How to prepare a winning omni-channel marketing plan

Marketing has been transformed by the digital age. It operates in social media, websites, mobile applications, and more. Offering a seamless experience is only possible with a unified approach to marketing.

Enter omni-channel, which shows the benefit of consistency in brand messaging and voice across marketing channels. It was recently found in a survey by SAP that there’s a 75 percent increase in sales and a 64 percent increase in customer loyalty through this marketing approach.

Almost every business uses a website, social media accounts, and other digital tools to connect with customers and prospects. Allowing these platforms to work together to provide a consistent customer experience is what omni-channel marketing is all about.

Take Domino’s Pizza, for example. Whether you’re online, on social media, or on a mobile app, you know exactly what you will get regardless of how the order was placed. The pizza giant is ahead of the game when it comes to omni-channel marketing and it allows customers to order simply by sending a tweet or pushing a button on their smart-TV or watch. Domino’s takes the customer experience one step further by allowing users to watch the progress.

https://youtu.be/SUS5NJ6TPZM

In April, Domino’s Chief Digital Officer, Dennis Maloney, told AdAge.com that the company has been successful largely because of a change in thinking. “We like to say we used to be a pizza company that sold online and we’ve now become an e-commerce company that sells pizza,” Maloney said.

Here’s how you prepare a winning omni-channel marketing plan for your business:

Consistent, Unified Voice

Maintaining consistent unified voice for your brand is a key step for creating a successful omni-channel marketing plan. Customers look at how unified the message is when interacting with a business. If your brand’s tone on social media channels and your website differ, the customer can get confused or even irritated. Provide stellar customer service experiences while being consistent and unified.

A Global Customer Service Barometer found that three out of four consumers say they have spent more money with a company because of a history of positive customer service.

According to Walker Info, by 2020, customer experience will overtake product and price as the key brand differentiator.

In order to provide a great customer experience every time, ensure that every platform you use to interact with customers is consistent. The storefront, website, social media pages, and applications should give customers the same look and feel.

[bctt tweet=”A consistent customer experience is what omni-channel marketing is all about.” username=”agilecrm”]

Starbuck’s is another leading example of successful omni-channel marketing. From the storefront to the website, to the mobile app, the brand’s look and feel are on point. They make sure that the “voice” is consistent across all platforms, including the way they market products.

https://youtu.be/N4ScwYcBA7E

Determine the Right Channels for the Right Messaging

Your marketing strategy is dependent on your brand or business’ unique selling proposition (USP) and playing with that USP in your messaging is the crux of your marketing strategy. Ensuring that this message is same everywhere in your various marketing platforms will produce better results.

Not every channel can advance your message to your audience in the right manner. You need to maintain the consistency across all channels and do that, you might have to forego channels that don’t suit your needs.

Disney is a great example of choosing the right channel. They use their website and mobile app to offer the most memorable experience. They offer a Disney Experience tool that is accessible on their website and app. It allows hotel booking, photo storage, attraction locations at the park and more.

Prioritize Channels

Once you’ve determined the right channel, if you still want to use others, there’s no harm in that. However, you do need to pick your priority channel(s) and ignore ones that don’t produce results.

Your priority channel should get the bulk of your marketing budget and other channels should support it. Risking everything on one endeavor is not a good idea, but having too many endeavors is also risky (it dilutes the message). Keep the essence of your messaging intact and find three to four channels that best suit your requirements.

Use the Right Tools

Find the best tools and techniques to automate tasks or to disseminate messages. Once you develop a clear, consistent messaging strategy, the next step is to identify the tools that will help make your omni-channel marketing transition a success.

The right tool, like an all-in-one CRM, sales enablement, marketing automation, and customer service platform will help you achieve consistency in your messaging by allowing the distribution of the same message across channels in a unified manner. Marketing automation tools also allow you to send messages on a particular time and date (in case you have a multiple-geography presence).

Test and Analyze Performance

Analyzing the performance of any marketing strategy is a ground rule. When it comes to omni-channel marketing, it is even more imperative to understand what is working and what is not. Test various channels, analyze their performance and make required changes. You can change the testing pattern based on the messaging, marketing channels or both.

There are plenty of successful examples of omni-channel marketing: Chipotle, Sephora, Bank of America and more. How you can use this marketing strategy to best suit your business needs is the task.