Have you been looking for effective marketing strategies for your business? If yes, please take the time to read this article. We will share one effective, workable tactic. And it goes by the name of omnichannel marketing.
There are many benefits to adopting omnichannel marketing. Research shows that companies that use it as an engagement tool can keep over 90% of their customers. You can achieve up to 250% higher frequency in purchases than if using a single channel. 35% of customers want access to a customer service representative on any channel they use.
Our article will define omnichannel marketing and go into an exploration of how it works.
Understanding Omnichannel Marketing
Look at the typical marketing landscape we have right now. There are so many ways to target or reach customers. Some venues include analog media, social media, email marketing, chats, and phone.
You may already be using all these platforms to reach your customers. The tone of voice, branding, or messaging could be different for each. The company website, for example, may not have any similarities to the social media pages. What you are implementing, in this case, is called multichannel marketing.
Please note some people use omnichannel and multichannel marketing interchangeably. But, they are not the same.
Multichannel marketing is:
- All about the number of avenues you can reach customers with. That makes it a channel-centric approach.
- The channels are standalone, meaning there is no integration between them. What customers see on your social media pages, for example, could be different from what is on the website.
- The management and marketing strategies used in each channel may be different.
Omnichannel marketing is customer-centric. The aim is to provide a seamless and unified experience. It should not matter what platform the customer is using. You could start the conversation on social media and move to your website without losing a beat.
There is no need to start a new conversation since it can be picked up from a different platform seamlessly. There has to be consistency in messaging across all the channels.
Creating the Omnichannel Experience
Let us now explore how to set up an omnichannel experience.
Understand Your Customers
Any marketing activity cannot succeed without a good understanding of the customer. Look at factors like:
- What is their pain point?
- Preferred media
- Devices and platforms they use
- Interactions at each touchpoint of the buyer cycle
Creating a buyer persona for your ideal customer is vital. The data you collect from the points above will be quite helpful. You will also need to segment your customers based on similar purchasing patterns.
Invest in an Omnichannel Contact Center Software
A contact center plays a critical role in responding to customer issues. The live agents take over the tasks that chatbots cannot handle. Inefficient or legacy systems can slow down response times, leading to customer frustration.
An omnichannel contact center software is a valuable tool. You get to centralize all communication in one place. The omnichannel contact center salesforce can switch from channel to channel without losing the context of the communication.
It becomes easier to handle many channels, both traditional and digital. Sharing and access to information are easy for everyone with access privileges.
Cloud contact centers remove the need for costly on-premise call center hardware. Remote access means live agents can work from wherever they are. It becomes easy to ensure customers have a good experience at whatever touchpoints.
Plan the Customer Experience
You cannot know the customer experience if you don’t go through the process itself. Position yourself as the customer and try to experience each touchpoint. See how the brand delivers on email, social media, chat, live agents, and other platforms.
It doesn’t hurt to get a few other people to go through the same for a more honest review. Customer feedback can also give you some critical insights. Throw in a few incentives to encourage participation in the survey.
Finally, get the input of your customer-facing team members. After all, they are the ones in direct contact with the customers. So, they will have tons of insights you can use.
Personalization
Remember we said that omnichannel marketing is a customer-centric approach? That means personalization must be a top priority. Your omnichannel contact center salesforce should have buyer records you can use.
A look at patterns will show you who the loyal/return customers are. You can send them personalized messages with exclusive offers.
Think about your typical behavior with email messages. Aren’t you more likely to open one that addresses your name, as opposed to generic ones? You can achieve up to 29% higher unique open rates with personalization. Personalized, targeted, and segmented emails bring in 58% of revenue. 63% of customers dislike generic ad messaging.
Omnichannel Marketing Is About Making Things Easy
How can the customer have a good experience if every process feels like an uphill task? Remember our earlier point on seamless and integrated experiences. So, let’s say a customer is browsing your social media pages and finds something to buy. The perfect omnichannel experience means:
- The ability to make the order on the social media pages without needing to log into your e-commerce store to place an order.
- If the customer has a query, it should be possible to ask via social media. And even if the customer logs off and resumes on the website or contact center, it should not require a repeat of the question. That brings us back to the need to invest in omnichannel contact center software.
- There should already be a report of the previous interaction. The live agent can pick up where the customer left off and resolve any issues.
- The checkout process should be smooth and available on the customer’s preferred platform.
We will finish this point with some sobering statistics. 90% of customers will leave due to a bad customer experience. Creating the perfect omnichannel experience ensures this will never be the case.
Final Thoughts
The customer-centric approach can be a game-winner in the competitive business landscape. That could explain why the omnichannel strategy is gaining such traction. We have shared salient points above on how it works.
The key takeout with omnichannel marketing is consistency. You must be consistent with messaging and the experiences across the different touchpoints. And it starts with having a good understanding of the customers.
Finally, investing in the right technologies is critical. Omnichannel contact center software will be of great help to the teams. Higher efficiency means better handling of customers across the different channels.
