Advertising is essential for any business. If nobody knows about you and your products or services, you won’t have any sales. An advertising strategy gets your company’s name out there and helps people learn about what you offer.
There are many ways to advertise. The internet, social media, TV, radio, and billboards are just a few tools you can use. However, figuring out which one to use can take time and effort.
For many businesses, the right answer is to use multiple forms of advertising by implementing an omnichannel advertising strategy.
What Does Omnichannel Mean?
Omnichannel combines two terms. Omni is a Latin term that means all of every, while channel describes different methods or forms of advertising. When combined, omnichannel means all or every form of advertising at once.
An omnichannel advertising strategy doesn’t focus on a specific type of media or way to advertise your company and its products. Instead, it integrates the different advertising methods and tools your company uses to interact with customers.
It’s important to note that omnichannel advertising doesn’t mean using every marketing channel available. It just means using multiple channels and integrating them to ensure a consistent customer experience across the ones you do use.
The goal is to create a consistent brand experience for everyone who interacts with your business, regardless of how they do so.
For example, companies using an omnichannel strategy will ensure consistent brandings across physical and online stores by using similar color schemes and styles to make the brand feel cohesive. They’ll also integrate physical and digital retail with “buy online, pick up in-store” purchase options.
Omnichannel advertising uses a few key elements:
A consistent, identifiable brand across all forms of communication, including things like tone and your company’s vision
Personalized messaging for individual customers based on their interests and goals
Personalized content informed by each customer’s previous and current interactions with your brand during their customer journey
Integrating different platforms of communication also helps you personalize your interactions with customers.
If you know a customer is coming into a store to pick up a new phone, you can personalize the experience by showing them peripherals like phone cases or screen protectors.
Or, if you know a customer has products in their cart but hasn’t checked out, you can customize communications sent to that customer to encourage them to complete their purchase.
Omnichannel vs. Multichannel
It’s important to note the distinction between omnichannel and multichannel advertising.
Multichannel advertising is similar to omnichannel in that it uses multiple channels to distribute advertisements and communications to customers. A multichannel advertising strategy, for example, might have television, internet, and in-store advertising.
However, multichannel advertising doesn’t take the additional step of trying to integrate all of the different communication channels. It expects customers who see online advertising to solely be ecommerce customers and make purchases online. It doesn’t try to push them into stores.
Omnichannel advertising is less siloed and focuses on the customer experience, ensuring customers can work with your company across all channels and have a similar experience.
Why Omnichannel Strategies Win
An omnichannel retail strategy tends to be more difficult to implement than others. This is because it relies on integrating every aspect of your business, its advertising, and its customer touchpoints.
However, the effort is worth the cost since an omnichannel approach beats single-channel and multiple-channel strategies handily.
A customer’s omnichannel experience is much better than the customer experience with businesses that don’t integrate their brick-and-mortar store experience with their online store experience or that don’t track customers across social media, their online store, and their other communications channels.
This seamless experience, regardless of whether your omnichannel customer is interacting with your company offline or through online channels, makes them more likely to want to purchase from your company again.
Omnichannel strategies also involve closely tracking customer metrics, such as the number of customers who add items to their online cart and ultimately make a purchase. These metrics can help you optimize your business operations to increase sales at your online and physical stores.
Some other ways that an omnichannel strategy will produce better results than other marketing strategies include:
Enhanced customer loyalty: Customers will appreciate the user experience created with omnichannel strategies. Collecting customer data can help you create a personalized experience that increases customer retention.
Cohesive brand identity: By integrating every aspect of your business and its sales channels, you can ensure your brand stays the same throughout all its marketing campaigns and customer interactions. This can help your customers be more willing to make purchases since they feel like they know your company.
Higher revenue: Ultimately, advertising is all about sales. The good news is that omnichannel strategies generate more revenue than other tactics. By interacting with customers more frequently across their customer journey and personalizing those interactions, you can increase sales.
Better data: The omnichannel strategy requires cross-channel tracking of customer data and interactions. Collecting that data can help you understand how people interact with your brand, how they prefer to engage with your company, and which campaigns have brought the most value to your business. You can use this data to retarget future advertising campaigns, change your in-store experience, or even implement marketing automation.
Word-of-mouth advertising: Word-of-mouth is one of the company's most powerful forms of advertising. However, it’s also the most difficult to generate since it relies on customers sharing their experiences. Social media platforms are essential to omnichannel advertising and are a great place for word-of-mouth advertising. Since omnichannel strategies use social media, they can generate word-of-mouth advertising from loyal customers.
How to Create an Omnichannel Advertising Strategy
Omnichannel advertising strategies rely on more than using different channels to interact with customers. It would be best if you had seamless integration between your customer touchpoints.
To create an effective omnichannel strategy, use these tips:
Build a mobile-friendly website: These days, everyone has a smartphone. Most people use their phones to interact with brands or shop online. Phones are a powerful way to track customer interactions with your company, so make sure your website is appealing and easy to use from a phone.
Track how customers interact with your brand: Omnichannel strategies integrate many communication channels, but they don’t require you to use every single method out there. If 90% of your customers use social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok but only 2% use Facebook, you can use that data to focus on the platforms generating the most value.
Track and map your customer journey: The customer journey is the path a customer takes from their first interaction with your business to their first purchase and future interactions with your brand. If you map out your customer journey, you can ensure it is seamless and that there are no awkward gaps that could cause customers not to make a purchase or return to your company.
Segment your audience for personalized communications: Different customers want different communications and interactions with your brand. Use the data you gather about customers to segment them based on factors like age, location, previous purchases, gender, and more. You can send them personalized communication to make them more likely to think highly of your brand.
Offer customer support across multiple channels: You want it to be easy for your customers to talk to you to receive help when they have problems or to give you feedback about their experience. Instead of forcing them to come to you via phone or email, go to where your customers are by offering multiple support lines across social media platforms, email, phone, chat boxes on your website, text message support, and more.
Get the right tools for the job: Omnichannel advertising requires many tools. You’ll need CRM software to track customer data, a strong website, email and social media marketing software, and equipment for any physical locations. Make sure to invest in the right tools to ensure you can run and integrate all of your marketing campaigns.
Protect customer data: Omnichannel advertising, by its nature, requires collecting a lot of data from your customers. It is imperative to keep that data safe and ensure that hackers or malicious actors don’t steal it. One breach can tarnish your company’s reputation and destroy any customer loyalty you’ve built.
Constantly iterate and test: Once you’ve found a marketing strategy that works, don’t sit back and relax. You should always try to improve your tools and strategies, test new methods to follow trends, and see if you can improve customer experience, generate more leads, or increase sales numbers.
The Final Word
An omnichannel strategy gives customers a unified experience across all their interactions with your company. This can help make the customer journey from their first interaction to first and future purchases smoother, which can increase sales revenue.
It also helps improve the customer experience and generate satisfied, loyal customers.
Consider implementing an omnichannel advertising strategy and integrating the different channels your brand uses to interact with your clients.
