How to Grow Your Online Shop with Omnichannel Marketing

Omnichannel marketing (also referred to as cross-channel marketing) is focused on delivering an identical, brand-named customized customer experience across multiple channels, including the in-store experience for those with bricks and mortar stores.

Utilizing an omnichannel advertising method, your company can put ads on the shelves of customers for merchandise that is relevant to their preferences and purchasing history and reduce business-to-business sales processes. Connecting prospective customers to relevant products and services makes conversions more likely and improves the effectiveness of advertising expenditure.

What distinguishes omnichannel advertising in comparison to multichannel marketing?

You're probably already using multiple channels to promote your business. If you're still dependent on one channel, your first task will be to implement more channels.

Multichannel marketing is different from an omnichannel model in the manner that your channels are integrated and cooperate to create a consistent and seamless experience, no matter which stage of the buyer's journey.

Multichannel marketing means that each channel may be functioning independent from the other. You might have a separate marketing division that is dedicated to each channel. You can analyze the ROIs for each separately. Some campaigns may be less connected ones, with each one having its individual customer journeys. Customers can interact with any of these channels, and be treated as if it's the first time they've ever interacted with your company.

However Omnichannel marketing is the integration and blending of marketing strategies on different channels, which results in an improved customer experience.

If you have a well-designed omnichannel strategy, a customer who begins their journey as a buyer through an PPC ad, but doesn't decide to purchase when they visit your website is likely to be contacted via other channels, based upon their initial engagement and will enjoy a consistent experience.

That could mean seeing advertising on display or social media which are pertinent to a new buyer, receiving push notifications when they return to your site, targeted video ads, or in-store promotions that are relevant to customers.

Most of us have experienced instances of marketing that was omnichannel in the form of.

Suppose you click on the social media advertisement to sign-up for a coupon via the website of the retailer via the pop-up. If you do not purchase the product, you could get an abandoned cart email that includes a coupon or discount, or view ads for the item on different digital channels.

If you choose to buy something and make a purchase, you'll likely receive an email with suggestions for related products and get future sale announcements. You may even get a postcard or catalog with a message inviting shoppers to purchase an item in the store purchase if the store has brick and mortar locations.

This is an experience that's omnichannel. It may involve a combination of both offline and online marketing and involves numerous points of contact.

Sounds complex? The good news is that you don't have to shell out a large sum of money or dedicate a whole staff to devise a minimalist, yet successful, omnichannel marketing strategy to promote your shop.

The benefits of omnichannel marketing are for both customers and businesses

An omnichannel strategy for marketing offers several advantages over multichannel marketing -to your business as well as for customers. Here are the main ones:

It's more cost efficient

For the business, omnichannel marketing saves money because it's more effective. Instead of putting together separate marketing campaigns that include email, direct mail, social media, and PPC, you can make a single campaign and apply it across your various offline and online channels.

However, more than a mere advertising campaign, you'll also be using automated marketing that responds in response to the way that current or potential customers react to your campaign.

Instead of making new offers the omnichannel model seeks to create an array of possible offers depending on the situation.

Imagine two customers that get the same advertisement. One of them purchases, and your marketing automation sends them a first-time buyer special offer, in hopes of becoming a regular buyer.

Another person isn't buying however their behaviour suggests that they have a lot of interest. The messages they receive from marketers try to convince them to revisit and complete purchase.

You only have to create the omnichannel marketing tools once the automated system will utilize the tools based on where a person is at in their buyer journey. It's a bit of work to set up however once the system is in operation, an omnichannel strategy is an enormous time saver.

It leads to better customer experience

If a client feels like they are known as a stranger the tools you use to automate marketing will be able to identify the place they are in the customer's journey. An omnichannel experience is more relevant and timely and aligns with expectations of the customer.

It saves customers time, allows them to make quicker decisions and reduces confusion.

It helps you provide better customer service.

When customers need help an omnichannel solution allows your customer support team to learn more about every person, so that they won't need to talk to them like everyone else. They will be able to reach speed more quickly, and not spend too much time beginning from scratch, and have the most relevant and insightful dialogue.

What should you do to design an omnichannel marketing plan

Following is a step-by-step procedure for developing an omnichannel marketing plan that doesn't exceed your budget.

Integrate one channel at a moment

There's no way of taking on everything in one go, and thankfully, you don't need to. Omnichannel marketing aims to reach your customers with a consistent message in multiple places.

Begin with your most dominant channel and identify the first channel you want to connect with. When you begin adding more channels, you should acquire the necessary tools for marketing automation that will help you and your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software communicate with your various offline and online channels including a brick and mortar retail store.

Send your marketing message to the right audience

Affecting your advertisements to the audience groups that are most likely to purchase your goods is essential to developing a good Omnichannel Marketing Strategy.

Make sure you are focusing on marketing at every stage of the journey of the customer

The journey for customers begins the moment a person first encounters the business, and culminates in an ongoing relationship with your company. The following are the five steps of the life cycle of a customer and some popular methods for reaching customers at every stage using the omnichannel approach to marketing.

1. Reach

Here, a shopper is seeking a specific item or solution to a problem. This is an opportune time to let the customer aware of your brand. Customers may be trying to compare products, reading reviews, or just seeking out information about whether a item is right to their needs.

2. Acquisition

Acquisition happens when someone visits your website, signs up for your newsletter, chats with your chatbot, reaches the company via either email or phone, or visits the bricks and mortar shop. They haven't made a purchase at this point, but they are looking your company out and collecting more details.

When you are in the phase of acquisition, you have the chance to keep collecting data from customers and use it to begin delivering an omnichannel experience for every segment of your audience.

3. Conversion

When someone buys while shopping online, or make purchases in stores, they've "converted" to being your customers. A seamless customer experience can make them feel valued and known. It could involve email, push notifications, or additional opportunities in stores when you own a physical location.

4. Retention

Not only does retention deliver more ROI, but fostering loyal customers who return repeatedly builds the brand's reputation and the customers you have loyal to will become your greatest supporters through their testimonials and telling their relatives and friends about your products.

At this step in the customer journey it is important to use the growing data on your customers to enhance your conversion process. It is possible to market customers via follow-up emails that include other recommendations for products or special discounts relevant to their previous purchases. You could also send them a request for a review or a feedback survey, provide loyalty programs, and offer excellent customer service.

5. Loyalty

The satisfaction of customers leads to loyalty. However, you shouldn't set it and forget it.

Determine which advertising platforms best suit your omnichannel plan

If you're operating on a small budget it is possible to pick the right platforms for marketing to choose when you create an omnichannel strategy for marketing. Choose low-cost methods for advertising first before moving on to higher-cost advertising channels when your budget increases.

The aim is to provide multiple touchpoints across different channels to provide the same experience to customers.

 Low-cost marketing methods comprise:

Organic search

Use the data you acquire through Google Analytics and other marketing tools to enhance your omnichannel marketing efforts.

Google Shopping

Email marketing

With services like MailPoet it is possible to send a welcome email series for new customers, suggestions for products based on previous purchases, abandoned cart emails to people who left things in their carts, sales announcements, and other multichannel marketing strategies.

Rewards programs

These customers can then get an omnichannel advertising campaign tailored to them regardless of various devices and other channels. Imagine a rewards member seeing an ad on display that informs the user the number of points they've earned and offers suggestions on how to utilize them. That's an example of an omnichannel experience.

Customer service

Every touchpoint with customers is a marketing opportunity. Instead of thinking of the customer experience as just a matter of addressing questions and complaints consider it an opportunity to build long-lasting fans.

Through an omnichannel approach to marketing, your customer service team will be able to see the history of a client's engagement and transactions and also previous interactions with your team. If you utilize all of this into consideration it will allow you to provide a seamless experience regardless of which channels of customer service they utilize, be it text messages, chatbots or phone or email, or within a brick and mortar location.

Using a customer relationship management (CRM) tool like Jetpack CRM will help to ensure that customer service is smooth and simple. Create an online support portal, monitor the status of tickets and much more, from your store. It's not necessary to log into a third-party CRM site for managing your customers- you can do it all from within the WordPress admin space.

Organic social media

It's not easy to get organic attention on social media with numerous voices competing However, there are several options to advertising that is free and extremely effective. You can:

• Start a Facebook Group for your business
• Be active and engage regularly on all your social media outlets
• Make an AMA post on Reddit with reddit's "Ask Me Anything subreddit

 Marketing methods that are more expensive are:

Paid search

If you're trying to rank your website above natural search results, or get instant traffic as you work to improve the SEO of your site, paid search ads are the method to take. It is also important to ensure that the landing page for your business is responsive to mobile devices, loads fast, and reflects the content of your ad copy.

With remarketing tools, paid search is an invaluable source of customer data that can be used to implement your omnichannel marketing approach.

Paid Google Shopping

Ads to display

Ads on social media

Marketing to people using social media platforms is an excellent way to get new clients because they will easily share your advertisements with their circle of friends. You can market to people by demographic data, perceived interests, customer preferences and uploading an email address list of customers to build a similar audience that has similar profiles as your current client base. Additionally, you could implement an omnichannel approach to marketing on social media when you have integrated these channels with your CRM.

Facebook allows you to connect your store's product catalog to Facebook and Instagram for a unified customer experience. It is also possible to purchase advertisements from your account's dashboard.

Video advertisements

The advent of internet-based platforms such as YouTube as well as more cost-effective video production equipment and editing software, video ads don't have to be out of budget for smaller businesses.

If you plan to incorporate videos as part of an multichannel marketing strategy, you must make sure to create videos that you can use on a range of channels. Make clips available for blog, social media as well as product pages in order to make the most of these marketing tools.

While the most popular media platform to advertise on is YouTube, other options include:

• Platforms for social video, such as TikTok and Snapchat
• Live streaming of video services such as Twitch and Vimeo
• Video streaming on-demand services such as Amazon Prime and Hulu

Print advertisements

Based on your target audience and your products, print advertising may be a great method to enhance your marketing initiatives online and blend your online and offline marketing strategies. Consider taking out an ad in a publication or mailing out a catalog, sending postcards with special deals, or using door-to-door marketing techniques like door hangers as well as product samples.

Similar to marketing via digital channels, you are able to track the impact of both your in-store and offline initiatives. Omnichannel marketing relies on an ongoing flow of precise customer data that's personalized for every customer.

Here are the top marketing tools that can be used offline for information collection as well as the omnichannel experience in stores:

• QR codes containing tracker links. You can create unique tracking-compatible links that work with those QR codes. Put these codes in the marketing material you print as well, so that when a client decides to use it in your store, you'll know the exact printed item that prompted this customer to go on the trip.
• Special landing page links. As a QR alternative to QR codes, make custom landing pages using distinctive links. You can also include the URL in the printed advertisements. Be sure to keep these URLs short since customers have to input them manually.

Design and create ad copy that is suitable for use across multiple platforms

Omnichannel marketing is all about consistency and efficiency. Not only does crafting your images, video, and ad copy with multiple uses with an eye to save money on creative assets, it also helps provide an unifying, consistent customer experience across different platforms.

It is important to shoot photographs and videos designed to be used on various advertising platforms. Different platforms employ different aspect ratios. Therefore, you'll need to film as well as edit photos and videos taking this into consideration. Common aspect ratios include:

• Horizontal 16:9
• Square 1:1
• Vertical 4:15 and 2:13
• Full Portrait 9:16

Make your videos and photos at the highest resolution possible and then export them in smaller resolution versions.

Analyze and leverage your customer information

Monitoring the effectiveness of your omnichannel marketing campaigns across all channels is critical. If an advertising campaign isn't performing, you could need to alter it before investing money into the campaign. Reviewing your statistics will let you know what ads are performing and which ones aren't.

Google Analytics is probably the most complete tool to track the activity of your site. It allows you to look up your sources of traffic to find out what websites visitors come from, gain an idea of the efficiency of display and search ad campaigns, and get information on the demographics of your website users.

By integrating this data with your CRM, your other marketing channels will be able to utilize it to create a consistent experience for your customers.

Give your marketing team the tools to succeed

By implementing omnichannel marketing, your team can improve their performance by adjusting strategies based on the behavior of customers.

And if you employ sales staff, they'll be much better at engaging every customer in a unique way when they can see the details of prior purchases, interactions, emails, clicks, shares, reviews and any other information resulting from an omnichannel experience.

Refresh your advertising strategy based on your KPIs. (KPIs)

If you've reviewed the effectiveness of your omnichannel marketing campaigns You can make changes to your strategy. For most companies, ad campaigns that have small CPAs as well as high ROIs ought to be awarded additional advertising as campaigns with large CPAs and lower ROIs ought to be retired. There are other metrics of performance that are crucial for your organization.

If you're running ads that don't result in direct sales, however they frequently are associated with higher organic search results or lead generation this could mean that your ads are very successful in connecting with customers in the beginning phases of the buyer's journey.

Test turning certain low-performing ads off and on during a time period to test if they've any impact on other measures.

In relation to loyalty and customer retention programs, if you find that fewer customers are taking benefits of rewards points or don't use some coupons, it's possible to think about tweaking the offer or changing the amount of points required for redemption. If one method within your omnichannel marketing campaign currently underperforming doesn't mean that it isn't able to be upgraded in order to increase profits for your business.

Watch your business grow

When you make a smart choice when choosing your marketing platforms and marketing automation tools, creating sustainable and adaptable creative assets continuously evaluating and revising your multichannel marketing plan according to your performance, you'll be able to be able to see revenue increase.

Just like any other thing worthwhile, it'll require time to improve. By starting out with just one or two channels of marketing, as you progress based upon the information you've gathered from past efforts, you'll develop an omnichannel strategy for long-term success which generate revenue to your business.