The one constant with consumer behavior is that it continuously changes. In the age of omnichannel shopping, the attention span of the average shopper is getting shorter while their list of customer expectations grows longer. Brands that can keep up with the changes will stay competitive. Omnichannel marketing is the way forward for local businesses. Potential customers have the freedom to engage with your brand on a platform of their choice. They also are free to choose the platform that offers them the most relevant brand experiences.
Keep in mind, your largest customer base today is made up of Gen Ys and Gen Zs. Notorious in their brand expectations concerning both speed and the quality of service they receive. And because they switch between channels, they expect businesses to deliver a consistent brand experience. Businesses that fail to maintain brand messaging consistency over multiple channels will end up losing a substantial chunk of potential customers.
The only way to ensure this does not happen with your business is to make sure that all your channels are unified and that you provide customers with a consistent customer brand experiences across all devices and platforms.
Do you want to optimize your omnichannel marketing in 2022? Continue reading for best practices and tips on how to expand your customer base using omnichannel marketing.
1. Identify the Platforms and Channels Customers are Using
The first step in building a robust omnichannel marketing strategy is to identify the different platforms and channels frequented by your customers. Only then will you be able to zero in on the channels and platforms where you should focus your marketing spend.
One common mistake that brands make is that they spread their marketing budget on all channels. Don’t let your time and resources be wasted on a channel that is rarely used by target customers.
The idea here is to focus your marketing budget on specific channels such as Twitter or Instagram among others, that are used the most by your customers as opposed to spending on each and every marketing channel.
2. Build an Omnichannel Content Strategy and Map your Customer Journey
An important step in building your omnichannel marketing strategy is to build your omnichannel content strategy. And if you want to gain the complete picture, then you must understand your buyer persona. This will help you expand and bulk up your omnichannel content strategy to keep customers coming back.
Mapping your customer journey is a critical aspect of your overall omnichannel content strategy. A great way to do this is by incentivizing your customer journey. Use different tools such as discounts and product recommendations based on their browsing history. You can also invite customer feedback, create customer segmentation models, and closely observe different brand interactions across multiple channels.
If customers follow through and visit your website, then you know it got their attention. At this point, even if the customer does not make an immediate buying decision, you can follow up with retargeted ads and explore other options for driving conversions.
Building on the above point about creating an omnichannel content strategy, it is important that you create content that matches the channel and the audience frequenting the channel.
So for example, the content on your Twitter cannot mirror your Instagram content. While the same customer may be active on both channels, the kind of content they consume on each of the channels will be different.
So make sure you customize your content for select channels and audiences.
3. Invest in Video Content
Video content is a great and highly effective way of getting your message out in front of target audiences.
A well-planned omnichannel video content strategy can be used on social as well as on your website or apps. It can help you drive email campaigns, or you could include video to boost in-person customer experiences. In short, by incorporating video content within different marketing channels, you can offer customers seamless and consistent online and offline brand experiences.
But here’s the thing – you must focus on creating an optimized omnichannel video content marketing campaign. Remember, the goal here is to define the customer journey in a way that every brand interaction or touchpoint builds on the previous interaction and provides a seamless transition to the next touchpoint or platform. Only then will you be able to direct the customer down your intended marketing funnel.
4. Mobile Optimize your Website
As mentioned above, an effective omnichannel marketing strategy focuses on offering customers seamless brand connections across different channels and devices. Mobile is a big part of the customer journey today and a very large section of your target customers use their smartphones for making online purchases. So ensure your site is mobile-optimized for different devices.
Again, the idea is to deliver a seamless shopping experience to potential customers regardless of whether they use a tablet or mobile or their laptop when looking up your products and services.
5. Track Customer Behaviour with Analytics
As is the case with any digital marketing strategy, you will only know how well you are doing if you can track your performance vis-à-vis your customer journey and intent and how these impact not only customer satisfaction but also your conversion rate and sales. Here analytics can play a crucial role.
Your analytics data can help you to build a customer journey by tracking customer behavior across multiple brand touchpoints and also help you identify ways in which you can further improve conversion and sale opportunities.
Omnichannel analytics provides information regarding the following;
- Channel usage.
- Customer coverage.
- Customer satisfaction.
- Impact of your brand messaging by the channel.
- Brand awareness.
- Sales insight over time and conversion rates.
- Customer retention.
In Conclusion
Omnichannel marketing is here to stay. And the shift is increasingly being shaped by changing customer behavior over different channels.
Brand interactions and experiences across multiple touchpoints are the norms today and businesses that can align their marketing with this level of customer service will dominate their market space.
It bottles down to one simple goal – giving your customer what they want, not just in their moment of need, but also to build the kind of anticipation and expectation that can drive conversions regardless of where the customer may be within their customer journey.
