Best practices for your omnichannel strategy
Establishing a thought-through and in-depth omnichannel strategy has been a priority for businesses for a while now, and not for nothing. Companies with omnichannel strategies retain on average 89% of their customers, while businesses with weak omnichannel customer engagement retain only 33% of them. We discussed in one of our previous articles (link to customer retention) that bringing a new client in might cost a business up to 10 times more than to keep one, so you definitely don’t want to turn a blind eye to omnichannel marketing. In case you need a refresher on what it is exactly: it indicates the ability to interact with (potential) customers on numerous platforms that are all connected and consistent, providing customers with an integrated experience. How do you do that? Let’s see!
- Select the right channels. We reviewed the importance of choosing the most suitable platforms in our article about marketing practices for small businesses (link to small business marketing article) and we can’t emphasize enough that you don’t need to use all of them, rather the ones that your potential customers use. When selecting your channels, consider your niche, the age bracket of your clients, where they like to spend time, what interests them, what kind of content they prefer to consume, so on and so forth.
- Ensure fluidity, consistency and real-time updates. According to Harvard Business Review’s study, 73% of shoppers switch between multiple channels during their customer journey, proving that omnichannel retailing (and browsing) works. As Liferay says, “no one wants to start their shopping progress all over again when they change devices or become unable to find what they need due to drastically changing layouts”. Unified marketing messages, consistent brand image and easy shift between devices mark successful omnichannel strategies.
- Map out the customer journey to find out how, when and where your customers interact with your brand, including mobile searches, desktop purchases, in-person customer service, app downloads and more. Empower customers to find what they want and launch data-drive marketing campaigns.
- Involve your employees and/or in-person representation (if you have brick-and-mortar locations) in omnichannel initiatives and train them to use omnichannel practices and mobile technology. Equip your employees with “devices that can see a customer’s history, interests, and reasons for visiting a location in order to quickly meet their needs and value their time.” (Liferay)
- Leverage leading technological solutions and use a unified back-end platform. To successfully implement an omnichannel marketing strategy, you need the technology that supports it. Look for technologies that provide the most in-depth look at all the channels your business uses, as well as at customer feedback.
Now that you get the hang of omnichannel marketing, let’s see a few brands who are brilliant at omnichannel solutions.
Disney. The entertainment giant just gets it. It has a beautiful, mobile-responsive website, along with a trip-planning website, a thoughtful mobile app to help you navigate in the park and even a tool that “acts as a hotel room key, photo storage device for any pictures taken of you with Disney characters, and a food ordering tool”. (HubSpot)
Bank of America. One of the industry-leaders has a dynamic website, multiple social media channels and a highly-functioning mobile app that allows customers to deposit checks, schedule appointments, pay monthly bills and more.
Starbucks. The Seattle-based coffee empire is famous for its amazing loyalty program that comes with a free rewards card that’s connected to and harmonized with all platforms that the company uses, including in-store purchases.
Do you want to see your business’ name on this list? You sure do and if you don’t, you should! Omnichannel marketing is the present, even more so the future and, call it a wild guess, but it’ll soon be absolutely necessary to survive for all businesses. To start the process, know more about Liferay’s solution!
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