Omnichannel Marketing: What You Should Know in 2020
Omnichannel marketing is a new marketing trend that focuses on putting your customer at the center of your marketing strategy.
Find out the newest Omnichannel marketing trends that your business should consider using today. If you are not using several marketing channels this article provides useful data and tips to start looking into Omnichannel marketing and get the best of it.
As we enter a new decade, people wonder what changes we will see in technology and the online market. With so many channels to manage and keep track of, it shouldn’t surprise people that businesses use omnichannel marketing strategies to run everything. Because of this, many businesses keep their eyes on omnichannel marketing and changes in the industry.
If your business uses omnichannel marketing, or if you’re looking into using it, then make sure that you take a look at the trends. Even in 2020, omnichannel marketings continue to change and develop. As you look over these five points, you can look at the developments of omnichannel marketing and make changes to optimize your strategy.
Omnichannel Marketing Keeps Growing
Whenever people look at new marketing techniques, they see what it offers, how it compares to previous techniques, and how it develops. For example, people compared omnichannel marketing vs multichannel and noticed the differences. However, those differences and improvements don’t matter if omnichannel marketing doesn’t develop, improve, and grow.
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As you can see here, omnichannel marketing will continue to grow to $11.1 billion by 2023. This statistic shows that omnichannel marketing still works and that it will continue to help businesses with ecommerce. Because of this, your business needs to either look into using omnichannel marketing or continue using it since it still brings in money.
This trend matters because it shows that omnichannel marketing continues to grow and isn’t dying. This means that businesses will still benefit and grow from omnichannel marketing while those who don’t use it yet aren’t too late to implement it. Statistics show that it will still be relevant in 2023, and even beyond that, so you should switch to it and stick to it.
Shopping Channels for Generations
Customers can now use different channels to shop or look for new products. Social media stands out because customers can easily access information and browse through new items to see what they like. However, a business shouldn’t stick to one channel for shopping: it should use multiple social media channels to reach out to customers.
Remember that generations and age play a large factor in using channels for shopping. This means that you need to pay attention to your demographics to see which channels you should focus on so that you can reach out to your customers. Here are some generation based statistics to show you that you need to pick the right shopping channels.
- Less than 10% of Gen Z members make purchases from physical stores while roughly 30% of the other generations still use them.
- Gen Z prefers to make purchases through Instagram and Snapchat.
- Millennials, Gen X, and Baby Boomers use Facebook for their shopping.
In short, recent statistics show that your shopping channels matter to each generation. You need to make sure that your omnichannel marketing strategy focuses on the right channels based on your customers’ demographics. On top of this, you are likely to have customers of all ages, so make sure to provide channels for them as well.
Taking Advantage of SMS
Since most people have cell phones, more businesses use short message services (SMS) as a way to contact more customers. It allows you to quickly communicate with customers, send them urgent messages and CTAs, and get responses from them as soon as possible. While these features seem nice, are they worth adding to your omnichannel strategy?
If your omnichannel strategy uses SMS, then the odds of that interaction turning into a conversion increases by over 47%. This shows that your omnichannel marketing strategy would greatly benefit from using SMS. You can interact with your customers in multiple ways.
- Sending them updates about products that they ordered.
- Confirming appointments with them and sending reminders 24 hours before.
- Giving them specialized deals and offers along with a CTA to use those deals.
SMS marketing gives your business an extra edge in omnichannel marketing since you can quickly and directly communicate with customers. Most people keep their phones close to them, so you increase the odds of getting responses from customers through text messaging.
From Loyalty to Relevance
As each decade passes, marketers focus on different aspects of marketing. This happens because what customers value in business changes over time as their own personal views develop. This means that marketers need to innovate and adjust their businesses to meet the needs of customers. To better illustrate this, let’s look at an image.
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As you can see here, marketing and business have changed from each decade. While it started as mass-marketing, it continued to change with time and focused more on each customer. As you can see here, marketing is currently shifting from loyalty to relevance.
While loyalty focuses on retaining customers and building relationships with them, relevance takes it a step further. Not only do businesses develop those relationships with customers to increase their retention, but they personalize it to attract customers. This means that customers want to support a business that personalize and adjust their advertising techniques according to their needs.
If your omnichannel marketing strategy still focuses on loyalty, it needs to start making changes to focus on personalized and relevant messages. Doing so will bring in more customers as you continue to build up loyalty.
The Customer’s Journey
Personalizing channels and showing their relevance to customers plays a large role in the customer’s journey. For those that don’t know, the customer’s journey involves turning people into customers even if they don’t know your business at first. Each customer goes through steps for this to happen.
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The customer’s journey involves six major steps.
- Awareness: they find out about your business.
- Interest: they research your business through its channels.
- Consideration: they decide if they want to make a purchase.
- Purchase: they buy your products or services through an online store.
- Retention: they make more purchases from your business.
- Advocacy: they recommend your business to their friends.
Omnichannel marketing builds itself around helping customers through this journey. As they see what your business can offer them, your marketing software sends them information or calls-to-action (CTAs) based around their interactions with your business. If you want your ecommerce strategy to succeed, then you need to keep the customer’s journey in mind.
As Rytis Lauris, CEO and Co-Founder of Omnisend, said:
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If you don’t already consider each step of the customer’s journey in your omnichannel marketing strategy, then you need to make adjustments to do so. This way, you can help more leads turn into customers and then increase your customer retention rate.
Final Comments
Omnichannel marketing continues to develop and grow. As this happens, marketers need to pay attention to those changes so that they can adjust their own strategies to benefit from omnichannel marketing. While it is a powerful tool, and something that can help your business, you need to know how to use it correctly.
These points about omnichannel marketing in 2020 will help you to use them correctly and improve your strategy. Make sure that you continue tracking trends so that you can optimize your strategies to increase your revenue and business growth. As you do so, you will successfully adjust your strategy and draw in more customers.