Gone are the days of relying on billboards and window displays to drive in-store traffic. 2023 consumers have more power (and more options) than ever before. Their expectation is for businesses to offer personalised and tailored solutions to everyday challenges on multiple online and offline platforms, and devices, with cohesive, intuitive and insightful input.
Omnichannel marketing is a no-brainer for businesses looking to leverage today’s technological advancements to increase sales and leads, optimise the customer journey and improve marketing budget efficiencies.
The issue with the single-channel approach or using channels in silos is that it has no understanding of the audience and how they engage across channels. (One person may engage with the brand on their website, Amazon, TikTok, Facebook, in-store and on the street before taking action).
Omnichannel marketing is all about creating customer-focused, seamless and consistent marketing experience using multiple channels (social media, Google, website, TV, billboards, in-store) and data and analytics to generate a more impactful brand experience.
How can your business integrate their performance marketing efforts across channels in 2023?
#1 Omnichannel tracking
In today’s world there are a number of useful tools designed to help you track customer interactions and behaviour across multiple channels. Customers expect businesses to understand their wants and needs and meet them where they’re at. This forces brands to up their game when it comes to knowing when and how to target specific audiences.
Omnichannel tracking helps businesses understand the impact of various channels, with some working to drive long-term brand building and others pushing the bottom of the funnel. This helps brands make better budget decisions and forecasts based on getting the omnichannel marketing mix correct to propel maximum growth in the short and long term.
Some helpful omnichannel tracking measurements that your business could utilise to boost functionality include:
- Customer Data Platform – collates and unifies first-party user data from multiple sources to create a full-picture view of the customer and allow for personalisation at scale.
- Web Analytics – clusters data from fractured sources to extract insights about customer behaviour.
Armed with this kind of consumer awareness data, your marketing team can accurately target existing customers and generate new leads and sales with improved insight.
#2 Omnichannel personalisation
This is more than simply adding a potential customer’s name to an email. It’s about gathering data to anticipate customer’s needs and deliver on them through thoughtful engagement.
Omnichannel personalisation is about providing customers with a unified experience across multiple channels simultaneously. This experience should be customer-centric, involve retargeting campaigns as well as data analysis to determine which devices and channels are best to target.
For example, email personalisation uses data gained through purchase history or browsing behaviour to personalise email content, subject lines (using the customer’s name) and offers to customer preferences. For instance, if a customer purchased running shoes a week ago, you could send an email advertising other appropriate running gear such as shirts, shorts etc. to complement the new shoes.
The result of effective omnichannel marketing and personalisation is likely to improve customer loyalty and increase engagement.
#3 Integrated loyalty programmes
While many businesses build their marketing campaigns around attracting new customers, customer retention is actually much more cost-effective. But some of the best loyalty programmes fail if their channels are not cohesive.
Some tips for improving loyalty programme channel integration include:
- Making it easy to join on any platform (online, in store, on the app)
- Offering points collection and rewards across multiple channels, e.g. earning points and getting a discount with all purchases, whether in-store, on the app or on the website
- Collecting data over time to exchange for rewards
- Offering tailored deals for individuals based on their purchasing history, preferences and location
- Surprising members with discounts at the right time, e.g. on their birthday.
- Allowing customers to easily return items bought online to a physical store in return for credit.
#4 Social media and influencer marketing
Influencer marketing is as old as Jacque Kallis and Lays Chips, Sanex soap, hair loss treatment (and now even Food Lover’s boerewors and burger patties). One of the best all-round cricketers of all time has enjoyed a fair amount of TV-time in the marketing arena, relating to the everyday struggles of ordinary people.
But 2023 influencer marketing trends that rule the social media space are even more nuanced and subtle.
Leveraging this for brands targeting GenZ (people aged 16 to 24) will mean jumping onto TikTok. Having captured 60% of its users in this age group, TikTok is the perfect space to draw on this impressionable market (who are keen to follow trends or buy something that makes them part of a community) through influencer campaigns.
Once brands have received some success on this platform, they use the hashtag #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt on their website and other social media platforms to boost their omnichannel focus. This hashtag has over 4.6 billion views and is bound to drive improved omnichannel connectivity. Some brands can even use it as part of point-of-sale branding and displays.
These are just a few examples of how brands can integrate their marketing efforts across channels in 2023, to create a seamless customer experience. Omnichannel marketing can be more challenging to execute and track, but the data and insights it provides can help brands improve their targeting, budget allocation and achieve better results.
It takes a village! Partnering with specialist service providers is crucial. From full funnel digital marketing campaign management and measurement to instore retail strategies and more – build your team of specialists to pave the way to success.