Mastering Omnichannel Retail Media Strategy

If you’re aiming to achieve broader customer outreach, gain a competitive edge, enhance customer satisfaction, acquire unified data for personalized targeting, boost sales, foster deeper customer engagement, and achieve strong customer loyalty all at once, then you need:

An omnichannel strategy, which is the ultimate objective for any retailer or brand looking to thrive in the evolving landscape of digital advertising.

But what does omnichannel mean?

When you engage with your customers through the channels they prefer, whether it’s at a physical store or cross-device interactions, including social media or search engines, that represents what we call an omnichannel approach.

Omnichannel encompasses the diverse ways in which customers can engage with a company, spanning physical stores, web browsing, social media, emails, mobile apps, SMS, and various digital platforms. This omnichannel strategy stands out as a robust means to connect with your customers on their terms, most importantly, delivering excellent service tailored to their preferences and their specific needs.

Omnichannel Retail Media Networks

The transformation within Retail Media Networks has been remarkable in recent years. Retail media bridges the gap between physical and digital retail spaces, amalgamating data, analytics, strategic insights, and creativity to address clients’ business challenges effectively. Retailers increasingly require this hybrid advertising channel to prioritize the seamless shopping experience at every touchpoint within their ecosystem. On the other side, brands are looking to align with advertising platforms that deliver optimal conversions, both in-store and offline.

Considering that 73% of shoppers prefer to engage with multiple channels during their shopping journey, with 43% of consumers ranking a seamless experience across all channels as their foremost priority, it becomes evident that customers value cross-channel experiences.

Furthermore, customers who interact across multiple channels tend to visit physical stores 23% more frequently. These multichannel shoppers exhibit spending behavior that is three times greater compared to single-channel shoppers. In light of these statistics, it is imperative for retailers and advertisers to prioritize the delivery of a unified and seamless experience across all channels.

To maintain a competitive edge, a critical step in this evolution involves the adoption of a robust omnichannel marketing and advertising strategy. As highlighted earlier, consumers now have access to an extensive array of content options, spanning connected TV, podcasts, news, blogs, and more, often consumed across various devices, with mobile devices taking the lead.

This dynamic landscape necessitates that brands work more intelligently to capture and effectively engage their audience’s attention. Employing an omnichannel approach to media buying empowers brands to harness data and insights, enabling them to connect with their target audience precisely where and when it matters most.

By delivering a consistent message across all channels, Retail Media enhances the customer experience, resulting in heightened brand loyalty and satisfaction. Moreover, it extends customer reach across multiple channels, enabling businesses to tap into a broader audience, thereby enhancing brand recognition and broadening their customer base. Maintaining consistent communication with customers through diverse channels also cultivates deeper relationships and boosts customer engagement.

Today’s Customers Embrace a Mixed Shopping

Increasingly, customers seamlessly transition between various channels, including in-person and online, to fulfill their needs. The modern day shopper is profoundly omnichannel-oriented, seeking a captivating and tailored user experience that seamlessly integrates digital functionalities, whether they are shopping online or in physical stores. Notably, approximately 60 to 70 percent of consumers engage in research and shopping activities across both in-store and online environments. Over one-third of Americans have incorporated omnichannel features, such as online purchases with in-store or curbside pickup, into their routine shopping practices.

Research conducted by McKinsey on the omnichannel experience reveals that over half of B2C customers utilize three to five channels during each purchase. Additionally, when it comes to making a single reservation for accommodations, such as booking a hotel room online, the average customer switches between websites and mobile channels almost six times. When it comes to younger consumers, like Gen Zs, they wholeheartedly embrace the concept of omnichannel. They do not confine themselves to traditional channel distinctions and, instead, anticipate brands and retailers to deliver a seamless experience, regardless of their location or the channel they use.

Since most online grocery consumers shop the same retailers online and in-store, the brands and retailers that offer strong online and in-store shopping solutions are best positioned to win by nurturing even deeper consumer loyalty. And as wallets tighten due to inflation and shoppers do more pre-shop planning online, an omnichannel focus becomes even more critical.

John Carroll, Chief Growth Officer at Acosta

Omnichannel marketing is gaining greater significance as customers engage with brands across a multitude of channels and devices. With consumers now having the freedom to decide when, where, and how they shop, Retail Media Networks are prioritizing the precise targeting of the ideal shopper in the right location, with the appropriate brands, pricing, and messaging, achieving outcomes that are beyond the dreams of traditional advertising.

Create Seamless Customer Experiences

Reach customers at every stage of their buyer’s journey, across various touchpoints.

Omnichannel advertising offers the advantage of enabling businesses to connect with customers in a highly personalized and precisely targeted manner. Through the utilization of data and analytics, businesses gain first-party insights into customer behavior and preferences across diverse channels. This valuable information empowers them to deliver content and offers that are not only relevant but also personalized. This, in turn, leads to enhanced customer engagement and a higher likelihood of converting prospects into loyal customers.

Omnichannel strategy establishes comprehensive marketing solutions for brands, allowing them to optimize their return on investment in Retail Media advertising.

Unify Data, Personalize and Increase ROI

Integrated advertising caters to customers’ preferences and actively guides them toward the most efficient resolution.

An omnichannel marketing platform enables businesses to consolidate data from various sources, resulting in more detailed insights into customer behavior and the effectiveness of their marketing efforts. Instead of having isolated data from different customer touchpoints, businesses can centralize their data, leading to deeper insights. The consolidation of data from diverse platforms enhances businesses’ understanding of their customers and bolsters their marketing performance. By monitoring advertising performance across all channels, e-commerce businesses can discern which strategies are successful and which ones need adjustment.

When businesses consolidate customer data, they enhance their targeted advertising capabilities, making their messages more relevant to their audience. This personalized approach enhances conversion rates and increases ad revenues by rendering the message more relevant to the audience.

A recent study shows that companies with robust omnichannel customer engagement strategies managed to retain 89% of their customers. In contrast, companies with weaker omnichannel strategies retained only 33% of their customer base.

The adoption of an omnichannel marketing platform presents a multitude of advantages for businesses, ultimately resulting in enhanced ROI. Companies that have well-defined omnichannel customer engagement strategies experience a substantial 9.5% year-over-year increase in annual revenue. (Source: DigiZuite)

Boost online and in-store ad experiences all together

• Best Buy primarily concentrates on both in-store and online commerce. They have enhanced their in-store experience by introducing smart home technology solutions and complimentary in-home advisory services.
• Sephora prioritizes omnichannel personalization through rich in-app messaging, personalized push notifications, and easy booking of in-person consultations. Sephora’s loyalty program has been successful and its omnichannel strategy has been working pretty well. Data reveals that customers who visit the Sephora website within 24 hours of a store visit are three times more likely to make a purchase, with orders 13 percent higher compared to others.
• Walmart Connect provides brand partners the chance to reach in-store customers through TV screen and self-checkout counter ads. With an estimated 90% of American households shopping at Walmart, brands can connect with millions of shoppers through its multi-channel reach. The Walmart Radio Network, in existence since the nineties, reaches approximately 140 million shoppers weekly. In 2023, Walmart announced plans to experiment with audio ads, allowing partners to engage customers through sound as they shop in-store.

Despite numerous opportunities and success stories, achieving omnichannel personalization demands significant investments in technology, encompassing both software and hardware. The process of personalizing physical spaces often entails building from the ground up to enable digital touchpoints like screens, kiosks, or tablets for store associates.

To take a more in depth look at the examples of in-store advertising, you can read our article here: https://gowit.com/in-store-retail-advertising

Ensuring a seamless customer experience and adequately training employees can be challenging. Frontline staff require training to grasp and reinforce the customer journey. Furthermore, companies must reconsider their organizational structure, encompassing both digital and physical aspects of the business, to successfully implement omnichannel personalization.

In a media landscape that’s growing more intricate and diverse, selecting the appropriate technology platform is vital for a thriving omnichannel strategy, allowing you to engage your target audience across numerous channels.

At GoWit, we collaborate to shape your omnichannel advertising strategy and bridge the gap between your digital presence and physical locations.

With GoWit RMA, advertisers can maintain message consistency, deliver personalized user experiences rooted in customers’ past interactions, and seamlessly manage multiple channels within a single advertising platform.

The key is to capitalize on your shopper data in a privacy-conscious manner through a trusted Adtech partner.

Sources:

Amar, J., Jacobson, R., Kleinstein, B., & Shi, A. (2020, June 22). Redefine the omnichannel approach: Focus on what truly matters. McKinsey & Company. https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/operations/our-insights/redefine-the-omnichannel-approach-focus-on-what-truly-matters

Drenik, G. (2023, June 9). The Next Generation Of Retail Media Is Here. Are You Ready? Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/garydrenik/2023/06/09/the-next-generation-of-retail-media-is-here-are-you-ready/?sh=7c9746084525

Geyser, W. (2021, May 4). 11 Omnichannel Marketing Examples that Fully Integrate the Marketing Experience. Influencer Marketing Hub. https://influencermarketinghub.com/omnichannel-marketing-examples/

Geyser, W. (2023, April 27). How to Choose the Right Omnichannel Marketing Platform for Your Business. Influencer Marketing Hub. https://influencermarketinghub.com/omnichannel-marketing-platform/

McKinsey ＆ Company. (2022, August 17). What is omnichannel marketing? | McKinsey. Www.mckinsey.com. https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/mckinsey-explainers/what-is-omnichannel-marketing

Retail Media Networks: A Complete Guide. (n.d.). Www.placer.ai. Retrieved October 3, 2023, from https://www.placer.ai/guides/retail-media-networks

Townsend, T. (2023, May 11). The Importance of Omnichannel in Retail Media 2.0. Total Retail. https://www.mytotalretail.com/article/looking-beyond-retail-medias-familiar-4-walls-the-importance-of-omnichannel-in-retail-media-2-0/