What is omnichannel marketing?

6 min read

The more advanced technology becomes, the more it becomes integrated into almost every aspect of our lives. Due to this, marketers now have to think differently.

Instead of providing a desktop experience, a mobile experience and a tablet experience, marketers instead must pursue a holistic approach that provides customers with a seamless and personalised experience. This, in essence, is an omnichannel approach.

But, what is omnichannel marketing and how is it achieved? Let’s take a detailed look.

What does omnichannel marketing mean?

So, let’s start with the basics. What is omnichannel marketing?

When a company adopts an omnichannel approach, they give their customers and prospects access to their products, offers, and support services on all channels, platforms, and devices. Omnichannel approaches also involve the seamless integration of branding, messaging, and online and offline touchpoints.

In a purely marketing sense, omnichannel marketing allows a business to promote their products and services across all channels, devices, and platforms using unified messaging, cohesive visuals, and consistent copy.

Omnichannel marketing allows your business to reach your customers wherever they are. It also ensures that you’re always providing a relevant and on-brand offer. By adopting an omnichannel approach, a business can create a consistent brand experience across all channels. The main aim of adopting an omnichannel marketing strategy is to create a convenient, seamless user experience. The best omnichannel marketing efforts create:

• A consistent and identifiable brand tone and vision
• Personalised customer messaging based on specific interests
• Content that is informed by past interactions and the current stage of the buyer’s journey

The differences between multichannel and omnichannel

Multichannel and omnichannel experiences are different for customers. For example, although multichannel environments provide users and customers with access to a variety of communication options, these communication options aren’t synchronised or connected.

By contrast, with an omnichannel experience, not only does the customer have multiple channels to choose from, but the channels are connected so the customer can move between them seamlessly.

A business may have an incredible mobile marketing strategy, engaging social media copy, and a slick website, but if these channels don’t work together then they won’t create an omnichannel experience. This means that the customer does not get seamless customer service or consistent messaging.

Sadly, many businesses aren’t harnessing the power of an omnichannel approach. In a recent survey, we asked 270 of our partners and clients ‘how would you classify your communication strategy?’ Only 15% of respondents told us their strategy was omnichannel, while 71% of respondents said their strategy was multichannel and 10% said they only used a single channel.

The benefits of using an omnichannel approach

Omnichannel marketing helps you create a positive experience for the customer at every stage of the customer journey.

Omnichannel marketing strategies provide businesses and customers alike with a number of benefits. These include improving the user/customer experience, developing a cohesive brand strategy and identity, increasing revenue, and improving attribution data.

By uniting and combining the strengths of each communication channel, marketing teams can use omnichannel marketing to deliver a more effective brand message. On top of this, by ensuring that every channel is used within the marketing strategy, the marketing team can also make sure that they reach the target buyers at the right time and in the right place. This then increases the likelihood that they will convert into a lead.

Plus, omnichannel marketing allows for greater levels of personalisation. This is because omnichannel marketing utilises a customer’s perspectives and interests to ensure marketing messages are optimised and consistent.

Examples of using an omnichannel approach

To fully understand how omnichannel marketing experiences work and the benefits they can provide, let’s take a detailed look at two omnichannel approaches in action: Spotify and Disney.

Spotify

Spotify’s omnichannel approach succinctly shows the importance of ensuring that different channels work in harmony.

To deliver its product, the company employs the use of a web app, a desktop app and a mobile app. However, rather than simply using these different apps, Spotify ensures that all the different apps are always synced.

This means that if a customer is using Spotify on their phone but has their desktop app open, then the desktop app will show the song or podcast that’s currently playing. Due to this, users can switch between apps seamlessly.

Disney

Disney uses its omnichannel approach to ensure that people who book holidays enjoy the highest possible level of customer experience. The entertainment giant achieves this by providing a number of different features and tools for customers that enhance their experience of engaging with the brand. 

Disney’s omnichannel approach starts with its beautiful and mobile-responsive website. The company has even invested money in ensuring that its trip-planning website works well on mobile (which is something you don’t see very often in the travel industry).

Once a customer has booked a trip with Disney, they can use the dedicated My Disney Experience tool to plan their entire trip. This includes the option to purchase Fast Passes for rides and book restaurants.

Then, when the customer arrives at the park at the start of their trip, they can use Disney’s mobile app to locate the attractions they want to see. To take the user experience to the next level, Disney’s app is constantly updated and always shows accurate waiting times for rides and attractions, so customers can make informed decisions.

To take the customer experience to the highest possible level, Disney has also launched its MagicBand program. This innovative wristband acts as a hotel room key, photo storage device, and a food ordering tool. To ensure everything about the customer’s stay is seamless, it even has Fast Pass integration and allows the customer to charge food and merchandise purchases to their Disney Resort hotel room.

From the customer’s initial enquiry (a swift, responsive, and mobile-friendly site), through to planning their stay (My Disney Experience) and their time at the park (mobile app and MagicBand program), Disney has made every element of the customer journey simple and integrated.

How to analyse and report on omnichannel marketing strategy

Calculating the impact of any marketing effort can be complicated. However, the inter-connected way that omnichannel marketing efforts work can make the process even more difficult.

This is because looking at a factor such as the final step before a purchase was made may overlook the impact of previous touchpoints. Similarly, focusing on the initiative that first attracted attention may ignore the impact of more effective messages later in the funnel.

As a result, tying omnichannel data together can be difficult. But, although pieces of information together from various sources can be challenging, it’s also highly rewarding. After all, with increasing amounts of data comes an increasing amount of insight.

To properly analyse and report on your omnichannel marketing strategy, you need the help of a platform that can integrate and analyse your data. To get the most out of any omnichannel strategy, you need the help of a piece of technology that will aggregate data sources, seamlessly integrate channels, and analyse channel-specific data.

How Apteco can help leverage an omnichannel marketing strategy for your business

To help make your omnichannel campaigns as effective as possible, employ the help of our solutions. With the help of our software, you can design and deliver successful campaigns that take advantage of every possible touchpoint during the customer journey.

Our solutions can help you deliver relevant, personalised, and consistent communications through the right channels at the right time. They can also help you understand each customer and improve your communications with them.

As well as helping you map the customer journey and select appropriate channels, we can also help you learn how to use consistency across channels to support your omnichannel approach. Plus, our planning and research tools can ensure that you always communicate with your customers in exactly the right way at the right time. You can decide who receives what content and through which channel – ensuring each customer gets a personalised experience at all times. This means you can design individual campaign routes over several stages and across several channels.

Similarly, our solutions can also help you understand more about each customer’s journey, interactions, and responses. By combining all of your data into one piece of software, you can follow a consumer’s journey through all channels to determine how a response was achieved. Having this information stored in one place makes your data far more accessible, meaning that analysis can take place quickly and you can generate actionable insights in real time.

Finally, by using our fully-integrated platform, your omnichannel approach can be implemented quickly and easily. By using our software, not only can you create an omnichannel marketing strategy, but you can also use analytical features to generate reliable insights that will allow you to make more informed decisions on the optimal journey for each consumer.