Omnichannel Marketing Strategy Guide

Discover what you need to develop an omnichannel marketing strategy that drives customer and business KPIs.

If you’ve got customers—and you want them to stick around (and refer their friends and family), then you need an omnichannel marketing strategy. Why? Because today’s customer isn’t a solo-channel customer. More likely than not, they’re engaging with your brand across a range of channels. In fact, most customers end up using three to five channels as they move across the customer journey towards successfully completing a purchase or resolving a request. 

A well-crafted omnichannel marketing strategy will help you deliver a consistent brand experience across those channels, driving engagement, conversions, customer retention, and customer satisfaction.

In this guide, we’ll define omnichannel marketing, share the building blocks of an omnichannel marketing strategy, and explore the benefits of investing in omnichannel marketing. Let’s get started. 

What Is Omnichannel Marketing?

If you’re wondering, “What is omnichannel marketing?” you’ve come to the right place. We’ve got a simple omnichannel marketing definition for you.

We define omnichannel marketing as a strategic effort to coordinate a business’s presence across both online and offline channels. Brands that excel at omnichannel marketing offer seamless connected experiences across channels, integrating interactions and campaigns across digital channels with those across physical and hybrid touchpoints.

Now that we’ve covered this high-level omnichannel marketing definition, let’s explore the question “What is omnichannel marketing?” even further by walking you through the steps involved in building an effective omnichannel marketing strategy. 

Creating an Omnichannel Marketing Strategy That Delivers Results

Use these building blocks to create an omnichannel marketing strategy that strengthens your customer relationships and supports your broader business goals.

1. Identify Your Key Channels and Customer Touchpoints

Identify the channels and customer touchpoints where customers interact with your brand, such as:

• Digital channels: Apps, websites, live chat, SMS, social media, email
• Non-digital channels: In person touchpoints, phone calls, print media, broadcast media
• Hybrid channels: Buy online pickup in store, in-store app mode 

2. Evaluate the Customer Experience Across Channels and Touchpoints

Conduct an audit of your marketing channels, identified in step one, and evaluate the omnichannel customer experience to identify any areas that are inconsistent or need improvement.

• Conduct market research: Leaders go beyond capturing basic demographic information to collect real-time insights across customer segments.
• Conduct omnichannel surveys: Gather customer feedback after key moments in the customer journey to shed light on customer needs and expectations.
• Capture customer signals from across channels: Bring together customer insights from across sources—from online reviews to customer support interactions—to get a clear picture of the customer experience.
• Use AI-powered analytics tools like Text Analytics and Speech Analytics for meaningful insights about your omnichannel experience which you can use to improve your strategy across digital, social, customer support, and in-person channels.
• Use behavioral intelligence: Tap digital customer experience technology to understand how your company’s web and app experiences are affecting engagement, sentiment, and conversions.
• Implement a social listening strategy: Get a snapshot of how customers and consumers really feel about your brand based on what they’re saying on social media.

In an audit, you might discover conflicting brand messaging, broken links on your website, long wait times for customer support, poor mobile optimization, and a lack of payment options in store. Identifying these areas are the first steps to improving them. 

3. Integrate Your Marketing Strategy Across Channels for a Consistent Omnichannel Experience

Now that you’ve identified your key channels and touchpoints and evaluated the customer experience across these channels and touchpoints, it’s time to make sure the experience you deliver and strategy you implement going forward across the customer journey is a consistent one. 

Whether someone walks into your store, follows your business on social media, or browses your website, your messaging, branding, and customer service should be aligned. No matter which device your customer is using or what channel they’re using to interact with your brand, they expect a seamless customer experience—so make sure you’re delivering it. A consistent approach to omnichannel marketing will:

• Build trust 
• Reinforcing your brand identity
• Drive customer engagement and customer satisfaction

You can leverage the power of comprehensive omnichannel marketing platforms to create and execute coordinated marketing campaigns across digital and in-person channels and harness an omnichannel customer experience management platform like Medallia to evaluate how your efforts are impacting the overall customer experience, revenue, retention, and loyalty. You’ll get a unified view of the customer experience to optimize interactions with customers across various digital and in-person channels like email, social media, mobile, in store, and more. 

4. Personalize Your Omnichannel Marketing

Research on how consumers feel about personalization finds that 61% are willing to spend more money with a business offering customized experiences—with a whopping 82% confirming that personalized experiences influence the brand they choose at least half the time when shopping. It’s safe to say that a personalized approach is a must have, not a nice to have. 

Serving up high-quality, relevant campaigns and interactions tailored to customers’ real-time needs, preferences, interests, and behaviors will help you drive business, marketing, and CX KPIs across conversions, engagement, retention, and loyalty. 

What Are the Benefits of an Omnichannel Marketing Strategy?

Brands that successfully implement effective omnichannel marketing strategies can expect to see their customer KPIs increase across a range of measures. 

Enhanced Customer Experience

Don’t underestimate the power of a seamless omnichannel marketing experience. Removing friction from the customer journey is a surefire way to drive customer satisfaction. 

Improved Brand Health

Well-designed omnichannel marketing strategies and campaigns deliver unified messaging and branding across all touchpoints, reinforcing your brand identity and ensuring customers know what to expect from your company.

Data-Driven Decision Making

Leveraging real-time customer data from across channels to tailor your omnichannel marketing campaigns and efforts will help you improve your overall performance. 

Increased Customer Engagement

Gaining better insight into customer behavior across channels allows you to deliver marketing campaigns, content, experiences, products, and services that are more responsive to customers’ needs, interests, behaviors, and actions, which in turn can have a positive impact on engagement. 

Stronger Customer Relationships

When you’re delivering personalized experiences across channels that really resonate, you can expect to see measures of customer satisfaction and loyalty to improve. 

Sales and Revenue Growth

Once you’re able to get the right products and services to the right customers via the right channels, watch sales and revenue soar. 

Case Study: Rent-a-Center Increases Sales by Focusing on the Omnichannel Customer Experience

The rent-to-own furniture retailer Rent-a-Center has over 2,400 stores across the U.S., Puerto Rico, and Mexico; serves over a million customers; employs over 17,000 people; and is using Medallia’s omnichannel customer experience platform to capture customer feedback and insights across channels.

By gaining a deeper understanding of the omnichannel customer experience, Rent-a-Center has vastly improved both sales and performance. Here’s a sampling of the brand’s impressive results:

• 54% increase in Net Promoter Score® (NPS), a significant and measurable increase in customer satisfaction and loyalty.
• 19% growth in customer base, achieved by leveraging insights from customer feedback across several channels.
• 28% higher sales in top-performing stores, demonstrating that locations with the highest customer satisfaction outperformed others in year-over-year growth

Future Trends in Omnichannel Marketing

As the omnichannel marketing landscape is one of constant evolution and flux, it’s important to not only stay on top of current trends, but be prepared for future ones. Here’s what we see on the horizon.

Digital Experience

Increasingly, the customer experience is becoming a digital experience. Even for primarily brick-and-mortar businesses the digital experience is central to customer interaction and revenue growth. 

Comprehensive digital experience strategies are essential for brands to be able to integrate various touchpoints without introducing friction and to ensure smooth transitions from websites to mobile apps and beyond.

Brands will need to double down on optimizing online and in-app experiences to cater to consumers who prefer researching, comparing, and/or purchasing products online. If you fall behind on delivering seamlessly personalized digital experiences it will be difficult to catch up and compete—especially with leading brands.

Customer Loyalty

To nurture your customers’ commitment to your brand, you need to make the experience of interacting with your brand as streamlined, intuitive, and satisfying as possible. Integrating omnichannel marketing into your business operations will simplify the customer journey and make customers come back again and again for the same consistent, elevated experience.

Connected Experiences

Connected experiences ensure customers move seamlessly across touchpoints—from online, in-app, and in-person—along their customer journeys. These represent the future of omnichannel marketing, where all facets of a business work together to create a unified experience. To create connected experiences, start by breaking down organizational silos, incentivizing collaboration across all departments, and leveraging AI and data analytics for predictive, personalized customer interactions. 

AI and the Omnichannel Experience

AI-powered personalization is becoming the norm across channels. The vast majority of brands (92%) are using AI-powered personalization to create personalized customer experiences. Leveraging AI technology and striking a balance between automation and personalization will allow your business to scale while working smarter, not harder.

Investing in the Omnichannel Experience

Today’s customer’s reality is an omnichannel reality. They’re moving across apps, websites, social channels, and in-person touchpoints as they reach out to customer support, consider and pay for products and services, consume content, engage with marketing campaigns, and interact with brands.

The organizations that will be set up for the greatest levels of success are those that not only craft their campaigns, content, products, and services for this omnichannel reality, but harness the power of omnichannel customer experience platforms like Medallia to measure and optimize the customer experience across these channels.