Multichannel and Omnichannel Marketing
In today's retail experience world where e-commerce, social media, and physical shopping seem to overlap, omnichannel and multichannel can be the keys to improving the customer experience.
But what do these terms mean, and what are the key differences between multichannel and omnichannel? More importantly, why are they important for your e-commerce business?
First of all, we need a clear understanding of the word Channel.
What does the word channel mean in marketing?
In marketing, a channel is a means through which your brand communicates with its target customer. It's the way you share your message. Your website, for example, is a communication channel. Other channels could be your social media pages, your physical store, a poster, and even your packaging.
The reason we talk about multichannel and omnichannel marketing is that in most cases, using one channel is no longer enough, and companies today use a combination of platforms to reach more customers with their message amplified across a variety of platforms.
This is achieved through the use of a multichannel or omnichannel strategy. Let's discuss the difference below:
What is multichannel marketing?
When a brand engages in multichannel marketing, it means that it doesn't use just one channel, but several media channels to promote and launch its marketing message.
This includes the use of email, social media pages, blogs, billboards, print, and even television marketing.
The goal of multichannel marketing is to engage with as many target customers as possible across multiple media channels to create a marketing campaign with wide-ranging reach. This can be considered an excellent way to raise brand and product awareness, as the primary goal of multichannel marketing boils down to customer engagement.
The key thing to keep in mind when it comes to multichannel marketing is that the media channels used are separate and don't necessarily interact or relate to each other in terms of sharing customer data between channels. There isn't necessarily any continuity between touchpoints or platforms your customer might interact with.
It is important to note that the multichannel approach is considered a system that is believed to have separate purchasing ecosystems across the various channels employed.
If you're looking for something more collaborative, that's where omnichannel marketing comes in.
What is omnichannel marketing?
While the focus of multichannel marketing is on the number of customers you can interact with, omnichannel marketing puts the user experience and customer journey front and center.
Omnichannel retail is an approach that focuses on a seamless customer experience across all sales channels, whether the customer is shopping online or in a physical store. Effective omnichannel retail is crucial because it maximizes customer conversions on each channel by ensuring a consistent experience across all platforms.
This strategy focuses on a unified experience and integrates across channels so that customers get a seamless experience regardless of the channel they are using.
This also means customers can seamlessly switch between channels. Whether your customer interacts with your brand through your website, social media, mobile devices, or in a physical store, an omnichannel approach aims to unify the customer experience. Your customer can connect with you through any available channel, which stays updated on their latest action, creating a fully integrated experience because your channels "talk" to each other.
Here's an example of what an omnichannel experience might look like for an e-commerce store:
A customer is looking for custom t-shirts and stumbles upon your website. They sign up but ignore the 10% discount coupon, add items to their cart, but ultimately abandon the site before purchasing.
A process is activated to retarget the potential customer by sending an email with a 15% coupon, but they ignore it. At the same time, another process is activated to show ads to your potential customer on Facebook, Instagram, and perhaps even YouTube, including the coupon. The ads show different ways the customer can order your product, from in-store pickup to online purchase with shipping. The customer decides to go ahead with the purchase because they've found their preferred channel.
The customer returns to the site where their data is saved, uses the 15% discount and activates the in-store collection the next day, thus completing their journey through a variety of channels.
The goal here, then, was to remove friction between different touchpoints in the customer journey.
Conclusion
Omnichannel marketing and multichannel marketing can be a little confusing at first, considering how similar the words may sound, but the key difference is that omnichannel strategies revolve around the customer, while multichannel strategies revolve around having many channels.
The choice between a multichannel and an omnichannel approach can largely depend on your goals, and who knows, you might even entertain the thought of a hybrid approach.
What's clear is that in today's world, one channel alone isn't enough. Your target customer wants to purchase on their terms, be able to explore what you have to offer on different devices, start their journey on a mobile device, and choose to end it on a different platform. Our job as merchants is to facilitate the customer experience.
Remember, it's no longer about waiting for customers to come to you, but about meeting your customers wherever they are.
