Industry watchers have tagged 2020 as the Omnichannel Marketing Year. The shift has been happening gradually over the last couple of years, and the best part of this is that it offers great advantages to the customer as well as to the brand.
Today’s shopper is the one that’s most comfortable with online shopping. They’re not overly interested in the “touch and feel” aspect of shopping compared to brand reliability and coverage, the influence of social media, lifestyle, the circle of influence, etc.
This means they shop in more unique ways and demand shopping experiences far removed from traditional ones. A greater chunk of their shopping budget is spent on products promoted on Instagram or Snapchat. Interestingly, Gen Z has been able to significantly influence the way the older generations shop too.
Current Trends and Statistics for Omnichannel Marketing 2020
- Business marketing strategies that used upwards of three channels in their campaigns achieved nearly 287% higher purchase rates compared to single-channel users
- Today’s customer doesn’t pay attention to the medium or the channel, but tends to focus on the message and the brand as these tend to overlap and crossover between different channels.
- Omnichannel users can retain more than 87% of their customers as compared to single-channel users who can retain just 33% of customers
- More than 70% of in-store shoppers who use smartphones to research their purchases rely on their phones to provide an enhanced in-store experience
- More than 60% of millennial shoppers expect consistency across marketing campaigns
- A large majority of customers are willing to pay nearly 25% more for products/services provided they’re offered a better shopping experience
- Omnichannel customers tend to spend at least 4% more on shopping in-store and 10% more online than single-channel customers.
How OmniChannel Marketing Can Benefit Your Business
Omnichannel marketing is a sales strategy approach that gives the customer more integrated shopping experience. It helps your business to interact with the customer via email, mobile phone, desktop, laptop, smartphone, in-store shopping, online shopping, etc. in a consistent and interconnected way. Some of the channels are Whatsapp, Snapchat, Instagram, Messenger chat-boxes, email, text reminders and notifications, YouTube, Facebook, etc. besides in-store messaging.
It helps your business unite all your communication channels’ energy and vigor and coordinate them into a practical, consistent, and reliable message. This gives customers a seamless shopping experience across different channels that they may decide to choose. It also provides a unique and customized experience for every customer because her/his individual behavior and interaction determine the sequence of what they view.
11 key benefits include:
1. Affirmative Experiences with Your Brand
Since omnichannel marketing focuses on the customer’s entire shopping journey, it gives them a more logical, easy, and seamless ride through the different touchpoints. Your brand is available at all the places they would find themselves more organically and naturally, without the customer feeling corralled or pushed.
2. Generates Comprehensive Customer Data
Businesses that don’t have access to customer data from multiple sources are at a disadvantage because single-channel information may not capture the complete picture. Omnichannel marketing provides the opportunity to draw the right conclusions using wider and deeper analytics.
3. Locates Your Business in the Current Scenario
All businesses need to stay in sync with current trends and customer preferences. Don’t get left behind – omnichannel marketing helps you move into the digital age and be seen as a modern, relevant, and data-driven business. It also locates your brand strategically at important crossroads and intersections of different channels.
4. Reach Your Customer
Omnichannel marketing helps your business meet the customer without waiting for them to come to you. Your product gets listed wherever your customer seems to be spending their time and effort. You can meet them in-store, online, and/or on social media and contain them within your brand ecosystem without them having to switch between different channels.
5. Know What Your Customer Wants
Omnichannel marketing provides crucial information about behavior, abandoned carts, feedback, opinions, reviews, what they buy, how much they spend, how often, etc. It also provides information about inter-generational shopping habits, motivation, and attitudes.
6. Leverage Technology’s Power
As technology advances and moves into almost every space in our daily lives, your customer is no longer limited to having just email/smartphone/tablet/in-store experiences. Instead, they want something that can be one complete and holistic shopping experience on the device of their choosing, at the time and location they want. This is what omnichannel marketing provides.
7. Realize the Potential of Every Touchpoint
Up until now, you were probably dealing with information exclusively from certain channels. You had access to measurements from mobile phone marketing or email strategies. With omnichannel marketing, your data comes from different channels and is integrated into one common theme or pattern that you can use.
8. Decoding Customer Behavior
Typical customers may read about a product or hear about it on social media, then check it on their smartphones, do a price/brand/quality comparison on their tablets/laptop/desktop at home or work, read reviews and get feedback, visit a store to get an “authentic” experience, look for discounts across different online retailers, accumulate reward points, etc. as they move into making the purchase and paying for it.
9. Deeper Brand Experience
Businesses that use omnichannel marketing allow the customer to transition smoothly and naturally from one sales channel to the other and get a deeper and more enduring brand experience along their journey.
10. Convenient and Time-saving
The customer can purchase, exchange, or return a product at a physical store after learning all about it online. This saves time in waiting for delivery or a return/exchange pick-up.
11. Trust and Confidence
Providing the same, consistent, and homogeneous message across different channels reinforce not only the message, but also inspires a feeling of trust and dependability. The customer feels that they are getting the same deal across different platforms and media.
In the post-Covid world, the lines between online and offline tend to become blurred, and the two often merge. Shopping experiences are now set to turn “phygital” (a combination of physical and digital) where some store experiences and others are online. Omni channel marketing helps to integrate all these diverse strategies and take your business to the next level.
