Omnichannel marketing is the process of creating a seamless customer experience across multiple channels and platforms, both online and offline.
It’s often confused with multichannel marketing because they share a major similarity: Both use multiple channels to connect people with your products and services. However, with multichannel marketing, those channels aren’t necessarily working with each other.
With omnichannel marketing, they are.
For instance, you probably have a business website, a social media presence, an email marketing strategy and maybe even a brick-and-mortar location. But these channels are individual silos. There’s a direct line between channel and sale. Change the channel and, in most cases, you’re starting over from square one. That’s multichannel marketing.
With omnichannel marketing, each channel flows into the next, guiding the customer on a journey and making sure they don’t get lost along the way. They can start the buying process on one channel and pick up where they left off on an entirely different one.
Done well, omnichannel marketing is a great way to keep existing customers happy, draw new ones into the fold and put you a few steps ahead of the competition.
A Real-World Example of Omnichannel Marketing
The easiest way to understand omnichannel marketing is to see it in action. Consider this example:
Bill is building a deck so he can entertain this summer. He needs an uncommon size of bracket.
He could spend his day going on a grand tour of the area hardware stores, hoping one of them has what he needs. Instead, he pulls out his smartphone and downloads the Hal’s Hardware and Hotdogs app.
On the app, he can see that the bracket is in stock, how much it costs, and even which aisle it’s in. He purchases it online and selects in-store pickup, gets confirmation that it’ll be ready in an hour, and heads to the store.
Bill’s a bit early, so he grabs a hot dog and peruses the aisles. He scans a QR code in the lumber aisle, which leads him to a free checklist of everything he needs to build a deck, along with some popular blueprints and links to helpful YouTube videos.
Bill walked in for a $6.49 piece of hardware and a delicious hot dog. He walks out with $500 in materials, the lumber manager’s business card and a shiny new customer loyalty card — all because of omnichannel marketing.
Benefits of Omnichannel Marketing
Omnichannel marketing is designed to meet your customers exactly where they’re at, whether that’s on your website, an app, your social media channels or your brick-and-mortar location.
Here are some of the benefits.
- Improved customer retention: Every business marketer knows that it’s much less expensive to keep a customer than to find a new one. Omnichannel marketing makes it easy to create satisfied customers — and satisfied customers stick around!
- Higher sales: As we saw with Bill in the example above, omnichannel marketing can help you rake in the dough. That’s because it makes it so easy for customers to find what they’re looking for, and what they didn’t even know they needed. Add-ons and upsells can be built right into the strategy, increasing your revenue.
- A better competitive edge: When you make it simple for a customer to do business with you, they don’t have a reason to go somewhere else. And that gives you a huge edge over your competition.
Omnichannel Marketing: Everything Everywhere All At Once
Multichannel marketing involves using many different channels to market your business. And that’s a good thing. The more channels you have, the more people you can reach.
Omnichannel marketing takes that concept a step further and creates a flow between all those different channels. The result is a buying journey that looks different for every customer but still leads them exactly where you want them to go: the checkout stand!
Are you ready to give your customers the experience they deserve? Mischa Communications can help you design a marketing strategy that’s right for your business. Let’s talk about it.