You could fill an entire new dictionary with marketing buzzwords.
Automation.
Personas.
Word-of-Mouth.
Customer Journey.
You’ll hear all these words thrown around any marketing class these days.
So, whether you’re a sophomore in your first marketing course and need to memorize these vocab words, or a marketing director who needs to increase sales, you should be caught up with the latest of these marketing buzzwords because while they may be over-used, they are essential in understanding the modern consumer market.
Perhaps one of the most important marketing buzzwords is ‘omnichannel marketing,’ which, when utilized properly, can propel your business from modest marketing to becoming a marketing maverick.
In fact, if you aren’t currently incorporating omnichannel marketing practices into your business strategies, you’re in danger of falling behind the competition.
According to our 2017 study, The Next Generation of Digital Asset Management, eighty-five percent of brands surveyed said they expected to increase their investment of time, personnel, and money in creating omnichannel experiences.
Today, we’ll talk about what exactly omnichannel marketing is, why it’s good for your business, and some companies who have taken this concept and run with it.
Omnichannel marketing is essentially trying to keep your marketing messages and customer experience as consistent and unified as possible during the customer’s journey from awareness to the actual conversion. Because there is such a wide variety of ways in which your customers can interact with your company and brand, it is essential that you make sure that you provide a positive experience through every channel. For example, your website and social media platforms should be similar in aesthetic, copy tone, and overall message you want to convey.
A common example when used to illustrate smart omnichannel marketing is Apple, whose website, social platforms, brick and mortars, and customer service all convey the message of sleek, modern innovation that the company strives for.
Another company whose marketing initiatives resemble that of the omnichannel approach is Peloton, a producer of stationary bicycles. Throughout all their channels, Peloton conveys the message of bettering ourselves even when schedules, and lives, are hectic. Whether it is their commercials, Instagram posts, or their cult-like status.
The key to omnichannel marketing is to make your marketing strategies as seamless as possible from channel to channel, where the experience, message, and the overall tone is the same across the board. Why is this important? Because no matter which of the channels your customers use to engage with you at the time, (the channel that is most convenient for them), it will still be impactful in reinforcing the main idea of your given marketing message.
Many customers equate consistency with trustworthiness, as well as quality. A brand that can create a holistic experience for their customers is one that will be trusted. When the information your consumers receive is consistent, they know that they can believe the information to be true and the repetition of the message will help to really hammer it home.
Omnichannel marketing will also assist in simplifying your marketing message. Because your marketing strategy will be streamlined across all channels, there will be less confusion in the messaging.
An increase in conversions can be seen through an implementation of a strong omnichannel marketing strategy. According to Telco 2.0 Research, 65% of consumers start the buying process on a smartphone, but 61% will continue the process on a PC/Laptop. So, when a consumer places an item in their cart on the mobile app, it should carry over to when they access the site on their desktop, therefore making it easier for them to make the purchase. Additionally, you can also send reminder emails to purchase the item in their cart before it sells out.
It’s all part of making the buying process seamless no matter which channel your customer is using to connect with you.
When it comes to implementing omnichannel marketing, the most common and effective strategy is to account for all platforms and devices your customers use to interact with your brand. Then, create an overall marketing message, goals, and objectives around that message for each of those devices and platforms. This will then lead you to your plan of attack for your strategy.
For example, let’s say you’re a bike manufacturer and your target market primarily interacts with your company through Instagram, Youtube, and your mobile app.
You’ve just created a new mountain bike that is the most durable on the market and your marketing department decides that the marketing message for this new product is that it can handle anything you throw at it and that it will last forever.
Your goal for this campaign is to sell 50,000 bikes in the first month of release.
Your objectives for accomplishing this goal is to get 25,000 downloads of your app and double the engagement on your Instagram and Youtube profiles.
In order to do this, you team up with professional mountain bikers and travel around the country creating Youtube videos of them riding the bikes and challenging the durability of the product. You share clips of these videos on your Instagram and link back to the full video. Along with that, you offer viewers of the video the chance to vote on their favorite one by downloading and voting on your app.
This is a simple example and you can apply the same principles to more than three different channels. Nevertheless, it does illustrate how taking an omnichannel approach can help you create a more powerful, direct, and simple marketing message to drive engagement, conversions, and even awareness.
MediaBeacon is a tool to help create, store, and control the digital assets, like images and video, that you will be distributing in your omnichannel campaigns. By storing your digital assets with the proper information attached to them, you can easily search and find the assets you need to create consistent campaigns across channels. To learn more about how to achieve omnichannel consistency with digital asset management (DAM), check out this video.
