Omnichannel Marketing

A Complete Guide

Table of Contents

Omnichannel Marketing Definition

Omnichannel marketing is a multichannel approach to sales that provides customers with a seamless, integrated experience. Whether the user is a retail customer shopping online or a business using a SaaS platform, they will enjoy a seamless brand awareness and advertising experience across the channels and devices they remain active on.

Omnichannel marketing generates an integrated, cohesive experience across a brand’s touchpoints using analytics and data to create consistency. Customers are at the center of an omnichannel marketing strategy to ensure a completely unified, consistent experience across multiple marketing channels and devices.

This customer-centric approach is the reason that the tech industry also focuses on omnichannel marketing. Although retail is an obvious example of an area that relies on omnichannel marketing, the seamless, consistent, customer-centric approach is well-suited to the complexity of the tech industry which demands more client nurturing.

FAQs

What is Omnichannel Marketing?

Omnichannel marketing is a multichannel, strategic approach that provides a unified experience for customers across all brand touchpoints. The goal is to create superior quality connections that motivate users to take action.

An omnichannel strategy meets customers with a unified brand face and experience on every device no matter where they go or which actions they take. A single, connected ecosystem is central to this approach and this allows a seamless nurturing experience to guide users throughout the buying journey wherever they currently are in the sales funnel.

Components of Omnichannel Marketing

Several components can enhance omnichannel marketing activities:

Channels. Companies must identify the correct channels for their audience and increase their presence on them. For a SaaS or other B2B company, those channels should have an online focus. For almost any B2B organization with an online presence, Google Ads management services (search and display), LinkedIn lead generation service, B2B SEO services and SEO copywriting services are critical for maximizing visibility on organic and paid marketing channels.

Process consistency. Consistency in the process is essential to seamless customer experiences. Therefore, brands should aim for consistency in their processes and user experience as well as their voice, presence, and collateral. Maintaining a strong online presence across multiple marketing channels is a critical success factor in achieving brand awareness, establishing credibility, and nurturing customers to the point of sale.

Personalized messaging. Engage and attract people with a personalized message at the right time. If your business objective is to build initial interest and generate customer demand, you should be reaching those potential customers with outbound advertising across various websites, YouTube and LinkedIn. To capture existing user intent within your industry on Google and other search engines, ramp up your company’s inbound lead generation efforts.

Metrics. Omnichannel marketing is ideally part of an ongoing, optimized process. To ensure omnichannel optimization, brands should watch relevant metrics and adjust their marketing activities and messaging accordingly. There are extensive levers that can be adjusted for omnichannel success; marketing teams should pay close attention to these campaign optimization efforts across active channels to ensure they maximize traffic and website conversions for their ad spend.

What is Multi Channel Marketing?

A B2B multi channel marketing strategy implements a unified approach across multiple promotional and distribution platforms and channels to achieve its goal. Benefits of multi channel marketing systems include maximizing customer choice and enhancing the brand’s opportunities to interact—both with existing customers and new prospects.

Channels can include:

Organic search engine optimization (SEO)
Paid Search engine marketing (ex. Google Search Ads)
Email marketing
Organic social media accounts
Paid social media advertising
Android or iOS app for mobile phones/tablets
Product packaging
SMS text messages
Retail brick-and-mortar storefronts
Promotional events
Mail-order catalogues
Traditional advertising such as a print ad
Word-of-mouth

Difference Between Omnichannel and Multichannel Strategies?

The difference between an omni-channel experience and a multichannel experience is depth of integration, consistent messaging across channels, and seamless experience. In other words, although all omnichannel strategies use multiple channels, not all multichannel strategies can truly be called omnichannel marketing.

Even a very high-end multi channel content marketing experience with a well-designed website, engaging and interactive social media campaigns, and successful mobile marketing is not omnichannel marketing if each piece doesn’t work together to deliver an integrated experience.

Omnichannel vs multichannel marketing strategies both focus on the use of multiple channels to reach consumers and potential consumers:

Multichannel marketing is limited to the mere ability to interact with and spread information to customers and possible customers on multiple channels and platforms. This is a channel-based approach, and every channel functions independently and has its own metrics.

In contrast, omnichannel marketing understands each platform and device customers use to interact with the company and delivers an integrated experience on each one with aligned design, goals, messaging, and objectives. This alignment also enables improved customer service and user experience efforts. The customer is the nucleus of all omnichannel marketing strategies and activities, and the multiple channel journey is designed to feel like one larger consumer-centric channel.

There are several important differences between multichannel and omnichannel marketing to consider in more depth.

Omnichannel Customer Engagement: Customer versus Channel

Multichannel marketing gets more customer engagements by being less focused about the audience and instead using the maximum possible number of channels to spread the information. The most popular channels for multichannel strategy are email and social media.

Customer engagements on every channel is part of the larger holistic omnichannel marketing strategy, and it all results in a seamless overall experience with the brand. This focus enables a stronger customer relationship with the brand.

Channel Goals: Consistency versus Engagement

Despite differing metrics from various channels, a broader omnichannel marketing strategy ensures a consistent brand message across channels. To ensure consistency, and a unified brand message and image, all stakeholder departments should understand the omnichannel strategy, including customer success, website copywriters, PR, sales, and marketing.

Effortless Experience

A multichannel approach offers choices, but this also implies effort on the part of the user. Omnichannel approaches deliver effortless experiences. For example with a B2B company:

A user discovers your business from a Google display ad showing on a news article
Searches for the product category and finds your SEO optimized website, signs up for newsletter
3 days later is reached with a retargeted LinkedIn ad that reinforces their interest
Receives an email about a recent company update
Clicks on a Google search ad when doing more research on their tablet, fills out the form and becomes a lead
A sales rep follows up and moves them down the pipeline.

At no time does the user need to think about which channel to use, or how to make it work seamlessly for them. This and other omnichannel marketing examples foster effortless consumer buying experiences.

What is Omnichannel Strategy?

Omnichannel strategy is a unified set of cross-channel content techniques used by organizations to drive better audience relationships and improve user experience across contact points. The channels that make up an omnichannel strategy are orchestrated and designed to cooperate, rather than working in parallel as channels and their supporting resources do in multichannel strategies.

An omnichannel strategy is customer-centric, so how the customer interacts with channels prompts the strategy to adapt. As any given prospect or customer moves through their journey interacting with the brand, the channels and their behavior update automatically to provide the most relevant possible customized message.

For example:

A prospect joins your newsletter mailing list after finding your site when searching for a competitor (see: competitor conquesting in advertising)
You send them a welcome message via email with some value-added bonus such as a link to a white paper
The prospect returns to the site from a LinkedIn ad and browses, looking at specific product pages, but ends up leaving
The prospect returns after seeing a retargeting ad on an informational website and visits the free trial page but still does not convert
The prospect searches for a specific problem they’re having, and finds your SEO-optimized blog post on the subject (or other related content as outlined in your keyword mapping strategy), leading them to read through and start their free trial of your product shortly after
The user receives an email offering a free consultation for additional features, prompting them to fill out a 20-minute time slot on an AE’s calendar
The sales team takes care of the customer and closes the sale

For B2B startups and SMBs, leveraging the most effective marketing channels in a way that resonates with your target audience is critical to stay competitive. Learn how to identify your unique B2B startup marketing strategy here.

Why Omnichannel is Important

Research on consumer expectations reveals that 87% of shoppers want a consistent, personalized experience across channels—an omnichannel experience. Users remember how a brand makes them feel after they engage with it at various connected touch points. If that overall feeling is good regardless of channel, place, time, or number of engagements, the holistic experience delivers a memorable, positive impression that inspires action.

Furthermore, omnichannel experiences are now expected across the board. When we consider examples of businesses that excel in the realm of omnichannel marketing, it is usually business-to-consumer (B2C) organizations that we cite. Because B2C brands were among the first to feel the effects of the shift toward e-commerce, this is not surprising.

Netflix, for example, is an excellent example of a B2C business that moved toward e-commerce with seamless personalization for users from any platform, anywhere. Across multiple devices and touchpoints, Netflix users enjoy the same customized recommendations and watchlists, for example.

However, business-to-business (B2B) companies must also deliver connected, effortless, and seamless experiences. B2B consumers are accustomed to omnichannel experiences both professionally and personally, and B2B organizations are at the forefront of user experience.

Hootsuite is a good example of a business using B2B omnichannel marketing—on its own behalf and as part of what it offers as a service. Because the Hootsuite mission is all about keeping people connected, that message comes through consistently across channels in simple, accessible blurbs of communication and uplifting imagery.

This ubiquitous presence further highlights the importance of omnichannel marketing.

Benefits of Omnichannel Marketing

Successful B2B omni channel marketing accrues many benefits:

Enhanced Customer Loyalty

The consistent experience good omnichannel marketing produces generates loyalty—and customers buy from brands they trust and value. The personalized approach cements this loyalty, enhancing overall customer experience, brand credibility, word-of-mouth, and retention.

Improved Brand Recall

An emphasis on consistency across channels ensures the brand comes across the same way across devices and platforms. This improves brand recall, and in turn boosts the likelihood of conversions.

Increased Revenue

Outbound marketing approaches like display advertising can fill the top of your sales funnel and generate product demand. Inbound marketing approaches like SEO & Google search ads capture users searching for business relevant terms. The cohesion between these two B2B lead generation services accelerates customer activity to drive rapid business growth. Make sure you understand the important nuances between SEO vs PPC in order to create an integrated approach to growth.

How Omnichannel Benefits Customers

Omnichannel obviously benefits businesses, as discussed above. But it also improves the customer experience by making it seamless and effortless. It’s beneficial for businesses to supply customers with a wealth of information through various channels to nurture those customers through the sales funnel. Thus, making it easier for customers to find and understand your product or service offering, and even easier to initiate a sale.

Omni Channel vs Integrated Marketing

Integrated marketing strategy seamlessly integrates ads, direct marketing, public relations, sales promotions, and social media together to communicate with opportunities, leads, and previous customers. The goal of digital marketers implementing an integrated marketing strategy is to ensure all communication channels are consistent and primarily customer-focused.

Omnichannel marketing focuses on the customer, their journey, and their unique experience, and blends different channels to improve that holistic result. What this means depends on the specific customer.

Integrated marketing vs omnichannel marketing is a subtle difference: integrated marketing focuses on the marketing strategies that target customers, leads, and opportunities, while omnichannel marketing focuses primarily on the buyer’s journey and customer experience by integrating digital channels between the brand and the customer.

How to Build an Omni Channel Marketing Strategy

Every business must develop a unique omnichannel strategy and infrastructure. To develop it, look to various stakeholders, including: customer success, customer support, marketing, products, and sales as you create your team. Then, proceed in a systematic way:

Nurture a Customer-Centric Culture

A true omnichannel strategy prioritizes customers over brand, and this in turn demands a customer-centric marketing culture. Instead of evaluating the customer journey from the brand’s perspective, assess all the touchpoints a prospect experiences before becoming a customer and ensure that they present a consistent CX. This can be more challenging than it sounds, but at a minimum it requires eliminating silos between teams and ensuring departments and teams meet their own KPIs and goals without working in vacuums or outside the CX goal.

Understand the Audience

A consistent and relevant brand voice can only be achieved by a business that understands prospects and customers at a deep level:

Define buyer personas and use them to identify and refine target audiences, including behavior patterns, demographics, goals, habits, motivators, needs, preferences, wants, and more.

Use tools to collect first, second, and third-party data, and analyze it for patterns. For example, understanding how prospects find your website via search can help you understand potential customer pain points.

Bolster existing customer profiles with hard facts from surveys and interviews of customers and prospects. Always ask for feedback from customers, site visitors, leads, and prospects, and when you receive it, take action.

MarTech and Omnichannel Tools

The right marketing technology setup and omnichannel tools can allow you to connect with and track your prospects throughout the customer journey. Although every omnichannel marketing strategy is unique, there are some basic tools that should be part of every MarTech stack to help you with measuring marketing effectiveness and optimizing your growth:

Content Management System (CMS)
Content Marketing tools
Customer Data Platform (CDP)
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software
Data Analytics Tools
SEO Tools
Social Media Management tools or solutions
Other quantitative and qualitative analytical tools

CRM software is essential to omnichannel personalization activities, so it is key to any MarTech stack. For this reason, as you go on to select other applications, be sure they are compatible with your chosen CRM software.

Segment Target Audience

There countless ways to segment your target audience based on behavioral, demographic, geographic, psychographic, and other characteristics. First identify which audience characteristics or data points are most relevant to the brand’s goals, and then define audience segments using them. Some possibilities include:

Profile information or data on customers, such as age, demographics, gender, location, marital status, etc.
How customers engage with specific channels and campaigns
Shopping behavior such as how often your customer shops, where they are in their customer journey, when they purchased last, etc.
Segments can also combine to create more targeted, precise segments.

For instance, perhaps customer retention is a key goal. You can segment your target audience based on subscription details and product usage to create a reminder campaign that rewards customers who renew their subscription via email with a discount. Or, you can design a re-onboarding campaign for the segment of users who have stopped using your product that highlights relevant product use cases.

Remember, if you’re unsure, start with buyer personas. From there, follow sales and marketing funnels—various natural pathways to purchase that already exist—to identify usable segments.

Personalize

Personalization is the most important aspect of omnichannel marketing, establishing a unique connection with a member of the target audience and making a customer feel valued. There are many aspects of personalizing an omni channel digital marketing strategy, but here are some of the most important.

Use customer data points to add personalization context. For example, don’t address audience members from different backgrounds on different platforms in the same way—and definitely not all with the same, generic “Dear.” Speak the preferred language of your target audience, and do it on the platform they use deploying its personalization features.

Use more nuanced targeting capabilities offered by social media platforms or run Google display ads on websites that your audiences frequent.

Personalize based on the stage and intent of the target user’s relevant segment or journey. If a user just found your site and downloaded an informational asset, it could be too soon to ask them to register for a product demonstration.

Engage Proactively Across All Channels

Proactive engagement is key to omnichannel marketing, because it must be effortless for the customer. Be present where they spend time, and interact with them across multiple channels and devices. Maintain consistency across all channels to avoid confusion.

Metrics

Actionable insights from the right metrics are essential to identifying inconsistencies in customer and other data. By capturing the relevant metrics, you can more effectively understand and report on the failures and successes of your omnichannel content strategy, revise it using those data points, and enhance ROI.

Omnichannel Marketing Best Practices

Once you devise a comprehensive omnichannel online marketing strategy, keep it relevant and effective with these omni channel marketing best practices.

Consistent Brand Voice

Brands have a limited ability to be noticed and remembered in the age of information overload. Users are numbed to attention-grabbing tactics, including page titles in search engine results, display ads, and special email offers.

A consistent brand voice across all channels ensures a consistent CX and better brand recognition—that moment that saves you from the trash. It also provides a sense of ease of achieving goals and familiar ability to advance through any given omnichannel marketing funnel seamlessly for the user.

Device-Agnostic

Many, if not most, internet users access websites from more than one device. Forcing users to choose one app or device to access your website is counterproductive. Improve form fields, the readability of your text, and other website elements to ensure the site remains responsive across all devices.

Use Customer Service Software

Customer service has the potential to be a serious CX failure point. Deploy strong customer service software to help eliminate frustrating situations for customers. For example, customer service software should ideally give representatives access to cross-channel reports, or at least CRM integration.

Enable Self-Service

Customers expect immediate answers to their questions, but chatbots are limited and connecting with human customer service representatives can be time-consuming and expensive. CX can improve with better self-service measures, such as a FAQ section, user forum, a self-service portal, or instructional videos.

Test, Adjust, and Retest

As with any evidence-based marketing approach, the first attempt is rarely the best fit. A team should test, adjust, and retest an omnichannel marketing strategy and its pieces, such as its marketing channels, rich media, messages, and processes, to confirm what is working and what needs refinement.

Address Behaviors and Use Cases in Messaging and Content

Refer to past behaviors in ongoing marketing. For example, reference past content downloads and abandoned items in shopping carts.

What are Omnichannel Services?

Omnichannel services, or omnichannel marketing services, integrate social, SEO, Google ads, email, and other channels to provide a unified, high-quality brand experience as a user moves between various channels. The idea is to maintain the same seamless, positive CX across channels without experiencing any drop in quality of service. For B2B companies, many of these responsibilities can be outsourced to an agency dedicated to B2B lead generation services.

How does Stark Visibility use Omnichannel Strategy?

Stark Visibility B2B omnichannel digital marketing agency manages the dominant B2B channels in your vertical as an extension of your holistic omnichannel marketing strategy. We offer omnichannel services such as:

Google Ads Management Services (Search & Display)
B2B SEO Services
LinkedIn Lead Generation Service
SEO Copywriting Services

Stark Visibility omnichannel consulting incorporates best-practice SEO keyword research and on-page optimization techniques to strengthen the performance of Google search campaigns by pursuing a high Quality Score.

Google defines the Quality Score by estimating the cumulative quality and integration of your business’s keywords, ads, and landing pages. Connecting the dots between SEO and PPC doesn’t just convert more customers; it also leads to better ad positions and lower prices at bid times.

Reported on a 1-10 scale, Google’s Quality Score includes ad relevance, expected clickthrough rate, and landing page experience. The more relevant that visitors find your landing page and ads, the higher your Quality Score is in Google’s eyes—and this is where Stark Visibility comes in.

The Stark Visibility omnichannel strategy moves through these specific channels to create new brand awareness, filling the top of the sales funnel with Google Display and LinkedIn ads. After generating demand, our strategy captures inbound users to the site through high-intent queries by implementing Google Search and SEO best practices, and optimizing landing pages to convert those users.

Ready to outsource keyword research services and other critical aspects of your omnichannel strategy? Reach out for a free consultation.