Why You Should Be Implementing Multiple-Channel Marketing Today

A few days ago, we decided to replace the old television in the drawing room. Here’s what followed: we checked out a few options online, compared prices in 2-3 online shopping apps, visited 2 physical stores on our way back home from work, and finally bought it online.

This sounds like a logical decision to most because it is convenient and we got to save some money in the process. What needs to be stressed on here is the number of options available to us – not only traditional brick and mortar stores but also multiple online stores.

Two conclusions can be drawn from this:

• A large number of choices have given customers more control over the buying process
• This has opened up more ways for marketers to reach customers through multi-channel marketing

If you are a retailer, setting up shop on multiple channels can benefit you in more ways than one.

Optimizing Your Business

Truth is, online shopping through multiple channels has been popularized by the customers. Online shoppers increasingly expect to find the products they are looking for on multiple platforms to compare prices etc. In fact, online shopping is thriving today because of one simple reason: convenience. Today’s online stores offer a comfortable user experience to customers. People move from Amazon to Etsy to eBay instinctively while making a decision about buying a product – like it’s no work at all. So, it only makes sense to put up shop where your customers are. This maximizes revenue generation.

A Complete Customer Profile

One of the biggest advantages of marketing through multiple channels is that it provides a 360-degree view of customer behavior and preferences. Having more than one touch point for your brand enables you to find out how your customers behave at each. This generates valuable data about how to approach your customers and increase sales. To achieve this, it is important to maintain a centralized data reservoir that pulls in customer data from all touch points and organizes them for a complete view.

Maintaining a Consistent Customer Experience

While the concept of multi-channel sales holds immense potential, it is up to you to ensure that it doesn’t fragment your brand’s individuality. Hence, marketers need to lay stress on providing a seamless and recognizable experience to customers that resonate with the brand’s identity. If your customer is buying your product from a different channel, s/he needs to encounter as fewer surprises as possible in terms of design, delivery, customer service etc. This keeps the brand’s value intact and triggers repeat sales. This can be achieved by integrating the concept of omni-channel sales into your marketing strategy.

Here’s a short video to explain how it works.

Did you know that business with a strong omni-channel customer engagement witness a 9.5% year-over-year increase in revenue? This figure is striking considering that this number stands at a mere 3.4% for businesses with weak omni-channel strategies. In such a scenario, there is only one thing that you should do – branch out.