Omnichannel Marketing is Customer Centric, Learn How and Why

The term "omnichannel" combines "omni," meaning "all," with "channel," referring to the different ways customers interact with a company. This approach recognises that customers often move across various channels to make purchases or resolve requests. It emphasises the importance of providing consistent and personalised experiences regardless of the channel used, whether it's in person, online, or through mobile devices. Learn more why brands should integrate it to retain customers.

Introduction to Omnichannel Marketing 

Omnichannel marketing is a wholesome strategy for providing a unified experience to the customer across all touchpoints. With it, brands can maintain consistency in the customer journey in all online and offline marketing activities. 

One of the primary goals of an omnichannel marketing strategy is to enable the customer to come across the brand and choose their preferred channel – social media, website blog, emails, SMS, mobile app, or brick-and-mortar store. 

With an omnichannel marketing strategy, brands can engage today’s customers better without any disruption, as they demand personalisation, right from the moment they show interest in products or services.

What is Omnichannel Marketing?

Omnichannel marketing refers to a strategy that focuses on a unified customer experience across offline and various digital marketing channels. It allows customers to interact with the brand on their own terms. 

Where Omnichannel Marketing is Heading Today

The approach brands nowadays take is integrating sales and marketing departments so that these teams can use customer data more logically and holistically. In recent years, over 73% of consumers have been using multiple channels in their purchase journey, according to Harvard Business Review. 

Omnichannel marketing is not that old. Brands began to adopt it as a strategy to redefine the customer experience about a decade ago with the smartphone boom. Industry leaders have focused on using customer data to treat consumers as individuals instead of considering them as a market. 

With the recent digital transformation, omnichannel has become more than a trend that will pass away in the future. It is necessary for e-Commerce and even plays a significant role in the modern-day retail experience. 

Having an omnichannel strategy is more than simply integrating a new-age social media strategy. This is where it deviates from (and should not be confused with) multichannel marketing – that is just about throwing all possible channels into the mix. 

Omnichannel marketing will continue to be even more customer-centric than it is today. And as technological advancements rise, marketers will need to make sure that customers have a seamless experience of a brand, whether it is shopping in-store once or maintaining a long-term relationship with the brand online. 

Omnichannel vs Multichannel Marketing

To better not confuse these similar sounding terms conceptually, here are some primary differences to consider. 

1. Omnichannel marketing is involved in the use of all relevant platforms in communicating with the audience, backed by a cohesive strategy. With multichannel marketing, the choice of marketing platforms are specific. 
2. Multichannel marketing focuses on the brand and product. It involves multiple channels operating independently, and offers separate and distinct shopping experiences. On the other hand, omnichannel marketing focuses on the customer, integrates all channels into a single, harmonious shopping experience, and provides a seamless and consistent experience across all channels.

Analogy-wise, a multichannel approach is as a restaurant offering separate menus for dine-in, take out, and delivery. Each menu features the same dishes, but the experience differs based on the chosen channel. Omnichannel is like a restaurant that tailors its menu and service to individual preferences, regardless of chosen channel. You can dine-in, order take out, or get delivery, and have a personalised experience each time.

Omnichannel Marketing vs Integrated Marketing Communications

Integrated marketing communication is about consistent brand messaging across all channels, while omnichannel marketing is about unifying the customer experience everywhere. Omnichannel marketing focuses on the customer, integrates all channels into a single, harmonious shopping experience, and creates a connected, personalised experience. Integrated marketing communications aligns communications across touchpoints, focuses on relaying brand messages consistently to customers, and prioritises customer communication.   

How Omnichannel Marketing Benefits Your Brand  

The advantages of omnichannel marketing include customer retention, more options for accessibility of consumers, and more opportunities for collecting first-party data. 

Makes Strategies more Customer Focused

Using automation software, marketers can track all the customer touchpoints and find gaps in their marketing strategies. By filling unique gaps based on the data provided, brands can predict or learn how to best serve customer interests in the future. 

Marketing campaigns this way will have a more consistent meaning and brands will be easily recognisable. Likewise, they can throw in better, data-informed cross-selling and upselling strategies that actually matter to the audience. 

Provides Quality Experience Beyond the Marketing Funnel

Whether consumers prefer going to physical stores or shopping online, starting with chatbots and doing a video call for a product demo, having a unified brand experience makes all the difference. 

Omnichannel is better than multichannel, even when customer support is in question. It is unimaginable today to provide a great experience in the awareness stage through the buying phase but offering a bad experience with a longer wait time during customer support. 

Customers do not like to wait. Period.  

Providing a quality experience across such touchpoints makes them repeat customers. Not bombarding them with emails about product launches and discounts. 

Improves Customer Lifetime Value

Google mentions omnichannel shoppers have a 30% higher lifetime value compared to the ones who shop using only one channel.

You can learn more about increasing customer lifetime value and calculating it, if you have come across this term recently.

Parting Thoughts

Omnichannel marketing puts the customer at the centre so that each of their touchpoints feel seamless. It caters to personalisation of communication that makes brand stand out in the saturated market.