Omnichannel Marketing Strategies during Covid-19

What is Omnichannel Marketing?

Omnichannel marketing is a cross-channel marketing approach that aligns content strategy across different marketing channels to provide customers an integrated shopping experience. 

It incorporates point-of-sale, in-store, traditional, digital channels, and online experiences. Because modern customers are no longer dedicated to a single channel, omnichannel marketing provides a unified buying experience regardless of the channel or platform. This marketing approach delivers a seamless experience throughout the buyers’ journey, despite customers shopping from a mobile device or a desktop, through phone, or in a brick-and-mortar store.

Customers prefer to shop from the brands they trust and value the most, and omnichannel marketing endeavors boost customer loyalty by offering a personalized customer experience. Since omnichannel marketing provides a consistent brand value throughout all channels, it strengthens your brand recognition and increases the revenue. Let’s dive into some ways to create a perfect omnichannel experience for your buyers.

How to Create Omnichannel Marketing Strategies during Covid-19 in 2020?

1) Analyze Customer Data

While creating an omnichannel marketing strategy, the first important step is to analyze your customers’ data to know more about your customers. During the Covid-19, it is more crucial to know about your customers. Don’t have sufficient customer data? Don’t worry! You can collect it right off: 1) Examine a full purchase on your site to evaluate the customer experience. 2) Ask your customers to give feedback at various stages of a buyer’s journey. Encourage people to respond more by incentivizing customer feedback.

Once you collect the essential data, make sure to listen to that feedback. Understand what’s attracting the customers to your brand and what’s taking them away. The insights you gain from analyzing customers’ data will help your brand leverage the omnichannel marketing strategy even during the crisis.

2) Segment Your Customers

Segmenting your customers is crucial in omnichannel marketing, as you can tailor your message to the right audience at the right time. Based on your customers’ data, you can easily segment your customers under different categories depending on their geographic, demographic, behavioral, and psychographic characteristics. One can also segment customer based on subscription and product usage. Also, make sure to provide offers and discounts relevant to your targeted audience.

To create a perfect omnichannel strategy, segmenting your audience will be crucial. As it’ll give an idea about channels that customers mostly use, you can effectively create a strategy that works for everyone. 

3) Personalize the Content

Personalization gets context through data points. Understanding your customers’ data will help you identify the right audience, according to which you can create marketing campaigns, ads, landing pages, emails, etc., that interest them the most. The content provided in different channels is crucial for your omnichannel marketing strategy. It should be based on data and not conjecture. To personalize your content, analyze customer behavior. If they find you through Google searches, build SEO content to attract the right audience. If they’re dropping off, find out the reasons to deliver the content that justify their problems. Personalizing your content will help you cater to different client personas with a similar buying experience.

4) Test, Analyze and Test Again

Unlike other marketing strategies, an omnichannel marketing strategy cannot be implemented before testing. To ensure your strategy works, you actively need to test various messages, images, header lines, timing, etc., before, during, and after the implementation. 

Test different channels regularly to check which messages are working the best with which kind of customer segment. Track user engagement to find the perfect marketing formula out of relevant metrics. Once you have executed an omnichannel marketing strategy, and have concluded the results, implement them in your next campaign and test again to deliver a perfect omnichannel marketing experience.

What are the Best Omnichannel Marketing Practices?

1) Propel a Consistent Brand Value throughout Buyer’s Journey

While making a choice, purchasing any product, and making payments, every user has different perspectives and behavior. In this overload of customer behavioral information, your brand may fail to stand out. Also, your user might be getting bothered with notifications, emails, SMS, etc. Having a superior value and propelling it consistently throughout all channels without bothering your user, can make you stand out with more immeasurable brand recognition.

2) Choose the Right Channel

When you want to promote consistent brand value, you need to optimize all the channels. Among the multiple channels available out there, not all are the best fit for you. Know the channel which customers have interacted with frequently. Ensure easy navigation for users throughout all channels.

3) Enable Effective Customer Service

Customers need immediate solutions to their problems and don’t want to recite the same thing again. Your brand should provide instructional videos and an FAQ section to help them understand the clarifications to their queries. Besides, investing in reliable customer service software would be crucial. Providing effective customer service can make your omnichannel marketing strategy even more robust.

4) Select the Right Tool

Understand and analyze your users during their buying journey, and set goals that need to be completed. Select the right marketing automation tool that works well with your brand goals and expectations. Use the right tool for your target audience. 

5) Measure and Persist

There isn’t any way to make your first omnichannel marketing strategy work effectively. Implement the strategy, understand responses, and continue. Once you have tested and analyzed the right messages, the apt time to approach, effective channel, and tool, your omnichannel marketing strategy will work the best.

Top Brands having Excellent Omnichannel Marketing Experiences

1) Starbucks

Coffee is the one-stop solution for every occasion. Starbucks has made it even more convenient to order coffee through its mobile app, giving recommendations based on season and location. Starbucks rewards app demonstrates a great omnichannel experience. They have contrived to emerge a fantastic physical experience with digital by combining mobile ordering and in-store experience. At first, they provide the customer with a rewards card that can be used at the purchase time. You can check your card and reload it via website, in-store, phone, or app. Also, changes made to the card gets updated in real-time across all channels. 

2) Chipotle

Chipotle, the fast-casual restaurant chain in the United States, has been serving a great omnichannel experience. The food chain has been a great hit, and it is not surprising to wait for your favorite dish. To eradicate customers’ frustration of waiting for the food, Chitople provides a great digital experience. Signing up allows the customer to personalize the experience by storing their favorite orders. By taking it further, one can also receive bonuses and sign up for a rewards program.

3) Pepperfry

Pepperfry is a furniture company based in India that creates delightful experiences for furniture buyers. Studio Pepperfry allows customers to walk through the products they liked online. Once customers travel through the studio, its consultant helps them to find their ideal home decor. Also, it allows users to purchase the product in-store or buy it online. This investment seems paid off, as the company reports 25 percent of Pepperfry’s sales are from customers who have visited its Studios.

4) Sephora

Sephora, the beauty giant, creates an excellent omnichannel experience by connecting buyers’ online shopping to in-store visits. Irrespective of the customers’ location, whether at home or at one of their 2500 stores worldwide; the brand strives to focus on every customer individually. Also, customers can utilize their in-store tablets to access their Beauty Bag at the time of shopping. 

Using digital software, customers can virtually try on products, load their cart at home, and purchase through the app. It also recommends products and shades that are a perfect match for clients’ skin tone. By merging its Beauty Bag feature with the in-store experience, Sephora intensifies customers’ shopping experience.

5) Bank of America

Bank of America is an excellent name in providing an intensified omnichannel experience. With the mobile app, you can perform everything from transfers between accounts, checking balances, depositing checks, to scheduling appointments. Bank of America reserves physical locations, as some of the complex banking needs such as applying for the loan can’t be performed through phones. Nevertheless, its omnichannel strategy ensures to perform other activities to provide a hassle-free experience.

Conclusion

Covid-19 crisis had put on many challenges at the forefront of businesses. Many brands are striving to leverage their marketing strategies and enhance their digital experience in these challenging times to provide an intensified customer experience. Looking at the proven track record of omnichannel marketing, brands have much to explore despite the challenges. The perfect omnichannel marketing strategy can help you increase sales and provide enhanced customer service, which is the need of time.