7 strategies to make your omnichannel marketing plan more effective
Omnichannel marketing refers to an interconnected multi-channel sales strategy that provides customers with a seamless shopping experience across all sales channels commissioned by a brand.
The goal of advancing marketing efforts across these interconnected channels is to provide a cohesive and cohesive shopping experience for the customer, coming from different sources via different means.
Omnichannel marketing is a multichannel content approach that aims to improve the customer experience and build stronger relationships across channels and touchpoints. This encompasses physical and online experiences, as well as traditional and digital channels and point of sale.
According to Omnisend, “Marketers who use three or more channels in a single campaign have a 287% higher purchase rate than those who only use one channel. Purchase frequency is 250% higher than single-channel purchase frequency, and omnichannel order value is 13% higher with every order.”
Thus, in today’s competitive business environment, comprehensive marketing tactics are imperative. Some key strategies that can make an omnichannel marketing plan more effective are –
1. Know your customers
Before writing a marketing plan, research your customers thoroughly – know who they are, understand their pain points and where they come from. This involves identifying target audiences, creating detailed buyer personas, and fully understanding their wants, needs, behaviors, demographics, interests, and goals.
You can use relevant tools like Google keywords, social mention, Klout, etc. to collect, evaluate and store such data which will help you identify and assess customer preferences. Your marketing efforts are in the right place if you know who your customers are and what they want.
2. Connect with your customers
The fact that omnichannel puts the customer first is an important differentiator between omnichannel and multichannel marketing.
A well-thought-out customer journey assessment is the first step to omnichannel success. Mapping that journey to added value at different touchpoints comes next, and then you come up with an engagement plan.
Examine every digital touchpoint a prospect encounters before deciding to become a customer. Often, brands take a business-centric approach to defining customer touchpoints and this is where they fail to deliver a consistent customer experience.
For example, a channel is never a touchpoint but a way to understand where the customer is coming from and how they are interacting with you. While digital is a channel, a digital conversation with your customer is a touchpoint.
When you are thorough with this, ensure that the experience going through these points is consistent and customer-centric. If not, bring together the appropriate departments to make this adjustment. Every department should have a customer-centric mindset and strive to create enjoyable customer experiences.
3. Generate content with context
Context is the most important aspect of an omnichannel marketing approach, especially for D2C brands. Your users will stop interacting with you if you send an irrelevant message to the wrong audience at the wrong time. For example, you don’t want to ask the prospect to sign up for your newsletter when they go to the checkout page.
Make sure the context of your message is relevant to the user and deliver it when they are most engaged and on the channel where they are most engaged.
These formats can be blogs, podcasts, email marketing, branded content and influencer marketing, user-generated content (UGC), community building, memes, infographics, white papers, etc. The communication channel should be based on the buyer’s journey.
4. Be where your users are
Omnichannel marketing itself insinuates that you need to be ubiquitous, which in simple terms means being where your customer is.
Analyze customer engagement numbers from different channels and allocate your efforts and resources accordingly. You can categorize your audience into multiple categories that help you create a unique journey for each type of customer and drive satisfaction.
5. Implement inclusive and goal-oriented marketing strategies
Be a brand with a cause. Your marketing strategy should always be inclusive and appeal to diversity. This will only happen when you know the purpose of your marketing initiatives and how they will help your business through the various stages of growth.
A goal-oriented marketing strategy will help you move forward on your set schedule and overcome any challenges that may arise.
6. Do not hesitate to automate
Use marketing tools to automate your marketing strategies and campaigns. For an omnichannel plan to work effectively, you will need some automation tools to keep things running smoothly and avoid missing information.
Some tools you should consider are CRM, video/web conferencing solutions, email marketing automation tools, data analysis and visualization tools, content management systems, and social media listening.
7. Always measure your efforts
Your data analysis tool should be your best friend. A truly effective omnichannel strategy must constantly evolve based on data collected across channels through different campaigns for different audiences. Get clear visibility into all your initiatives to turn customer feedback and behavior into actionable insights.
Keep track of your efforts, don’t dwell on initiatives that didn’t work, and keep experimenting. Take the “fail fast, learn fast, improve fast” approach.
(Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of YourStory.)
