Omnichannel marketing | What Is It And Should You Shift?

This is part one of our three-part series intended to help you understand the world of omnichannel marketing.

Today, every customer has two lives — An online life and offline life. To know and personalize the customer experience, your business needs to map these two lives together. With the explosion in smart devices and the number of channels available to the customer, there is a growing need to meet customer expectations by leveraging the benefits of Omnichannel marketing.

What is Omnichannel Marketing?

You are trying to get a nice comfortable jacket to help you navigate the winter. You have been searching for it online and in a few hours’ time, the Ads that show up on your Google feed seem related to Jackets. The promotional emails that you receive via Gmail, show you Jackets at locations near your place. You seem to be getting coupons on Instagram or Facebook, with a link encouraging you to buy jackets from your favorite brands online. One-click and you are almost done with the purchase. It is personalized and driven by customer behavior.

If you are ever done this or heard someone close say this over a casual chat, then you have been introduced to Omnichannel marketing. Omnichannel marketing seamlessly integrates the different communication channels that businesses use to stay in touch with customers. It makes sure the customer remains at the heart of the marketing strategy.

It operates on three main principles.

• Nurture your customer by ensuring seamless customer experience.
• Promote brand familiarity by consistency in messaging across all channels.
• Eliminate friction in decision making by the purchase as effortless as possible.

Why is this Shift Happening now?

According to Google Research, 90% of multiple device owners switch between three per day to complete a task. In the United States, about 210 million adults access the internet with an average of 4 different devices. This essentially means that customers are more connected and have more control over the buying process than ever before.

The channels that are available today range from newspaper ads to billboards, Google ads to social media influencer marketing, storefront ads to word of mouth. The channels are growing and the choices are expanding. What used to be a one or two-stop shop is now a journey that spans days, times, locations, and channels.

In such an open and a fiercely competitive market, businesses that help customers complete tasks as and when they want, have an opportunity to gain a piece of $1.8 trillion in cross-channel sales predicted for this year.

The Gradual Shift to Omnichannel Marketing:

Considering the joint research from the CMO Council and Netsertive, 94% of marketers believe that providing an omnichannel experience is crucial to business success. Another study of 46,000 shoppers, it has been observed that companies providing an omnichannel experience, made customers spend an average of 4% more on each shopping occasion in-store. Omnichannel marketing is all about eliminating friction for the customer by integrating multiple channels.

Customers on average spend 10% more when two or more channels are integrated. When provided with an Omnichannel experience, customers get used to the convenience and speed in getting things done. Customers spent 13% more when doing some research before buying.

Omnichannel marketing makes the customer seen, valued and heard. With better integration of multiple channels, the customers find it easier to buy what they want, where they want and how they want. This obsession with seamless customer service makes omnichannel marketing, a preferred choice among marketers.

As the market shifts and embraces this more, in our next blog, we bring you 5 key tactics that you can use right away to jump-start your omnichannel marketing strategy.

At TechAffinity, it is our mission, to be future-ready and help you stay on top of current market trends. In alignment with that mission, we want to empower you to get ahead in the market by leveraging our expertise in Omnichannel digital marketing. Please feel free to Get in touch with us. You can also drop a mail at media@techaffinity.com with all your queries.

Originally published at techaffinity.com on September 17, 2019.