What is Omni-Channel Marketing?

In the past, if you wanted to buy a car, you generally went to a car dealership, looked at cars, maybe test drove a few, and then made your decision. Today, by the time a person enters a dealership, they’ve done hours of research, read hundreds of reviews, and really just want to sign papers and drive away in their new car.

This is quickly becoming the case with many shopping experiences. Today’s consumers are not only shopping in stores, but they are also shopping via desktop, laptop, smartphone, iPad, smart TV, even Alexa. Our job as marketers is to provide an integrated and seamless shopping experience across those platforms. Enter multi-channel and omni-channel marketing.

Omni-Channel Marketing vs. Multi-Channel Marketing

What’s the difference? Well, multi-channel marketing refers to using lots of tools or channels to engage customers such as direct mail, social media, email marketing, websites, and traditional media advertising. However, each of these channels kind of stands alone.

Omni-channel marketing brings all those channels together. The goal of omni-channel marketing is to understand that people are interacting with your brand through apps, landlines, websites, smartphones and more. The challenge of omni-channel marketing is integrating those interactions into a consistent, positive experience.

The organizations that excel at omni-channel marketing are those that view their approach through their customers’ experience. They understand that customers want personalized interaction with brands and consistent experiences across multiple platforms. Like this: A customer wants to be able to stand in your physical store comparing products and reading reviews on your app while also copying a promo code from your Instagram page to scan at check out. At the same time.

So your goal as an omni-channel marketer is to account for the different platforms and devices customers use to interact with you and craft an integrated message that aligns goals, objectives, design and experience across channels. Piece of cake, right?

Up Your Omni-Channel Marketing Game

Here are some considerations to optimize your omni-channel marketing:

1. To succeed at omni-channel marketing, you’ve got to focus on the customer’s view. Get to know your customers, where they’re coming from, what their expectations and challenges are, what they want, what they hate, what annoys them. Use lead-capture landing pages, social listening tools, and surveys to invite customer feedback.
2. What content resonates with your customers? Do promo codes for free shipping turn browsers into buyers? Do they purchase from their smartphone directly or save and then make the purchase later from a laptop or desktop? If they want to purchase from their device are they able to? Can your emails be viewed on multiple devices?
3. Web pages must be designed responsively. If your customers are accessing your site from multiple channels and devices, it needs to be easy to see and interact with regardless of screen size. This is especially true if you want them to enter personal information into a form … with their thumbs.

Here at Green Arrow, we’re always looking for ways to blow our clients’ expectations out of the water. Give us a call. Prefer mail? You can tweet at us if you like. Or fill out the form—using 8 fingers or just your thumbs, your choice. Let’s see how we can take your business to the next level.