Why You Should Adopt an Omnichannel Strategy
Today’s marketers seem to have their work cut out for them when it comes to figuring out what their customers are looking for in a shopping experience. Whether it’s early in the morning or late at night, on a cellphone or a desktop computer, businesses consistently need to give their customers a seamless experience.
According to research conducted by Google, 90 percent of people who own more than one device switch between those devices at least three times a day. Companies that can provide an easy transition from device to device can stake their claim of a share of the predicted $1.8 trillion that is expected to come from omnichannel, or cross-channel, sales this year. By using an omnichannel approach to build a seamless brand experience, companies can increase sales and customer loyalty.
What Is Omnichannel Marketing?
Omnichannel marketing essentially gives the customer a smooth experience throughout all aspects of their interactions with your company. The term focuses on the way consumers now make buying decisions.
Compared to the times when shopping was just a one-and-done affair, now the same process can take days and span different places and times. People may look up products on a company’s website using their desktop computer, browse the app on their phone the next day, visit the brick-and-mortar store over the weekend, and then use their phone to look up other products in stock while they’re in the store. Although websites and apps are a major part of any omnichannel strategy, other channels are still important, such as newspapers, billboards, catalogs, and even word of mouth. Other tactics include in-store tablets, kiosks, and geolocation marketing. Marketers cannot afford to leave any pathway to the customer behind.
Omnichannel marketing is described by HubSpot as “the ability to deliver a seamless and consistent experience across channels, while factoring in the different devices that consumers are using to interact with your business.” Besides allowing for a seamless customer experience, omnichannel strategies also translate to a sales approach that gives the consumer a diversity of options for researching products and buying.
In 2015, Rakuten Marketing collaborated with the CMO Club to discover how businesses are keeping up with marketing trends. Surveying business-to-business and business-to-customer marketing officers on their use of omnichannel marketing, the results showed that 45 percent of chief marketing officers had already begun the process of adopting an omnichannel strategy. Of the businesses that had not implemented omnichannel marketing, 29 percent planned to do so within the year.
Omnichannel marketing isn’t considered a tactic focused on one channel over another — it’s more about being everywhere at once. People have a variety of ways to shop nowadays, and they are using them.
One Example of Omnichannel Marketing
The goal of the omnichannel method is to create multiple brand touchpoints for the customer to interact with. The company that has the most customer interactions can be expected to have more business.
However, businesses that implement an omnichannel marketing strategy don’t just rely on multiple channels to reach their customers, though this is certainly a part of it. A good omnichannel strategy is also focused on ensuring that the customer has the same experience whether they are on the app or walking into the store, and that the different channels are “talking” to each other. For instance, say you wanted to buy a jacket and you were browsing the options on a store’s website. The next day you walk into the store with your phone. You receive a request to connect with the store’s network, and once you approve, your phone tells the salesperson’s tablet which jackets you’ve “favorited” on the site, so he or she can help you. This communication is a key aspect of any omnichannel strategy — it’s what enables that seamless customer experience the strategy aims to provide.
This means that the most advanced omnichannel strategies depend on technology. Retail apps, mobile integration, guided selling, GPS-enabled deals and offers, and even different checkout options are just a few of the technologies and techniques that can be used to create an excellent omnichannel experience.
Why Omnichannel eCommerce Is Essential
Omnichannel ecommerce strategies are proven to increase sales. In one Harvard Business Review study, omnichannel customers (those who used more than one channel to interact with a brand, such as buying products on a website and in a physical store) spent an average of 4% more on every shopping trip in stores and 10% more on every shopping transaction online. In addition, the more channels customers used to interact with a brand, the more they spent.
Consumers that use more than one channel are also valuable because they tend to have greater customer loyalty than someone who only shops online, or only buys in-store. Research shows that 47 percent of consumers who interact with their preferred company on at least 10 channels will make a purchase from these preferred companies once a week, versus the 21 percent who use no more than four channels. Omnichannel strategies essentially extend the customer relationship.
It’s clear that omnichannel strategies are becoming a necessity in a world where people have multiple ways to shop — not to mention multiple options. The more ways that companies can find to interact with their customers, the more they can capture their business.
