What is an omnichannel marketing strategy?
Let’s take a trip down memory lane for a moment.
It’s starting to get chilly outside. You really need that new sweater to keep warm.
So you hop in the car and drive over to the store.
But they’re already closed. Or it’s out of stock. Whatever. Real stores are the worst.
Jokes aside, there’s a reason 40% of all product searches start on Amazon. Because products are never out of stock. Plus free two-day shipping for Prime members.
Convenience reigns supreme.
It’s only recently that we’ve conflated the terms “promotion” with “marketing.” Back in the day, Promotion was just a subset. Marketers also worried about Product and Pricing and… Place.
Place (or Distribution) is, “The process of making a product or service available for use or consumption by a consumer or business user, using direct means, or using indirect means with intermediaries.”
Today, distribution — how and where you sell what you sell — is a marketing strategy all of its own. Just look at what’s happened in social media over the last decade:
- YouTube grew by piggybacking off of MySpace’s user base.
- Facebook targeted select college campuses.
- Airbnb went after Craigslist.
- And Pinterest used an invite-only.
Pinterest is especially interesting because of what they’re doing now: Buyable Pins.
People can (and do) shop for products directly on Pinterest, without ever leaving their site to checkout.
That’s omnichannel marketing.
Hubspot describes it as, “the ability to deliver a seamless and consistent experience across channels, while factoring in the different devices that consumers are using to interact with your business.”
Case in point:
BigCommerce’s Omnichannel Retail report shows that online spending is distributed evenly between marketplaces, large retailers, web, and category-specific stores.
It also then goes on to say that people are doing this shopping while in bed, in the car, while physically standing inside another retail store, and even on the toilet.
Omnichannel eCommerce isn’t a tactic. It’s about being everywhere at all times. Because that’s how people are increasingly shopping: Fragmented, hopping from device-to-device, and channel-to-channel.
TWEET THIS: #Omnichannel #eCommerce isn’t a tactic. It’s about being everywhere at all times.
Add to this that people will commonly require 6-8 ‘touches’ prior to purchasing, and you can almost guarantee these people are (already) interacting with your brand across multiple places.
Today’s customer journey is nonstop. And people don’t personally consider the shopping experience in terms of channels. Only us crazy marketers do.
As Ann Handley said, “What your customer experiences over here also matches what they experience over there.”
TWEET THIS: What your customer experiences over here also matches what they experience over there.
That means customers expect a seamless experience between online and physical stores.
- While on your smartphone, you see a Facebook post from a friend who just bought a new bike. In the market for a bike yourself, you click the link to check it out on the store’s website. You have a meeting to get to, so you put down the phone and stop your bike research.
- Then, when you get home for the day, you pull up the store’s website on your tablet. Recognizing you, the bike pops up on the site as a recently viewed item. From there, you can take a better look at the bike, and also see other options they offer.
- But you want to touch and feel the bike before you buy, so the next day you go to the local brick and mortar location of the store. While there, your phone links up with the store’s mobile network, which pings the salesperson with what bikes you have been searching. This helps them be better prepared to assist with personalized, quality customer service, and eventually close the sale on the bike.
- You can either take the bike home that day, or use the company’s system to have it shipped to your house. If you have it shipped, you can track the bike through the delivery process using your smartphone, tablet, or laptop.
- Knowing the bike has arrived, the store calls to make sure it’s exactly what you wanted. It’s great, but a couple days later, you have a few questions for customer service. The rep knows exactly what you have ordered and gives you information on your specific item.
This is omnichannel.
And it’s exhausting.
But incredibly, there’s a silver lining.