Why It’s Important to Use More Than One Marketing Channel

Jan 13, 2023
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Most marketers today know that there are lots of different marketing channels that can be utilised and that it’s recommended to use several. Perhaps you have often heard the terms omnichannel or multichannel marketing but aren’t sure exactly what they mean or how they differ.

Omnichannel marketing, in particular, is a method of using different marketing channels to achieve your goals. Unlike multichannel marketing, where you use several marketing channels, omnichannel marketing takes things a step further by putting processes in place to ensure that all the marketing channels you use are working seamlessly.

Omnichannel Marketing Definition

Omnichannel is a word that derives from Omnis, a Latin word that means all or every. In this context, a channel refers to how today’s customers interact with brands, such as email, websites, social media, search engines, computers, mobile devices, text messages, chat services, and more. Some channels are offline, too, such as telephoning a brand to speak to customer services or shopping in a brick-and-mortar store.

How Does Omni Channel Marketing Work?

Omnichannel marketing is the process of carrying out marketing campaigns that use a range of platforms, devices, and channels to promote products or services to both existing customers and prospects. Regardless of the interaction, customer, or channel, the overall message, visuals, and experience of the omnichannel marketing campaign should be relevant and consistent throughout.

The primary purpose of using multiple marketing channels with omnichannel marketing is to create a consistent and seamless message no matter where the customer or prospect receives it. An omnichannel approach ensures that each channel works together with the others to create a unified brand message and voice. While using multiple channels ensures that your brand is marketed in many different places, omnichannel marketing takes it one step further. For example, you can use it to ensure that customers who have recently purchased a product on your website are segmented into a different list so that they don’t get pointless promotional emails advertising something to them that they’ve already bought and are using.

Omni Channel Campaign vs Multichannel Campaign

Omnichannel and multichannel marketing are ways your business can utilise a wide range of marketing channels and platforms to reach and engage with your customers. However, the terms can’t be used interchangeably as the two have some main differences.

Multichannel marketing puts the brand itself at the centre of marketing strategies. While various channels are used, these tend to operate independently. Communication is mainly static, and the messages will typically remain the same or very similar across the different channels used. The channels need to be updated or personalised to suit the customer’s needs. Instead, the main focus is on simply getting the message out there across different channels.

Omnichannel marketing differs as the customer is at the centre of this approach instead of the brand. The message is consistent across various marketing channels, as with multichannel marketing. However, in this case, the channels work together to ensure that the end message is personalised and relevant to the customer based on their actions and interactions with the brand. Customer behaviour prompts updates and changes to the strategy, ensuring that viewers and customers are presented with the most relevant messages at the correct times.

Omnichannel Marketing Benefits

While multichannel and omnichannel marketing are pretty similar in that they both involve using several different marketing channels to get the word out about your brand, products, and services to customers, omnichannel marketing is the way forward if you want to use multiple channels in your marketing approach. According to experts, one of the main advantages of omnichannel marketing is that it makes the marketing relevant to both the brand and the customers. The main benefits of omnichannel marketing include:

  1. Improved customer loyalty: Statistics show that omnichannel marketers report a 90% increase in customer loyalty and customer retention compared to single-channel marketing campaigns.
  2. Bigger purchases: An omnichannel marketing campaign can also increase the spending rate, with research suggesting that omnichannel campaigns can encourage customers to spend around 13% more compared to single-channel campaigns.
  3. Improve engagement: Compared to an engagement rate of just over five percent for single-channel marketing campaigns, omnichannel marketing campaigns earn an engagement rate of nearly nineteen percent.
  4. Increase orders: in 2021, omnichannel marketing campaigns earned an order rate around five hundred percent higher than single-channel marketing campaigns, statistics show.
  5. Boost brand identity: Although omnichannel marketing campaigns aim to improve the customer experience with more relevance and personalisation, they can also positively impact brand awareness, as the brand has a more consistent identity across all channels.
  6. Improve ROI: Since the customer experience and the business’s bottom line go hand in hand, an omnichannel marketing strategy can help increase each customer’s lifetime value, improving customer engagement and loyalty. Ultimately, this leads to customers making more purchases and generating more revenue for your business over the long run.

Why Choose Omnichannel Marketing Automation?

Today, customers are not always the biggest fans of marketing – but there is no getting away from it. But with a high percentage of customers using ad blockers, the message is clear to see these days. However, the problem isn’t just advertising. Most consumers are happy to read messages that are highly relevant and personalised to them. They just don’t like being bombarded with messages about things they don’t care about and aren’t interested in. It’s much easier for customers to ignore or delete messages that have nothing to do with their wants or needs.

Omnichannel marketing automation is a solution that can help with this problem. It is centred around ensuring that the right message is delivered at the right time and to the right customer. Although automation is a crucial aspect of omnichannel marketing, it is just one part of the process. If you want to use omnichannel marketing automation in your company, there are some basic steps to follow.

1.     Centralise Customer Data

The first step is setting up a common objective without losing sight of individual team goals. To do this, you will need to centralise customer data, including everything you know about your customers, their preferences, needs, interests, and more, in one place. This will allow you to start putting your customer, rather than your brand, at the centre of your marketing strategy.

2.     Examine the Customer Experience

Before using omnichannel marketing automation, perform an audit of the customer experience at every step of the journey. Bear in mind that the customer experience goes much further than just their interaction when using your website. Consider the overall omnichannel customer experience from the discovery phase to the checkout process when making a purchase and measure each aspect to get a clearer idea of what exactly customers experience when they engage with your business.

3.     Ask for Customer Feedback

Customers might be easily distracted, but there are many opportunities for you to gather feedback from them throughout the customer journey. Offering low-commitment ways for your customers to provide you with their feedback might not provide you with the most in-depth or detailed data. Still, it can be an excellent way to encourage responses that will ultimately help you make essential decisions regarding improving the customer experience.

An omnichannel marketing automation platform allows you to create different strategies ranging from the first touchpoints to complex programs involving several steps. It allows business owners and marketers to personalise and tailor their strategies to target individual customers and define which kind of content should be shown to specific customers and groups while saving money and time.

Omnichannel automation programs combine a range of channels, including email, social, and text messaging, to maximise the marketing reach. Ideally, an omnichannel campaign should consist of all the different channels individuals can use while ensuring that each channel provides a unique value to the customer.

Omni Channel Marketing Automation Benefits

Adopting an omnichannel marketing automation strategy has many benefits when using multiple channels for marketing your brand. These include:

  • A more unified customer experience
  • Customers that are more loyal to your brand than competitors
  • Improved ROI
  • Seamless integration and working together between the different channels you use
  • More control over each marketing channel
  • Improved brand awareness

The use of omnichannel marketing automation in marketing strategies has seen a massive 90% higher customer retention rate and a huge 250% higher frequency of purchases. It’s clear that advertising itself isn’t a problem for customers, but rather the fact that many customers get a lot of irrelevant messages about products and services that they are not interested in. While it’s important to use different channels to market your brand, it’s more important that the message resonates with your audience and is valuable to them.

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