Omnichannel Marketing is the Future
DIY Sprocket Solutions
If you’re a marketer or a business owner, you obviously have an idea of the approach you are taking to market your business or products. Recently, we’ve been hearing more and more about multichannel marketing and omnichannel marketing.
From Emarsys:
Multichannel marketing refers to the ability to interact with potential customers on various platforms. A channel might be a print ad, a retail location, a website, a promotional event, a product’s package, or word-of-mouth.
Omnichannel refers to the multichannel sales approach that provides the customer with an integrated shopping experience. The customer can be shopping online from a desktop or mobile device, via phone, or in a brick-and-mortar store, and the experience will be seamless.
So, what is the real difference here? The added next steps.
Multichannel marketing is what most marketing is these days. Interacting with potential customers across various platforms. This could mean social media marketing, email marketing and more. In my opinion, omnichannel marketing is simply the next (more completed and cohesive) step in the process. As marketers, we are constantly working and reworking strategies to reach customers and lead them to our products and services. Omnichannel marketing takes these strategies a step further.
Instead of simply interacting with potential customers across various platforms, omnichannel marketing orchestrates the entire customer experience (from marketing to purchasing) so that it is painless, easy and consistent. Shouldn’t this be the entire goal of marketing anyway? For example, if our goal is to sell a product, and we market that product effectively, what good is that marketing if people aren’t able to then easily go and purchase that product off of your website?
We have to begin thinking of marketing as a cohesive whole. It’s not enough to reach and connect with customers, we have to tailor “ease” into the entire experience. Amazon is a perfect example of omnichannel marketing done right. They are successfully reaching new customers with their multichannel marketing efforts. They then go a step further in making their user experience and purchasing process so seamless and intuitive that it’s difficult not to buy.
This omnichannel marketing process includes looking at every single hurdle that stops customers from purchasing or engaging with you. What is holding customers back? Once you’ve identified the hurdles, you can work to eliminate them. We absolutely live in the world of instant gratification. An effortless process is what people have come to expect as the new norm. Are you providing your customers an intuitive and seamless experience or are you leading a horse to water without giving them the ability to drink?
Breanne Bannon
Breanne is a Content Writer, Social Media Marketeer, and Sales Associate for Sprocket Websites.
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