, they have also launched a network of offline experience studios to cater to the customers who prefer getting the look and feel of the furniture before purchasing it.
Starbucks is another great exponent of the omnichannel strategy. They have an app through which one can place an order on the move, walk into the selected store and pick the order without having to wait for long. They also have various other digital initiatives such as a Rewards program and this strategy has helped them increase their revenue and loyal customer base significantly.
Benefits Of Omnichannel Marketing
Omnichannel Marketing offers a number of benefits to businesses. These include:
1. Precise customer understanding - Omnichannel marketing generates a lot of data through different touchpoints and helps businesses create a much detailed customer profile including his/her likes and dislikes, preferred payment modes and items etc which lead to greater conversions.
2. Superior brand visibility – Omnichannel marketing ensures that a brand is visible to target audiences across channels like websites, social media, Google ads and so on.
3. Customer segregation – The data generated through omnichannel marketing helps analysis and segmentation of customers based on their behaviour and helps businesses target them better.
4. Cost benefits: The power of data analytics enables optimization of campaigns, and reduces inefficiencies to allow businesses to get more conversions at lower budgets.
5. Seamless integration across channels: Through omnichannel marketing, a brand can synchronize and standardize the user experience across channels. Brands engage the customers where they usually are and encourage them to buy the products as per their convenience.
Conclusion
This is an era of short attention time and diversity of products as well as digital touchpoints, and the modern consumer is always on the move digitally. In today’s scenario, an omnichannel strategy that allows brands to constantly accompany customers in their journey, delivering a seamless, quick and pleasant experience, can facilitate greater brand growth.
The author is Gary Steele, Business Manager, Kilowott
