Why is omnichannel marketing becoming crucial?

We all know that many years ago, in the era of TV advertising and email marketing, they could easily reach most users and were called mass marketing communications or simply advertising. Now, with the increase of various online channels including social media, we have entered the era of precision marketing. It is not easy for users to notice you. At this time, if you still want to maintain a competitive advantage, you must consider omni-channel marketing methods.

So, what is omnichannel marketing?

1. Omnichannel Marketing

Omnichannel marketing is to create a consistent user experience in all the marketing channels you can reach and convey consistent information to your users through online and offline channels.

In this way, before acquiring new channels, at least the existing channels can send the same brand voice and gain customer recognition and trust. Today, users also want brands to do this. In the era of information explosion, the information they obtain is very diverse. A consistent and smooth experience will reduce their learning costs and make them more interested in your brand, which will be reflected in high conversion rates at each level of the marketing funnel, leading to higher revenue for you.

Moreover, there is a superposition effect here. It is possible that the customer learned about the product features of the brand in channel A, completed a trial in channel B, and made a purchase in channel C. If the communication is inconsistent, the customer is unlikely to be saved in C, and there is a high probability of loss in the middle.

We have also heard of two related terms, one is "multi-channel" and the other is "cross-channel", so what is the difference between "omni" channel, "multi" and "cross" channel?

Multi-channel marketing

As the name suggests, multi-channel marketing means that a brand communicates with customers through multiple channels. What we need to note is that these channels are independent of each other and do not communicate with each other. In other words, users cannot jump from one channel to another on their own, and there is no memory function, so they cannot go to the corresponding point of another channel to complete subsequent purchases. For example, if a user viewed a product through channel A and later wanted to purchase it through channel B, they would have to “go back to square one” and search for the product again.

Cross-channel marketing

Cross-channel marketing takes it a step further by enabling smooth transitions between different marketing stages and channels, with a smooth user experience and the ability to share information, so that users can reach anywhere across multiple channels throughout their shopping journey.

Omnichannel Marketing

Omnichannel marketing goes a step further, where different channels are fully interconnected, allowing for maximum reach to users. Not only that, users can use different channels at the same time to communicate with brands, switching seamlessly between channels and having a consistent experience.

2. How is omni-channel marketing used in online advertising?

In online advertising, omnichannel digital marketing is all about interacting with customers through various online channels, your display ads, and landing page integrations. This approach requires effective use of data.

First, create a user portrait that is as accurate as possible. This user portrait data can be obtained from the user's profile on social media, online purchase records, search and other behavioral data. Most companies now use CRM to save these customer profiles.

Then, based on the user portrait, we summarize and analyze the user's consumption behavior and personality preference data according to the user's geographic location and changes in online movement trajectory, to prepare for subsequent location-based message push and personalized recommendations.

For example, you can embed a marketing code similar to Facebook Pixel in your APP and use it to track your users. You will then see a visualization of data such as click-through rate, conversion rate, churn rate, daily active users, etc. on your platform dashboard. This is especially important when implementing omni-channel marketing.

It goes without saying that one of the main tasks of omnichannel digital marketing is to track user performance at each level of the marketing funnel, ultimately increase sales conversion rate, reduce churn rate, and make adjustments to push information based on these data changes for continuous improvement. We recommend that you connect this data to your channel management platform account, see the data changes at each level in real time, and dynamically adjust the information you want to push on the platform.

Figure: Omni-channel marketing is essentially data operations at each level of the funnel

Omni-channel promotion can be understood as the implementation of an omni-channel marketing strategy. We believe that this strategy should include the customer's full-cycle online and offline journey, from advertising reach to conversion to retention, and every link should be involved.

We further divide “reach” into two sub-stages – “initial contact” and “re-engagement”.

“First contact”: As the name suggests, this is the stage when the user first comes into contact with you. We do not rule out your use of traditional media such as television, portals, social media rankings, search engines, Taobao or JD homepages, etc. These are channels with very wide coverage, and there is no problem using them to reach users for the first time. More advanced methods, such as using similarity algorithms (lookalike) to gain the attention of a certain type of users, can be said to be precise communication with mass characteristics, and can be used as a highly efficient method to reach users widely.

“Re-engagement”: It is somewhat similar to “re-sales” in the traditional marketing field. The first contact may not be successful immediately. The reason for failure is often “wrong timing” - when the child is crying, the phone is ringing, or the boss is catching you working.

Whatever the reason, even your most ideal prospects may have to stop their first interaction with you. So let’s go back and talk about why this stage is so important. If you want to re-establish contact with your potential customers, you need to find platforms like Facebook Pixel to efficiently recover lost users and interact with them again.

Thanks to their powerful tracking capabilities, you can reach users who had their first contact with your brand again at a point in time when they have the desire to buy.

"Repositioning": This is basically the finishing touch before conversion. These users already have a strong intention to buy. They are very familiar with your brand and may have visited your website or official account. Some even come here specially.

At this stage, portals and search engines are no longer of much use. They don't need you to bombard them with advertisements anymore, which may cause a negative experience. You need to seize the specific channel where they can place orders accurately, such as the purchase details page of Taobao and JD.com. You must pay more attention to user experience at the final moment. Don't let them tire of searching. You need to know which channel they like to order through and how they place orders, and help them solve all difficulties before payment.

"Retention": Retention rate and repurchase rate are key indicators for multiple conversions and stickiness. With these, you can significantly save marketing costs and get on a virtuous track of sustainable development. At this stage, you can make money only if you turn those first-time buyers into your loyal customers and their purchases become multiple and your marketing costs approach zero.

Note that at this stage, you are not just selling, you are building relationships. Therefore, if you want to communicate in a more private way, you can make full use of private traffic channels, at least email, WeChat, and text messages. Better channels include WeChat communities, Moments, Pinduoduo, etc. You can convey a lot of content, such as shopping discounts, or simply post some photos in Moments to let users know your movements.

Products like Pinduoduo are a perfect combination of social media and ordering pages. Weimeng and Youzan are operating tools independent of social media, which are more conducive to omni-channel marketing. A survey by Salesforce, a giant in the US SaaS industry, shows that running Facebook ads together can increase the reach of email campaigns by 77%.

Having said so much, let’s look at the case of an omni-channel, full-link marketing technology company. Jiuzhilan focuses on the management and optimization of online advertising through search engines, information streams, etc., helping companies establish promotion effect tracking and attribution infrastructure, manage brand marketing assets (promotional ideas in various media formats, etc.), and can help customers optimize advertising on WeChat Moments, Douyin and Baidu.

It will record the customer's advertising data in the Douyin advertising account. For advertisements with good conversion effects, they can be directly migrated to the Kuaishou platform. Similarly, they can also be migrated to other platforms, and the delivery effects can be verified from various channels in turn, so as to better grasp the user's ordering preferences in dynamic adjustments. Moreover, they attach great importance to maintaining consistent brand information communication on various channels to further increase customer stickiness.

3. Affiliate Marketing – A Channel You Can’t Ignore

Another way to definitely enhance your omnichannel marketing efforts is affiliate marketing. Sometimes this method doesn’t get a lot of attention, but it actually has a lot of potential. Some people may not understand the word “affiliate,” but if I say “outsourcing,” you’ll basically understand it. They are similar, and when you’re scaling up and don’t want to use company staff, you can consider this approach.

The difference from outsourcing is that the "alliance" pays based on results and usually does not charge in advance, which makes it more cost-effective for you than outsourcing. Moreover, the resources of the "alliance" are much richer than outsourcing. It can reach new channels that you have not touched before, which is very beneficial to your omni-channel coverage strategy.

However, there are a few things you should be aware of when it comes to affiliate marketing. For example, they are basically independent companies and are generally not under your control. They are more of a marketing collaboration. In addition, managing alliance partners requires some follow-up and relationship maintenance, especially when multiple alliance partners need to coordinate to complete the work. Finally, how to evaluate the work performance of alliance partners may be a bit complicated.

Therefore, using an alliance management platform is a good solution. There are many products available on the market, one of which is Jiuzhilan’s one-stop marketing promotion management system, which has full-stack capabilities for online marketing including alliance marketing, unified management across media and accounts, real-time tracking of promotion results, and provides tools for quickly improving marketing delivery.

All in all, affiliate marketing is an integral part of omnichannel marketing, and it would be beneficial to use an affiliate management platform to streamline the process, just like programmatic buying for advertising.

Fourth, let’s finally look at the advantages of omni-channel marketing

1. Improve data collection and user insight capabilities. Omnichannel marketing allows you to effectively collect and uniformly manage data from different channels. Analyzing this data will effectively help you understand your customers and tailor content for them, thereby improving sales conversion rates and ROAS (return on investment).

2. Maintain smooth communication across all channels. Communicating smoothly with customers wherever they reach you, and maintaining consistency and continuity in communication across channels, will create a good customer experience.

3. Strengthen brand recognition and consistency. To establish better brand recognition, as mentioned earlier, you must maintain consistency in information delivery and synchronize the brand voice. This not only consolidates the value of your brand and makes it more trustworthy, but also repeatedly conveying consistent information can also increase your sales conversion rate.

4. Have omni-channel resource management capabilities. Omni-channel marketing, especially the one-stop marketing promotion management system, provides you with insights beyond the human brain. It uses machine learning, natural language processing, distributed cloud computing and other technologies to effectively deploy your full-link resources. It will tell you which channel is the most advantageous and the conversion situation at different funnel stages. It presents it in a visual way and provides real-time warnings. This aspect is very important, you can get a panoramic view in real time that exceeds human intelligence.

5. Adjust your marketing strategy in real time based on user behavior. Omni-channel marketing allows you to truly understand your customers’ needs and pain points, and you can also determine their consumption behaviors and preferences through their user portraits and tracking their actions in different channels. This means that you can dynamically adjust the keywords, pictures, texts, videos and other materials you deliver to meet their ever-changing consumption behaviors, or change the target audience and obtain improved performance data in real time.

V. Conclusion

There is no doubt that omnichannel marketing is a standing strategy for every advertiser today. It is more advantageous than other methods in terms of precise user positioning and segmentation, resource management capabilities, brand recognition, customer satisfaction, input-output ratio, real-time strategy adjustment, etc. This method is also the key to implementing full marketing funnel management.

Of course, you can proceed in steps, starting with multi-channel or cross-channel, and gradually move towards omni-channel marketing management; and a good omni-channel platform management system can allow you to move faster, as these platforms have already thought of your future steps, and they are also built on the basis of numerous customer cases.

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. No matter what method you use, the one that suits you is the best. I hope this article will be helpful to you on your omni-channel marketing journey.

Author: Jiuzhilan

Source: Jiuzhilan Internet Marketing (jiuzhilan)