With the holidays around the corner, a marketing campaign is imperative to capture your needed retail share. In this Internet age, omni-channel marketing has become the buzz-phrase. To truly utilize this integrated marketing approach, you need to understand your sales channels, the marketing message and the consumer’s shopping experience. The ability to weave these three things together can be the difference between an omni-channel, a multi-channel, and no-channel marketing strategy.
Know Your Message
Omni-channel marketing focuses on the shopping experience of the consumer. Omni-channel has one marketing message across every channel while maintaining the retail integrity for the customer. Walmart’s Black Friday campaign is an example of good message integration. If you walk into the store, you will see the same message there as you see on the Web page, mobile app, and paper circulars.
The effectiveness of integrated marketing communication depends a lot on the psychological principle of priming. The priming effect is an unconscious response to words, images and memories. The classic example is the people that are shown the word “yellow” will identify a banana out of multiple images faster than have not been shown the word. A good omni-channel strategy will use images from one channel to prime people to receive the message under other channels. Walmart is currently priming consumers to identify positive marketing messages in other of their channels.
Understand Your Sales Channels
Savvy customers can shop around online and in-store and find the cheapest price on the same item. This process also lead to a comparison between similar items from different manufacturers. As business people become better educated in omnidirectional sales, they are beginning to use it to their advantage.
One example of this is Oasis clothing company, which has integrated iPads throughout its stores so consumers can purchase in-store items online. This innovative approach serves to enhance the customer's shopping experience while eliminating the problems of cross channel competition, notes Smart Insights. As a side benefit, this process has a human resource impact where sales people are no longer needed to serve as cashiers, effectively creating a specialized salesforce.
Make The Customer Happy
The most significant difference between omni-channel marketing and all of the rest is in the customer’s shopping experience. This is why Multichannel Merchant magazine reports Starbucks has one of the best omni-channel marketing strategies. Starbuck’s reward app makes the coffee company a leader in customer experience. The app, which is linked to the website, gives you points every time you use the card or phone QRC. Starbucks regularly updates users via email with how many points they have earned. These points can be redeemed for free drinks and discounts on store items.
As you create your omni-channel strategy, use these examples as templates for your design. Always keep in mind the consumer’s experience and point of view. Make your message clear, uniform and frequent and make your sales channels work for you.