What is Omnichannel Marketing? Definition, Tips, and Examples

Eric NIU
Topics

Omnichannel marketing is the integration and cooperation of the various channels organizations use to interact with consumers, with the goal of creating a consistent brand experience. This includes physical (e.g. stores) and digital channels (e.g. websites). The goal of an omnichannel marketing strategy is to create a convenient, seamless user experience for consumers that offers many opportunities for fulfillment.  An omnichannel strategy may give consumers the chance to find and purchase online, in-store, or a combination thereof – such as “buy online and pick up in-store”. Today, organizations across industries are leveraging omnichannel strategies, including healthcare, retail, finance, technology, and more.

Thanks to online channels, modern consumers have more options than ever and expect information in real-time. Omnichannel marketing enables them to engage with brands on their own terms, leading to a better customer experience overall.

What is Omnichannel Marketing?

Omnichannel marketing is the seamless integration of branding, messaging, and online and offline touchpoints as consumers move down the sales funnel, enabling a more impactful customer experience. 

Omnichannel marketing takes a consumer-centric view of marketing tactics. Consumers can now interact with brands on innumerable channels, from social media to customer service hotlines. An omnichannel approach ensures that the consumer has a positive, consistent experience on each channel, by offering a few key elements:

  • Consistent, identifiable brand tone and vision

  • Personalized messaging based on specific interests 

  • Content that is informed by past interactions and current stage of the buyer’s journey 

An identifiable brand simplifies brand recognition, while personalization based on interests and shopping history makes consumers more likely to interact with branded content across channels.  

What’s the Difference Between Multichannel vs. Omnichannel?

While omnichannel and multi-channel are both concepts based on the idea of engaging consumers across multiple platforms, they are not interchangeable. Multichannel looks at the specific channel and how the transaction will be completed there. Alternatively, omnichannel takes into account that the customer journey may span multiple channels – and looks at how to create the best experience as consumers move between them. Each interaction is a touchpoint on a path, leading to a conversion. Let’s take a deeper look at the differences between the two:

Multichannel

Multichannel is much simpler in its intention, which is to distribute content and advertisements across various channels. A multichannel strategy makes an organization available to consumers online, in print, in-store, etc. The consumer can choose where they want to interact with the brand, however, content and engagements within these various channels are often very siloed. With this in mind, multichannel is more reflective of operations, reaching as many channels as appropriate, while omnichannel is more reflective of the overall customer experience. 

Omnichannel

Omnichannel also makes brands accessible across online and offline channels, however, it goes a step further to ensure an integrated, seamless experience across each one. As consumers move across devices and online and offline platforms, transitions are seamless and messages are informed by prior encounters. An omnichannel approach enables organizations to truly take a consumer-centric approach that keeps the comprehensive customer journey top of mind.

The Benefits of Using an Omnichannel Approach 

Today, most brands will agree that an omnichannel approach can yield the best results.  While implementing an omnichannel approach is far from simple, when done properly it offers a host of benefits. Today’s consumers are accustomed to being bombarded with messaging from various brands, and as a result, they have become increasingly selective of which brands they choose to engage with. Creating omnichannel customer engagements can act as a brand differentiator, bringing the following benefits: 

    • A Better User Experience – Since omnichannel focuses on the individual experience across devices instead of the channel, the customer experience (CX) is better. By focusing on the customer instead of the platform, companies can drive more sales and better retention rates.

    • Cohesive Brand Strategy & Identity – Creating a seamless strategy across channels means building an easily identifiable brand image and tone. Organizations should base this image on core audience needs and values. By focusing on the overall experience and working within your brand guidelines to target each channel, you will have a more comprehensive brand strategy that will translate into increased loyalty and more targeted messaging. 

    • Increased Revenue – An omnichannel approach encourages customers to engage with a brand across multiple touchpoints and channels. These increased, diverse engagements at each stage of the buyer’s journey can help increase revenue, as research shows that customers that engage with multiple touchpoints tend to be 30 percent more valuable. This more targeted messaging also builds loyalty, making it more likely a customer will purchase from your brand again. Repeat customers on average contribute to 40 percent of revenue, despite being a smaller portion of your consumer base. 

    • Better Attribution Data – Going truly omnichannel should not just extend to a user’s experience with your brand, but with your data analytics as well. By tracking engagements across channels, brands get a better understanding of what the customer journey looks like, when and where consumers prefer to engage, and which campaigns have created the most value. All of this data can be put back into your strategy to build more targeted campaigns and optimize media spend. 

What is Omnichannel Attribution?

In a world where there are now multiple touchpoints across channels, which should get credit for the conversion? That can be difficult for marketers to answer, without the appropriate attribution model in place. Marketers often rely on multi-touch attribution and media mix modeling (MMM) to understand what led to a conversion, however, these models are not perfect.

    • MMM: Media Mix Modeling only looks at long-term aggregate data, rather than person-level insights. While this allows marketers to see the impact a campaign had on conversions, as well as historical trends, such as times of year when shoppers increase or decrease engagements, it does not provide insight into individual preferences. MMM also uses several year’s worth of data, meaning teams cannot use this model to optimize campaigns in real-time.

    • MTA: Multi-touch attribution offers granular, person-level data in real-time across each touchpoint. When analyzed, teams can use this data to make changes to campaigns as they run, to better cater to consumer needs. The challenge with multi-touch attribution is that it is difficult to determine how much credit each touchpoint should be given for a conversion. For example, was the webinar or the email campaign more influential in moving the consumer toward conversion?

Attribution models no longer have to rely on outdated practices and can now give a more holistic view of the marketing funnel and the buyer’s journey. Just as omnichannel tactics combine online and offline channels, omnichannel attribution removes silos between campaign measurements to understand the role each touchpoint played in the journey. 

Leveraging omnichannel attribution offers a host of benefits to brands, allowing them to correlate online and offline measurements, and gain visibility into both person-level insights and aggregate, historical shopper trends. 

Steps for Leveraging Omnichannel Marketing

As noted, creating an omnichannel experience needs to take into account how the individual interacts with your brand. It focuses not on the channel, but the experience as a whole. With this in mind, there are a few essentials when it comes to creating an omnichannel experience:

1. Data Collection

Collecting accurate, timely data about your consumers is essential to the implementation of an omnichannel strategy. This data will allow you to understand when your target audience prefers to interact with brands and on what devices, which type of messaging they are more likely to engage with, what products and features they are looking for, etc. This data will be the driving force behind an omnichannel strategy.. Brands need to make sure they have the tools in place to effectively collect this data across online and offline channels. A smart way to do this is with Unified Marketing Measurement (UMM), an attribution model that combines the person-level metrics of multi-touch attribution, with the historic, aggregate measurements of media mix modeling. This way, touchpoints can be informed by individual preferences as well as historical trends such as regional or seasonal elements that affect engagements / conversions.

2. Data Analysis

Data collection is only the first step. Without a team and platform that can translate all of this big data into actionable insights, it is useless. Brands need to deploy an analytics platform that can distill all of this data in near real-time so that teams can course-correct while campaigns run, to meet consumer needs in the moment.

3. Customer Journey Mapping

Before launching an omnichannel campaign, organizations should be sure to create customer journey maps for each of their audience segments. The customer journey map evaluates the steps taken between the customer discovering the brand and purchasing from the brand. Outlining these maps allows brands to create more targeted campaigns by considering individual interests, the user experience and interface, and factors outside of the brand’s control that may impact the path to purchase, such as economic factors. 

4. Brand Guidelines

It’s important for organizations to develop a brand identity with clear guidelines for messaging and creative. These guidelines should be adhered to across each channels to help facilitate brand awareness and recognition through a cohesive message. Another way that organizations can help facilitate an omnichannel experience is by leveraging brand tracking tools that can help measure and predict their brand’s health in the mind of the consumer

5. Testing / Optimization

One of the most important components of an omnichannel marketing strategy is to continuously test the efficacy of your omnichannel approach. This enables the marketing team to determine ways to optimize campaign spend, messaging, creative, and more. Today’s organizations should utilize media planning tools that can run “what if” scenarios that take budget, target audience, multiple KPIs and media mix into consideration and in turn provide a highly granular media plan that can maximize ROI and inform future decision-making.

Examples of Omnichannel Marketing

When building an omnichannel strategy, take a look at these brands who have done so successfully: 

1. Starbucks

Through its mobile rewards app, Starbucks is able to better integrate the mobile experience with the in-store one to put consumer convenience first. Users can reload their cards from their phone or desktop computer. By using the app to pay, they are rewarded with points that can be applied to a free coffee. Additionally, they can skip the morning line by ordering in advance. 

2. Walgreens

Walgreens created a custom mobile app that makes it easier for customers to refill prescriptions, which they can then pickup in store. Their app also showcases store specific inventory making it easier for customers making a trip to decide which location they should visit.

3. Timberland

Timberland is combining the convenience of online with the experience of the in-person customer experience through the installation of near field communication (NFC) technology. Timberland created Touchwalls in their store, which leads to further information on their shoes. Customers can then add these to their online shopping list or purchase in-store. In addition, Timberland utilizes a product recommendations engine to gain exposure to lesser-known products based on user preferences.

Industries Applying Omnichannel Tactics

Omnichannel approaches have become popular across industries as consumers become more empowered, however, they are particularly prominent in these verticals: 

    • Retail: Retail in particular has faced drastic changes in today’s omnichannel environment. With the ability to buy in-store or online and the emergence of social media and review sites, retail marketers need to centralize how consumers are interacting with their brand across a multitude of channels to ensure a positive outcome.

    • Healthcare: Healthcare customers generally interact with many touchpoints across various providers, from hospitals, to primary care, to pharmaceuticals. By analyzing data around the customer journey and engagements, healthcare providers can better cater to individuals, providing them with data that matters most to them, while mitigating potential health risks.

    • Automotive: Since cars are a long term investment, keeping top of mind and driving customer loyalty are big priorities for car dealerships and manufacturers. Today’s advertisements may not yield the desired effects immediately, but if they engage current customers and interest prospects, they will impact sales down the line.  However, the buying journey, even in automotive has changed with 80 percent of shoppers researching cars online first. Additionally, it is estimated that 4.5 million cars could be sold online only in 2020. Having an encompassing advertising strategy that engages with buyers across all touchpoints has become more vital than ever.

    • Financial Services: The banking and financial services industry is shifting from a product-obsessed mindset to a more customer-centric view. As they do so, organizations must consider how they can deliver personalized experiences that can gain insight into which of the various services and products would be the best fit for each user based on their personal preferences, wants, and needs.

Trends in Omnichannel

As omnichannel becomes more popular, several trends have emerged that can help make these efforts more effective to improve consumer satisfaction and maximize marketing ROI. These include:

    • Integration of In-Store and Online – Many consumers are shopping online, only to pick up their purchases in-store. This could be to avoid searching for items in-store or to avoid delivery fees. Today’s shoppers are expecting the ease of their online experience to be integrated with the in-store experience. Almost 70 percent of US shoppers expect a notification that their order is ready within 2 hours of ordering it online. When Destination XL realized this trend, they combined customer location data with inventory to help customers find what they were looking for online to pick it up in-store. Additionally, stores like Kohl’s have created parking spots designed for shoppers who are picking up orders they made online.

    • Focus on the Brand, Not the Channel – As the Forrester Report: “Retailers are Starting to Reap the Rewards of Omnichannel Commerce” notes, “Customers believe they are engaging with one unified brand or organization, regardless of the various touchpoints that they use. This means retailers must ensure the continuity of information and resources across digital and store touchpoints — or risk losing customers to competitors that do.” Brands need to provide a consistent identity across channels with messages that resonate with the customer, regardless of platform.

    • More Devices for One Purchase – Customers are frequently beginning their journey on one device and making a purchase on another. However, many retailers are struggling to address this element of the customer journey, as it can be difficult to account for all cross-device interactions. Failing to account for this shift in trends could drastically impact your bottom line and media spend optimization efforts.

    • Multiple Channels Mean Better Customers – When tracked correctly, customers who visit your site across multiple devices tend to be better customers and spend an average of three to four times more than customers who only interact with a single channel.

Key Takeaways

An omnichannel marketing strategy allows teams to meet their consumers where they are, with the right message at the right time. Through omnichannel marketing, organizations can deliver a unified customer experience that acknowledges the previous touchpoints along the customer journey. This not only fosters brand awareness in the mind of the consumer, but also leads to improved engagement, increased ROI and sales, and enhanced customer retention and loyalty.

Today, organizations can more easily enable an omnichannel experience for consumers through the help of advanced marketing performance measurement platforms that can offer reliable, person-level insights to identify the optimal media mix, targeting, and more. By analyzing the customer journey at every step, organizations can make more informed decisions about how to optimize campaigns and reduce wasted ad spend.

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