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Written by Janine Pollack
July 25, 2023
MNI Blog / 4 minute read
July 25, 2023
Today, there are myriad of ways to engage with the world around you both interpersonally and commercially. These connections are made digitally, and others take place in-person. As a marketer, your job is to reach people where they are and make meaningful connections that generate sales and business. To do this, it’s important to provide customers with a consistent consumer experience across platforms and channels.
Omnichannel marketing, or hybrid marketing, does just that. This type of marketing strategy allows for brands to seamlessly connect with and engage customers across multiple channels. Consumers can make purchases online, through an app, in store, seamlessly navigating between tools and resources— for example, when buying online and picking up in-store (BOPIS). This gives companies a chance to deepen relationships in ways that a single channel wouldn’t be able to achieve.
Omnichannel marketing is a marketing strategy that combines both traditional and digital marketing techniques in a complementary fashion, rather than relying on one or the other alone. This is also sometimes referred to as a hybrid marketing strategy, but for the remainder of this article we’ll refer to it as omnichannel marketing.
At first glance, omnichannel marketing sounds the same as multichannel marketing but there is a key distinction. While both strategies involve reaching new customers on a variety of platforms, multichannel marketing focuses simply on the top of the funnel (TOFU), attempting to reach more people by being present in more places.
An omnichannel marketing strategy takes this a bit further by integrating those channels to deepen customer relationships. This strategy creates the opportunity for brands to be present across multiple channels, whether digitally or in person, establish a consistent brand message, and offer personalized customer experiences. It decentralizes the marketing structure, removing the boundary between channels to create a singular view of the customer.
Omnichannel marketing focuses not only on TOFU, but also the middle of the funnel (MOFU), and bottom of funnel (BOFU). The goal is to utilize the strengths of both traditional and digital marketing techniques to support consumers as they are being moved through the marketing funnel.
Omnichannel marketing is quickly becoming the most popular strategy for marketers because it creates better customer relationships and helps brands cut through the noise. Some benefits include:
Many brands have made successful use of omnichannel marketing techniques in recent years:
Omnichannel marketing isn’t just about products. It’s about the overall customer experience. That’s why the best thing you can do when getting started is to focus on the customer rather than the channel. Whether you deliver an integrated experience via text, mobile apps, email, websites, or brick-and-mortar stores, what matters most is the overall experience as a whole.
To ensure success, make sure to cover a few bases during the process:
Part of the power of omnichannel marketing is the ability to determine which elements of an omnichannel mix are most effective. This is referred to as omnichannel attribution, and there are two main strategies. Multi-Touchpoint Attribution (MTA) uses personal-level granular data to examine each touchpoint in real-time. Media Mix Modeling (MMM) only considers aggregate touchpoint data collected over time. MTA is better for helping you understand individual customer preferences, whereas MMM is more effective for understanding the overall impact of a campaign.
As you start your omnichannel campaigns, keep a few things in mind:
When planning your omnichannel marketing campaigns, it helps to be thorough in the planning stage. Consider your current customer base, your industry as a whole, and what competitors are doing. Most importantly, clearly define your goals.
You may face challenges both in planning and implementation. For one, omnichannel marketing campaigns can be expensive. Further, determining which channels are doing the best and generating the best ROI can be challenging, and while you may see great results, without robust data, you may not be sure your omnichannel strategy worked better than a single-channel approach.
For that reason, it’s wise to partner with an experienced expert who can help you plan and execute an innovative omnichannel strategy properly from the ground up. With omnichannel solutions for every kind of channel, MNI can help with data analytics and visualization, planning, and robust execution of any omnichannel strategy. Contact us to find out how we can help your omnichannel marketing succeed.