10 Highly Effective Omnichannel Marketing Strategies to Boost Your Sales

Did you know that omnichannel marketing helps companies retain 89% of their customers, while weak omnichannel campaigns can still keep 33% of the buyers?. No wonder many successful brands today implement this strategy, including Starbucks, Amazon, Apple, and Walmart.

Successful omnichannel campaigns show that today, it’s not enough that your business has a website and social media presence. There are several areas you can be present to boost awareness of your brand and, consequently, sales. So, what does this mean for you as a business owner? That means you need to mold your entire marketing strategy into building a strong omnichannel presence.

Otherwise, your business faces the unfortunate fate of companies like Toys R Us, American Apparel, and Kmart. Each failed to create a uniform presence across their channels, eventually leading to sales decline and bankruptcy.

To avoid that, this article walks you through highly effective omnichannel marketing strategies for you to implement. It doesn’t matter if you run a brick-and-mortar, B2B or E-commerce store, these techniques can give you insights on what better steps to take to drive more sales.

What is Omnichannel Strategy?

An omnichannel marketing strategy involves integrating multiple channels like physical stores, social media, and websites to interact with customers. In other words, in omnichannel marketing your goal is to create a unified experience across all channels.

This strategy focuses on a customer-centric view. The whole point is to let customers conveniently communicate with your brand no matter what platform they prefer.

By convenient means omnichannel is more consistent than multi-channel, which you’ll understand more in the next part.

Omnichannel vs. Multi-channel: What’s the Difference?

Many people often mistake omnichannel for multi-channel, which is understandable. While they sound similar, these two strategies are completely different. Here are the things that make them different:

Customer Journey

In a multichannel strategy, customer journey mapping doesn’t need a seamless transition between channels. Instead, each platform implements a different part of the customer journey.

For instance, TV ads handle the awareness stage. Upon learning about the product, the customer will now go to the website.

With omnichannel marketing, you must consider each stage within the customer journey. A good example is how Sephora can give you recommendations and loyalty program rewards whether you buy in-store or online.

Communication Channels

Another good thing about omnichannel is that you can switch between platforms easily. You can buy in-store and then get similar recommendations via email. The brand lets you continue where you left no matter the platform.

Meanwhile, the same isn’t guaranteed in muti-channel. One network doesn’t necessarily “remember” the activities you have on another platform. Thus, each communication channel can feel different for you.

Messaging

The goal of omnichannel marketing is to make social media, websites, ads, and emails one. So, when you see a promo on Facebook, you’ll see it on the website, too.

Meanwhile, with multi-channel marketing, a brand can adopt a friendly tone on social media but not on its personal app.

Customer Engagement

Many omnichannel adopters tend to create a makeshift “community” within their channels. This is how they encourage customers to become a part of it.

A good example of this is Duolingo. Ever since the language-learning app joined TikTok in 2021, its mascot has been going viral. Because of its consistent humorous tone across its channels, people have made thousands of content around the brand on TikTok.

On the other hand, multi-channel marketing doesn’t need to employ consistent ways of engaging with customers. Because of this, each platform can attract different audiences.

The Benefits of Omnichannel Marketing Strategy

A 2021 survey found that one in two e-commerce marketers in Europe and North America believe that omnichannel marketing strategies are important in creating successful campaigns. Here are some reasons why:

• Better customer experience. Omnichannel marketing provides overall better customer support, purchasing process, and seamless transactions to users.

• More engagement. Omnichannel strategies let you interact with customers many times throughout the customer journey. This results in a deeper and more meaningful connection with each user, which can keep them loyal to your brand.

• Better insights. Your use of different channels within one ecosystem gives you complete and connected data about each customer segment. This means that you can get to know your customers, resulting in a more targeted strategy each time.

• More ROI. Omnichannel strategies result in 287% higher sales than single-channel campaigns. Better customer experience, organized data, and data-driven decisions save a lot on costs and get more sales, so no marketing effort comes to waste.

• Greater brand visibility. Maintaining your presence on all platforms opens up to more audiences and potential customers. Moreover, the improved customer experience you provide can naturally drive the algorithm to your brand, leading to more exposure.

How to Use Omnichannel Marketing Strategy? 7 Things to Do

Omnichannel marketing can be tricky to implement, especially since you need to make all channels feel like one. You want to remain consistent while personalizing your content to each customer segment.

There is no “general style” to follow when doing an omnichannel marketing strategy. Everything depends on your brand, users, and goals in your campaign. Even so, here are seven tips to guide you in creating an effective strategy.

1. Conduct Extensive Data Collection

Start with a comprehensive data collection process. List down everything you need to know in order to conduct customer journey mapping effectively. This can include:

• Demographic Information: Learn about your audience’s age. Gender, location, job, etc. This lets you understand their basic needs and topics to get their attention.
• Behavioral Data: Be sure to record customers’ buying history and product interactions. You can input them into a high-powered tool to come up with big-picture insights in minutes.
• Channels Used: This is important to ensure that your brand is present on the platforms where customers spend most of their time.
• Cross-Device Behavior: How does the customer move between their phone, laptop, and tablet? Take note of what features you can add to make the customer journey easier for them.
• Social Media Interaction: Keep track of the mentions, likes, and shares you get. After that, you should come up with data on what content resonates with them the most.

Having fruitful data about your existing customers is important in omnichannel marketing. So record, record, and record everything. After that, analysis tools like Google Analytics, Salesforce, and other CRM systems.

2. Consider All Platforms in Customer Journey Mapping

After collecting and analyzing customer data, it’s time to plan how people interact with your brand. Customer journey mapping in omnichannel marketing is similar to multi-channel, except that you consider that a customer can use different platforms throughout the journey.

A personalized email from Duolingo, a popular language-learning app, that creatively reminds a user of their missed lesson

Analyze again Duolingo’s strategy. After you show interest in the brand online, you can get ads and promotions. Ultimately, you’ll succumb to using the app, which employs a gamified experience. At the point of disinterest, they’ll send engaging and personalized emails to keep you using the service.

3. Use Predictive Analytics

Predictive analytics can teach you so much about customers’ possible activities in the future. This can tell you where you’re lacking and which customers will back out before they even know it.

A formula for this is good data collection and a powerful AI tool. Here are some advanced predictive analytics solutions for omnichannel marketing:

• • Domo: Identifies patterns and trends from large datasets to let you predict the result of certain business decisions.
  • Sisense: Uses machine learning to identify opportunities and avoid risks in decision-making.
  • Tableau: Data visualization tool that can perform statistical analysis on an interactive dashboard. You can use a drag-and-drop function to explore data and see patterns.
  • Salesforce Einstein: A popular AI CRM that can predict customer behaviors and recommend actions to improve sales, satisfy users, and make better campaigns.

4. Ensure Personalized Messaging

Personalized messaging means talking with customers based on their wants, behaviors, and interactions in different channels. Customer data plays an important role here again. Using those data, create messages that specifically match the customer’s interest.

For example, when a customer buys a pair of jeans in your boutique, you can recommend other stuff that matches the jeans’ design. The more you know about the customer’s style, the better you can offer personalized services.

5. Add Cross-Communication Customer Support

In multi-channel marketing, customer support means offering chatbots on different platforms. In fact, 35% of customers in the US say they want the same customer service rep to handle their issues.

When it comes to omnichannel marketing, top it up a notch by letting the conversation continue on another channel. You can use ticketing systems like Hiver’s, which combine all customer inquiries across email, app, and website.

6. Maintain Consistent Branding

Your brand should seem like one person on all platforms and materials. Everything from the brand color to the communication tone and core values should align to avoid alienating the users.

For example, an eco-friendly beauty product should associate its online presence with environmentally friendly causes. Their green values should reflect on the packaging and conversation style of the brand.

7. Combine Online with Offline Experience

Make it easier for customers to switch between online and offline means when buying and interacting with you. A great example of this is an Asian health and beauty retailer called Watsons, which combines in-store with app experience.

Customers can take orders and collect rewards online, then pick them up in-store. Likewise, the products they buy in-store reflect online recommendations and tailored incentives.

Adidas, another great example, launched a click-and-collect feature in 2015, which got them 1,000+ orders within the first week. It goes without saying that customers in the fashion industry benefit from offline product checkups that online channels can’t replace.

8. Track Inventory in Real-Time

Customers need to see the same data and information across all channels. It can create confusion when something isn’t available on your website but is still up for sale on social media. You can easily keep track of everything by using advanced inventory management tools such as Zoho, inFlow, and NetSuite.

9. Use Compatible Software

A PwC survey revealed that one of the biggest challenges in omnichannel marketing is software incompatibility.

Today, many affordable AI marketing tools offer advanced and easy-to-use systems. Many even act as data storage, analysis tools, social listening software, channel managers, and everything else at the same time. Some of them include HubSpot, Salesforce Einstein, and Mailchimp.

10. Conflicting Goals in Each Channel

Conflicting channel goals are especially likely to happen when there are different managers on each platform. They all must work towards the same goal. Here are some actionable tips to do that:

• Establish a clear objective. Make sure that each of them understands what you want to achieve, as well as the roles they play and the gap that they fill within each other’s channels.
• Do a regular meeting. You can have the managers talk about each other’s progress and suggestions once a week or bi-weekly. Aside from unifying their steps, brainstorming sessions can also help them get to know each other and learn from their strengths.
• Encourage cross-channel training. You can have the managers experience a different channel temporarily through immersion. This can help them understand better how each channel works and how the customers interact on each platform.
• Have someone to handle the entire channel management. You can hire someone or lead the channel managers yourself. There must be one person who understands what’s going on in the entire campaign to keep the actions aligned with your objectives.

Overall, being in sync is key. Whether single or multiple managers handle the channels, make sure that each of them matches the steps taken on other platforms.

3 Things That Can Cause Your Omnichannel Strategies to Fail

Omnichannel marketing is a complex strategy to perform. It’s not just a campaign – it can define your entire brand. With that, here are some don’ts to take note of when doing omnichannel plans:

Forcing Customers to Other Channels

The beauty of an omnichannel marketing strategy lies in its connectivity across all channels. Customers don’t need to use other platforms they don’t prefer just to enjoy the whole package. Forcing customers can cause discomfort and a bad experience instead.

In addition, some customers get concerned about their security online. Instead of forcing new channels on them, it’s better to spend your budget on improving security on your platforms.

Using All Channels

The more does not necessarily mean the better in omnichannel marketing. In fact, it can only cause unnecessary marketing expenses. So instead, focus on the relevant platforms based on your location, customer preference, and industry.

For example, Messenger and Snapchat are more popular in the US, but in Europe, it’s WhatsApp. In addition, LinkedIn can be a great channel for B2B businesses, but some B2C can usually skip that.

Hire More Team Members Than You Need

Whether marketing, sales, or customer support, smaller teams have easier cross-communication flow than larger ones. While more people can complete many tasks, omnichannel strategies focus more on the quality of service. With fewer people in the team, managers and staff can pass down information quicker and more accurately.

Takeaways

Omnichannel strategies are the way to go to stay afloat and attract more sales today. As everyone goes online and technologies become more seamless, there is no excuse to put channels in separate bubbles. With a unified system, your customers can browse your services more conveniently, which results in higher sales and repeat purchases.

That said, omnichannel marketing is easier said than done. You need the help of advanced tools and many trial-and-error to understand the best techniques for your customers. With the insights from this article, feel free to adopt these strategies and tailor them to your goals and branding.

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