Omnichannel Marketing: Definition and Key Components

Omnichannel marketing is a digital marketing strategy that uses many different channels to reach customers with a consistent message across multiple touchpoints. The ideal omnichannel experience involves an omnichannel customer seeing a similar marketing ad on multiple platforms they frequently visit, with each message leading them closer to a purchase. Retailers, e-commerce stores, and even brick-and-mortar stores can use an omnichannel strategy to create a customer experience that is more holistic, consistent, and personalized to facilitate the customer journey.

Omnichannel marketing is heavily reliant on customer data to track customers’ experiences across channels. Developing an omnichannel customer experience can require more effort and a higher budget to create an experience that translates to customer success, customer retention, and customer loyalty.

Multichannel marketing simply describes the strategy of using multiple different media channels to market your message, while omnichannel marketing involves integrating these channels into one cohesive approach.

• Multichannel marketing: A multichannel approach assumes each media channel will function separately from the others, with different customers converting (making a purchase) based on their interaction with a single channel. For example, a multichannel strategy may consist of placing both TV ads and social media ads, with the intention that the TV ads will attract the company’s older, TV-watching client base, and the social media ads will engage their younger, tech-savvy customers. A company may choose to run completely different ads on each platform.
• Omnichannel marketing: Omnichannel marketing is similar to the multichannel strategy in that it uses various channels, but an omnichannel approach views these channels as intricately connected in a holistic retail strategy. An omnichannel marketing strategy aims to create a seamless experience across marketing channels to create personalized experiences for a target audience. Instead of tailoring the ads to the media channel, the ads are tailored to the individual customer, and repeated across channels.

There are multiple components that make up a successful omnichannel marketing strategy—it involves much more than just choosing channels and running ads.

1. 1. Marketing channels: Channels are how your customers will learn about your product information. Marketers can choose to run their omnichannel campaigns on social media platforms like Instagram and Twitter, through SMS push notifications or email, or they can use marketing automation tools like online advertising platforms that disperse ads across many digital channels like on popular websites and landing pages.
2. 2. Sales channels: The goal of omnichannel marketing is to encourage customers to make purchases, so you must have an easily accessible storefront or website where your target customers will be most likely to make a purchase. Your omnichannel retail strategy could direct customers to an online store, a mobile app, or a physical store.
3. 3. Company operations: The operations of a company include how its marketing strategies are developed and carried out and how they handle customer relationship management (CRM). Your marketing team should have a clear vision and workflow to produce consistent and successful marketing efforts across communication channels. Without a system for managing the company’s operations, retention rates may fall. New customers may leave if they fail to have a consistent experience.
4. 4. Fulfillment methods: Fulfillment involves the entire supply chain of inventory management that allows your inventory to be tracked and shipped to customers. Orders must be fulfilled and inventory must be managed correctly for a company to be successful. This also allows for the online functionality of having your inventory quantities displayed in real-time to customers when they shop at your e-commerce business.

In order to begin creating an omnichannel strategy, you need to consider your target customers and how you can reach them. With a clear understanding of how your customers engage with your brand, you will be able to run multiple ads that all work together to create brand awareness and lead your customers to make a purchase.

1. 1. Segment your customers. The market segmentation process involves organizing your customers based on various demographic metrics, such as geographic location, age, or income. With your customers categorized into silos based on their key differences, you can custom-tailor the user experience.
2. 2. Choose your channels. Choose which channels to use by first determining where your customers like to get their information or entertainment, or how they search for products online. Consider different online channels, such as social media and email marketing, as well as offline channels, like television and newspapers. You’re not limited to the number of channels you can choose, but you should carefully consider how you keep your marketing consistent across all channels.
3. 3. Follow the customer journey. Determine the various touchpoints your customers will go through from first contact to finally making a purchase. This process, known as the customer journey or buyer’s journey, may begin with an online search, or they might see one of your advertisements and click on it. If you can find out where your customers come from and how they engage with your marketing, you can tailor your advertisements to their specific customer engagement and focus your marketing to the right channels.
4. 4. Test your ads. Track your ads and watch customer engagement to see if your ads are performing well. Tweak your ads and try different channels to increase your conversion and improve customer interactions.

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