Marketing

What does omnichannel marketing actually … look like?

It seems everyone in marketing these days is talking about ‘omnichannel’. But is this just some other buzzword, or a new industry phase that you really do need to pay attention to?

Let’s explore.

 

What is omnichannel marketing?

Omnichannel marketing is, basically, the modern way of doing things in marketing. With omnichannel literally meaning ‘all channels being orchestrated into a single approach’, it’s a strategy that recognises customers are no longer browsing and making buying decisions through just one channel – or even one device.

Indeed, 73% of customers say they use more than one channel when making buying decisions, including both physical media and the internet. They also tend to spend more than single-channel buyers, and that number goes up the more channels they use.

Read the study: Harvard Business Review

 

So, omnichannel marketing is … a fancy word for multichannel marketing?

No, although they’re both strategies for finding an audience across channels. Omnichannel is a lot more than just marketing over multiple channels (which is all multichannel marketing can say for itself) – omnichannel is about creating an omnichannel experience. That is, the customer has a consistent experience no matter where they browse, and this experience follows them as they move from device to device, or platform to platform.

Omnichannel marketing is empathetic marketing. It encourages marketers to put people at the heart of everything they do, mapping out and understanding the customer journey, and identifying all the potential touchpoints along the way. It helps them to empathise with the different ways their various users will want to connect with their brand, and understand how to get their message to people in a way that is convenient. Here, a marketer isn’t trying to yell and wave and steal someone’s attention, but to blend into it wherever it may already be.

 

What does a real omnichannel approach look like?

Meet Jane. She’s just about ready to buy a new home and will soon need a home loan.

Every morning she takes the bus to work listening to podcasts on Spotify. It’s her morning ritual, and she loves it. One day, as she’s heading into the office, she hears an ad on Spotify about home loans. It piques her interest, but she isn’t ready to research right now. Helping reinforce the idea, though, is that she sees a billboard for the same product as the bus pulls into town. The billboard refers to a tool she can use on her phone, which she notes to remember for later.

Later, on her lunch break, she’s browsing the news and sees an article about the new home buyer’s property market, with some tips on how to get approved for a home loan. The tips are well-written and helpful; while a brand wrote them, they weren’t trying to sell their services but rather to be genuine and useful. Jane is also exposed to a display ad while on this news site, reminding her of the brand she’d seen earlier.

Over the following months Jane uses the tips she learned to improve her chances of getting approved for a loan, and eventually logs onto the home loan tool she saw advertised. After giving her email address to the company, it’s able to talk to her a little more personally – ensuring their emails know her name, and that they serve her content relevant to her stage of their buyer’s journey.

It’s an entire, empathetic experience from one brand across multiple touchpoints.

 

Real advertising touchpoints along Jane’s journey

  • Audio: She heard a Spotify ad, but it could have been Acast or AdWave.
  • Out of Home: The billboard may have been JCDeceux, Ooh!, or VMO.
  • Native: Her native article could have been on NZ Herald, Stuff, Yahoo!.
  • Display: Display advertising served her in the same places.
  • Email: Jane received personalised emails from Pardot, which could have been Hubspot or Marketo too.

     

    What does it take to get started with omnichannel marketing?

    1. You must be audience-first

    In modern marketing, the customer comes first. Instead of deciding which ad platforms you want to use and working backwards to find an audience from there, you must start with the customer and work forwards.

    If you can’t clearly articulate who your customer segments are, what they enjoy, where they consume content, what their needs/wants/challenges are, or any number of other key details, you will struggle to fit into their daily lives in an empathetic manner. So, the first step is to create good user personas.

    2. You’re going to need data

    As you grow from a single channel to many, you must be able to draw each of those channels into a single source of truth so that you don’t run the risk of siloing your data. Siloed data can leave you unable to determine if one variable affects another, not to mention the fact that it requires you to check results on multiple platforms instead of a single dashboard. It’s slow, clunky, and won’t scale smoothly.

    Tools like Global Web Index and Campaign Manager 360 can help here.

     

    3. You’re going to need to map out your customer journeys

    Jane had lots of potential touchpoints with the home loans brand. This brand was able to find all of these touchpoints by first mapping out the customer journey for their home loan product to determine where Jane might first meet them, and how they can be of assistance.

    Her journey started potentially months before she ever logged on to the brand’s web tool – she needed to sort her finances well in advance. The home loan brand knew this, and began its omnichannel marketing experience early, so that it could guide Jane and help educate her on this very complex topic.

    So, where do your customers first start entering your pipeline and what are all the potential touchpoints along the way? Host CX workshops, run surveys, talk to your salespeople, and compare this data to your user personas to determine the answer for your own business.

     

    With these three things combined, you will understand the who, what and where of your audience, and be able to track your results over time. This will allow you to find the right tools to serve people in the right place, at the right time, with the right messaging.

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