What Is Omnichannel Marketing? Definition, Examples, and Strategy

What is omnichannel marketing?

Omnichannel marketing is an approach to promoting and selling products that serve three main purposes:

1. Deliver consistent brand messaging across all marketing channels as customers move through the awareness, consideration, and decision stages of the buyer’s journey.

2. Provide customers with a seamless customer experience from the first touchpoint to the last, including social media, SMS, email, live events, or experiences at a physical location.

3. Engage customers after they make a purchase to inspire their loyalty.

Omnichannel marketing is becoming more common as businesses leverage technology to integrate marketing channels and close the gap between different touchpoints. Chances are you’ve had an omnichannel experience with various brands and benefited from the convenience it offers. Common examples include being able to order a product online and pick it up in the store and receiving push notifications that you’ve abandoned an online cart.  

An omnichannel marketing strategy offers several potential business benefits, including:

• Reducing costs of acquiring customer data

• Obtaining valuable customer insights 

• Attracting new market segments

• Boosting sales 

• Keeping customers engaged after a sale

• Inspiring customer loyalty

Omnichannel vs. multichannel marketing

Omnichannel and multichannel marketing share similarities in that both approaches involve interacting with customers on multiple channels to increase brand visibility. 

However, an important difference between these marketing approaches exists, and you’ll need to keep it in mind. Omnichannel marketing creates a seamless customer journey by connecting one channel to another and using unified messaging. A multichannel marketing strategy can increase potential customers' chances to interact with your brand but may not integrate their experiences at each touchpoint. This can result in a disrupted journey through the awareness, consideration, and decision stages of purchasing.

Omnichannel marketing examples

The examples below show how well-known brands in different industries leverage technology to offer omnichannel buying experiences. Use these examples to draw inspiration for your omnichannel marketing strategy.

Retail

Brands like Shopify are leveraging mobile apps to drive sales in the retail industry. Shopify’s mobile app now integrates with shipping service Oberlo so that customers can dropship products listed directly in their catalogues on Shopify.

Recreation and entertainment

In the recreation and entertainment industry, Facebook Local app allows users to learn about events in the local area and view them on a map layout, with an option to add them to a calendar.

Food service

The Zomato app allows customers to order online from a range of food outlets for delivery or in-store pickup, earn rewards and get discounts such as two for one offers.

Rideshare

In the rideshare industry, the Uber app allows customers to book and manage a trip, and share trip status with phone contacts.

How to build your omnichannel marketing strategy

When building a strategy to reach target customers on multiple channels, it’s important to prioritise customers’ needs, desires, and preferences. This way, you can create a personalised customer experience wherever they are in their buyer’s journey.

Read more: Marketing Strategy: What It Is and How to Create One

Collect and analyse customer data.

This step aims to understand which channels and platforms your target customers prefer and how they behave on each one. With this kind of data, you can focus on optimising and connecting important touchpoints so that customers enjoy interacting with your brand and progress easily toward a purchase.

• Where do your target customers shop, including physical stores and online platforms?

• What devices do they use to shop?

• What challenges, barriers, delays, and issues do they face whilst shopping?

• How do they interact with brands at each touchpoint?

Map your omnichannel customer journey.

Your goal for this step is to design a customer journey that offers ease and convenience. 

First, use the data you collected to list every customer touchpoint, including:

• Discovery of your brand and products

• Learning about your products and making a purchase 

• Experiencing a product after a purchase

• Requesting customer support 

• Accessing a community of fellow customers 

• Seeking out your brand again for subsequent purchases

Next, identify which marketing methods you’ll use to engage and serve customers at the various touchpoints. For example, digital ads can attract people to your brand whilst they’re active online, whilst post-purchase email surveys can keep customers engaged and allow them to influence future products and experiences. Be sure to prioritise target customers’ favourite platforms. Then, refine the messaging on all channels and at every touchpoint to enhance the experience with your brand. 

Tip: As you grow your business and identify a more diversified customer base, you may need to design a unique omnichannel experience for different customer segments.

Establish omnichannel brand guidelines.

To create a consistent look and feel across all marketing channels, you’ll need to define a set of omnichannel brand guidelines. 

Review your business’s general brand guidelines, including the mission statement, values, voice, and visual brand identity. Next, determine how these components will appear in your omnichannel experience. For example:

• Where will your logo be positioned at every touchpoint? 

• Which messaging elements will change as customers move from one touchpoint to another?

• What words, phrases, calls-to-action, instructions, product information, and other messaging elements must be consistent throughout? 

Distribute the omnichannel brand guidelines to your team and train them to implement brand elements at every touchpoint.

Read more: Brand Marketing: What It Is + How to Create Your Strategy

Implement your omnichannel marketing strategy and test results.

Part of any successful marketing endeavour is continually testing and measuring results. Where do customers experience friction along their journey? What can you adjust to improve interactions and lead more customers to sales? 

A marketing and sales automation tool can make coordinating customers’ experiences across channels easier, managing your shop fronts from one platform, providing customer support, inspiring loyalty, and optimizing your efforts to improve results. Here are three tools to investigate:

• HubSpot 

• Shopify 

• Magento 

Watch this video from the University of Pennsylvania on Omnichannel Retail Strategy Specialisation to learn more about omnichannel marketing and how to make it customer-centric.

Improve your marketing with Coursera 

Online courses can be a great way to build marketing skills for your business or fill a marketing position at a company. 

Learn customer-centred omnichannel strategies by understanding marketing and e-commerce and the various touchpoints customers will experience with the Google Digital Marketing and E-Commerce Professional Certificate. This can help you to seamlessly connect a customer’s experience by learning how to craft social media content, design and manage ads, and more.