The simplicity index shows that at least 64% of customers are willing to spend more cash on a product to get a simpler experience, and omnichannel marketing offers just that. Besides offering customers a simple shopping experience, omnichannel also allows businesses to strengthen relationships with their customers.
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For any small business in Australia looking to scale up its operation and increase its return on investment, an omnichannel marketing strategy should be at the top of the list of things to implement. An overview of the marketing strategy should clarify why it makes good business sense, but first, it is essential to understand what it actually entails.
What is omnichannel marketing?
In these modern times, where there are multiple ways for consumers to shop, most people use multiple channels for many of their purchases. For example, a customer can look up a new pair of jeans online using their mobile phones and then walk into the retailer’s store to buy the jeans.
Omnichannel marketing aims to ensure that these different shopping channels are interconnected, and customers get a similar and seamless experience shopping across them. Unlike multichannel marketing, where the channels are managed separately, everything is centered around the customer with omnichannel marketing. The main aim is to ensure the customer can navigate between the different retailer or company touchpoints with ease.
This seamless mode of customer and company interaction pays off for most businesses. Companies that use omnichannel marketing retain up to 89% of the customers they serve, which is more than double the retention rate (around 33%) of companies that do not make good use of this marketing strategy.
1. Omnichannel leads to high customer retention
It is always easier to sell to an existing customer than a new one. The chances of retention is 60%-70%, while the probability of selling to a new one is only 5 to 20%. Hence, it makes more business sense to do everything possible to retain your existing customers.
Omnichannel can help increase your customer retention and loyalty significantly. With this marketing strategy, the customers get a consistent experience across all the business’s touchpoints. This approach offers customers more convenience and enhances their overall experience, which boosts customer trust and loyalty. Loyal customers buy more products and spend more money in your store, which translates to increased ROI.
2. Improved customer insight
Omnichannel marketing makes it easy to collect customer data from different channels and systems, improving overall customer insight. You can get data from customer shopping carts, social media, mailing systems, and even the POS system.
With the vast array of customer data, you can quickly identify customer purchasing behaviors and easily tailor your marketing strategy to suit them. A customer-specific marketing strategy enhances the lead generation process and ultimately ensures a faster return on what you spend on the marketing campaign.
3. Increased brand visibility
You can use different things to give your brand and products a unique identity, such as having custom QR Codes on your merchandise and using a unique, easily identifiable logo. Omnichannel marketing is also highly beneficial as it ensures brand presence across the different online and offline channels.
Increased brand visibility ensures customers can interact with your business in their preferred ways. The more you have your brand out there, the more easily recognizable it is, which translates to increased conversion and a higher ROI.
4. Increased overall business efficiency
Overall efficiency is vital for increasing ROI for any business regardless of the size. When using omnichannel marketing, a company has a centralized database that ensures increased efficiency when dealing with customer problems.
When customers have an issue, it will be easier for the business agents or representatives to identify them and offer satisfactory responses and solutions. 60 to 75% of customers are willing to do business again with a company that addresses their issues fairly. A happy customer is likely to do more business with you, which is vital for increasing ROI.
5. Unified sales strategy
Many small businesses tend to use too many sales strategies to bump up sales volumes, which is a huge mistake. In many instances, these multiple strategies appear not well-thought-out. However, omnichannel unifies the sales strategies by ensuring the needs of your customers always come first.
With the customer-first approach central in omnichannel marketing, all your sales strategies are optimized for enhanced customer experience. It is easier to ensure that your business meets its sales target when using this marketing approach as it is based on actual customer preferences and not what the company thinks will work best.
Looking to the future
Omnichannel marketing is the future for every small Australian business in the retail and e-commerce sector. With every passing day, it becomes more and more critical for an enterprise to use omnichannel marketing and implement it correctly.
The good news is that emerging digital marketing tools continue making it easier to implement multichannel marketing for a faster increase in ROI. If you do not want your brand to lag behind the competition, it is time to move with the times and adopt an omnichannel marketing approach.
