You’ve been running a small online business for five years, making natural candles curated specially for wellness and aromatherapy benefits. Aside from this, you are also operating your business from a cart in a well-known shopping mall. A solid digital presence engages customers through digital communities and information.
How can you prepare yourself for the festivities and beyond?
The festival shopping time is a golden opportunity with the merchandise you sell. Ensure you prepare your business for the holiday rush.
Despite headwinds, expect holiday sales to increase by 4-6% over last year, indicating that consumers will spend money on gifts and decorations. Hybrid shopping – a blend of physical and digital channels — is preferable for consumers.
As a result, retailers like yours with several sales channels need an omnichannel strategy to sell directly across all channels while providing exceptional customer service simultaneously. Furthermore, ensure the customer experience is consistent across devices, in-store and online.
What is Omnichannel Marketing?
Multichannel and omnichannel marketing are two different concepts.
Multichannel marketing is what most businesses use, and it is a proven marketing strategy that includes promotional messages across multiple marketing channels. Consumers have the option of purchasing on a choice of platforms
Omnichannel marketing takes this concept further by offering a single, seamless and consistent customer experience no matter which communication channel a customer uses. For example, from the shop and website, you’ll know which candle the customer prefers and recent purchases through open API integration.
As consumers change their shopping behavior, business teams such as marketing, sales and customer service must also adapt. Multichannel has traditionally been about engaging consumers and the number of channels. In contrast, an omnichannel approach is more about the customer experience and the quality of customer service.
What can Omnichannel Marketing do for your business?
- Unified communications – Digital commerce is growing. In the past, customers browsed websites or called your shop to get details about a product. Now, digital-savvy customers engage retailers via live chat, email, and social chats, expecting a seamless customer experience.
- Customer reach – Retailers understand it is crucial to find their audience to serve customers better. It now simply takes one click to access products, services and support whenever and wherever they are.
- Boost customer satisfaction – Delivering exceptional customer experiences through personalization creates loyal brand advocates who refer new customers, generate sales and increase the customer lifetime value.
- Increased productivity and profitability – Productivity increases because you only need to collect customer data once and not at every touchpoint. A holistic customer view streamlines and simplifies marketing strategies, improving operational efficiency and reducing costs.
How can an omnichannel strategy increase sales?
An omnichannel approach will help you increase sales by giving consumers a seamless shopping experience in-person, online or smartphone. Personalizing recommendations based on past purchases or browsing history can also let customers find what they want without browsing many pages of products.
The brand is important
Remember that consumers interact with brands, not marketing channels. It’s time businesses stop taking an inside view of customer communications and adopt an outside perspective.
For instance, installing a web widget at your online store offers unified communications by combining chat, phone and video discussions into a single platform. You and your team can switch channels with a click, share brochures and screens for a whole multimedia experience, and move prospects through the buying journey more quickly.
Consumers who see a brand expect a consistent customer experience in their encounters with it. You and the team should be all-knowing and access customer information, including interactions across all channels and what was said.
As mentioned earlier, customers see brands rather than channels. When customers reach out and then jump between their preferred channels while interacting with your brand, the boundaries between them quickly become irrelevant. You must be everywhere at once to provide a seamless consumer experience!
Follow your customers
Shoppers choose channels with the highest value for the money. Many consumers take advantage of a retail presence and convenient location for a tangible product experience.
Controlling the distribution and pricing of a product ensures that brands appear on an audience’s chosen channel. An omnichannel marketing strategy means buyers don’t miss out on an opportunity to purchase with you.
Live chat, web calls, emails, and social chat platform messages are equivalent omnichannel platforms. Furthermore, offline consumer interactions deliver targeted experiences to buyer segments. Optional digital and human touchpoints like QR codes in printed ads, leaflets, posters, etc., give customers an option for future purchases.
Deliver proactive customer service
Imagine spending time and money to outfit a retail store, hiring sales assistants, and then ignoring customers when they come to the store. Challenges include an online presence and a proactive, consultative approach for ecommerce shoppers.
Rather than depending on conversion rate optimization (CRO) techniques, ecommerce providers offer chatbots to welcome visitors. Some shoppers prefer to browse uninterrupted, others will appreciate you asking questions to understand shoppers’ desires and goals.
Personalise the buying experience
How can you get to know your customers better in-store or online? Talk to them. Converse with consumers to gain valuable insights for customizing shopping experiences by gathering data safely.
Personalization means giving a customer a tailored experience. Research shows that 71% of B2C customers expect companies to be informed about their personal information during an interaction.
An omnichannel strategy is vital for your business success
When savvy customers increasingly utilize various digital channels to communicate with brands, you need an omnichannel strategy. Today’s sophisticated consumers expect more personalized and consistent experiences regardless of their communication channel.
Engaging prospects via email newsletters, social ads, in-store and online buying, and hoping for the best is no longer enough. An omnichannel solution gives a single, consistent experience that puts shoppers in the mood to buy.
About the author: Sean Cho is a content marketer at CINNOX, a total experience platform for customers and employees. He brings both depth and diversity to his content themes having worked for consulting, telecoms and B2B SaaS companies. Sean appreciates the slow art of making coffee when he is not writing.
