Hands up if you’re finding it challenging trying to get consistent traffic and sales in your online store right now?
Or finding it overwhelming trying to figure out how to get your digital marketing dialled in and really converting consistently?
I’ve been speaking to a lot of eCommerce business owners recently – recent start-ups as well as seasoned veterans – who are experiencing these things right now.
And they all ask me the same question: is it just them, or are customers still buying? Is it actually possible to get good revenue results right now?
The answer to that question is definitely yes. We’ve got clients who are growing and posting record months in terms of revenue.
But that doesn’t happen for people who are still doing things the way they were even at the start of this year, let alone the same as last year.
Let me give you an example. Just a couple of weeks ago, I created a new strategy for a new client we just started working with, and I completely rebuilt their ads with a whole new structure.
Within 3 days, their revenue increased 293% and their ROAS improved by over 80%.
The pace of change in the digital landscape has certainly accelerated this year, which is what’s so very frustrating for so many and leads to feelings of overwhelm and fear and lack of confidence!
Trust me, I totally get it.
I really want to share with you the approach to digital marketing that we’re finding is necessary to get great results right now, and that’s what is called Omnichannel Marketing.
What is Omnichannel Marketing?
Omnichannel Marketing is the seamless integration of branding, messaging, and different touchpoints across all channels as consumers move down the sales funnel, enabling a more impactful customer experience.
Omnichannel marketing takes a consumer-centric view of marketing tactics. Consumers can now interact with brands on a very wide variety of channels, from social media to live chat on your website and everything in between. An omnichannel approach ensures that the consumer has a positive, consistent experience on each channel, by offering a few key elements:
- Consistent, identifiable brand tone and vision
- Personalised messaging based on specific interests
- Content that is informed by past interactions and current stage of the buyer’s journey
An identifiable brand simplifies brand recognition, while personalisation based on interests and shopping history makes consumers more likely to interact with branded content across channels.
Something I just said might jump out at you, and that’s the multi-channel approach.
So what’s the Difference Between Multichannel vs. Omnichannel?
While omnichannel and multi-channel are both concepts based on the idea of engaging consumers across multiple platforms, they are not the same.
Multichannel looks at the specific channel and how the transaction will be completed there. While omnichannel takes into account that the customer journey may span multiple channels – and looks at how to create the best experience as consumers move between them.
Each interaction is a touchpoint on a path, leading to a conversion. Let me explain in more detail.
Multichannel
Multichannel is much simpler in its intent, which is to distribute content and ads across various channels. A multichannel strategy makes an organisation available to consumers via various online channels, and maybe in print, in-store, on TV and so on.
The consumer can choose where they want to interact with the brand, however, content and engagements within these various channels are often very siloed. What this means is, the marketing content and messaging isn’t congruent across channels using a multichannel approach, whereas omnichannel is more reflective of the overall customer experience.
Omnichannel
Omnichannel also makes brands accessible across a variety of online and offline channels, however, it goes a step further to ensure an integrated, seamless customer experience across each one.
As consumers move across devices and online and offline platforms, the content feels congruent and seamless and messages are informed by prior encounters. An omnichannel approach enables organisations to truly take a consumer-centric approach that keeps the comprehensive customer journey front and centre.
Let me give you an example.
One of our recent clients came to us having experienced a decline in revenue from their eCommerce store that they didn’t feel was entirely down to economic conditions.
We designed a new strategy for them for their paid advertising channels that saw them achieve some very quick positive results: a 55% increase in revenue with a 24% drop in cost per purchase and a 32% increase in ROAS, all in 30 days.
Click here to read this case study.
That sounds pretty amazing, but the frustrating part of this was that we were only working on their paid ads. They had a totally different strategy in terms of content and promotions and overall messaging for all their other channels.
In reality, they were leaving a lot of money on the table by taking such a siloed approach.
Compare that to another one of our clients who we’ve been working with this year.
In that time, we’ve worked across all their channels, rolling out a comprehensive strategy that is congruent across website, email, and all their organic and paid channels.
In 4 months, we were able to transform this brand by generating a 620% increase in revenue. Click here to read this case study.
Why did the second omnichannel approach outperform the first example?
While implementing an omnichannel approach is far from simple, when done properly it offers a host of benefits. These days consumers are accustomed to being bombarded with messaging from various brands, and as a result, they have become increasingly selective of which brands they choose to engage with.
Creating omnichannel customer engagements can act as a brand differentiator, bringing the following benefits:
- A Better User Experience – Since omnichannel focuses on the individual experience across devices instead of just one channel, the customer experience is better. By focusing on the customer instead of the platform, brands can drive more sales and better retention rates.
- Cohesive Brand Strategy & Identity – Creating a seamless strategy across channels means building an easily identifiable brand image and tone. Brands should base this image on core audience needs and values. By focusing on the overall experience and working within your brand guidelines to target each channel, you will have a more comprehensive brand strategy that will translate into increased loyalty and more targeted messaging.
- Increased Revenue – An omnichannel approach encourages customers to engage with a brand across multiple touchpoints and channels. These increased, diverse engagements at each stage of the buyer’s journey can help increase revenue, as research shows that customers that engage with multiple touchpoints tend to be 30 percent more valuable because they spend more per transaction and are more likely to turn into repeat buyers.
The more targeted messaging in an omnichannel approach builds loyalty, making it more likely a customer will purchase from your brand again. Repeat customers on average contribute to 40 percent of revenue, despite being a smaller portion of your consumer base.
So you increase revenue and also profitability by implementing this kind of an approach.
Anecdotally, from my own experience as a consumer, you’re also more likely to increase your conversion rate and ability to acquire new customers.
Let me give you an example.
I became a puppy parent a bit less than a year ago. My puppy, Lenny, is half border collie and half standard poodle. He’s big now – when stretched to his full length he’s almost as long as my son who is 6 foot 2.
He’s also very strong, which is hard to control on the leash considering he’s got the energy and need for activity like a working dog breed, and the separation anxiety and need for constant attention of a poodle.
So a while ago I started researching no-pull leashes.
I should have been a slam-dunk customer, but here’s the gist of the customer journey I went on.
Firstly, I started googling for information about how to stop your dog pulling on the leash. I started reading lots of articles and watching lots of youtube videos.
Then, I started being retargeted by a bunch of Meta ads promoting everything from online courses and books as well as products like no-pull harnesses and bungee leashes.
I clicked through to a lot of websites to have a look at a lot of options, but in the end there was only one brand that did a really good job with their marketing content.
Most of the brands had pretty decent top of funnel ad content – usually a problem-oriented video – but then they took me to a fairly bog standard product page and used discount incentives as their only conversion mechanism.
The one brand that I felt did a really good job seemed to have a much better grasp of their customer’s journey.
Starting from that initial process of information gathering as I googled the problem.
Showcasing their product of course, but then on their product page and in their emails and all the other marketing content they retargeted me with, they took me further down the buyer journey.
They made excellent use of demo videos, detailed FAQ’s, showed a LOT of customer testimonials that included images of their dogs so you could see how the product fit on various different breeds of different shapes and sizes, not to mention read all the comments from different customers.
They made use of various conversion and risk reversal techniques as well, including an incentive and a great returns policy and live chat support.
And it didn’t matter what channel I interacted with them, I was seeing the next relevant message that made sense for where I was at in my buyer journey.
They did not have the best looking website or best looking branding in the world – I mean, they still came across as professional-looking but none of that stuff was perfect – yet they were able to give me the impression that they really understood my needs better than any other option on the market and that their product would suit me better than any other option on the market.
So of course that’s the one I bought.
Hopefully by now you get the picture about how impactful an omnichannel approach can be…
How to get started with Omnichannel Marketing
Unfortunately, shifting to an omnichannel marketing strategy isn’t as simple as identifying more channels for your customers to interact with your brand and to consume your content.
To truly adopt an omnichannel approach, you need to make significant changes to the way you do business. Otherwise, you’ll be spending on a simple multichannel strategy that won’t be capable of bringing in the results you expect.
Yes, it will definitely be a big effort, but one that will lead to tremendous growth for your business.
First of all, you need to accept that the single-touch marketing strategy no longer exists.
It’s tempting to fall into the trap of thinking you can just get some ads running and then you won’t have to think about your marketing anymore. Or that you can just get some ads up on one channel and get that really cranking in terms of amazing conversion results before you even think about adding in any other channels.
You might not think like that, but plenty do. I see it all the time. I do get it though – I mean, in an ideal world it would be very nice to be able to tick things off your business to-do list and never have to look at them again, or to just be able to do one thing at a time would be a whole lot simpler.
But this just isn’t how things work in the digital world.
You need to treat your website and all your marketing and advertising as a constant work-in-progress.
You should always be monitoring your conversion rates and other performance metrics and finding ways to optimise and improve.
Don’t assume that whatever your website looks like now, or the last time you worked on it, will be good enough to receive paid traffic and convert that profitably into sales.
Secondly, don’t assume that customers will come to you via just a single channel.
This is still a common pitfall right now. Brand owners want to track sales from individual channels, whether that be Google ads or Facebook ads or whatever, but the fact is that a single touchpoint brand doesn’t exist anymore.
Customers are interacting with us via multiple channels now and we need to approach marketing accordingly, knowing that each platform will influence and enhance the results of the others and that the sum of the results across multiple channels will be greater than an individual channel on its own.
For example, when you run Facebook ads you will always see your paid and organic Google traffic and sales go up – both organic search and paid. And when you send marketing emails you’ll always see conversions on paid channels go up.
It just makes logical sense as a consumer you know you will look at stuff on your phone and then come back later and google for the thing.
But as a business owner you need to avoid the mistake of thinking that only Google ads work and to cut out the rest. Your brand and your rate of growth will suffer as a result.
Next, you must use customer data to your advantage.
The data you collect from all your customer interactions is a goldmine, but only if you know how to use it to your advantage. To start, audit your entire customer experience. Go through the purchase process as a whole and interact with all your available channels.
Additionally, you can survey your customers to gather insights from them so that you can make improvements based on their actual experiences and opinions. By doing all this, not only will you gain insights on what your business can improve on, but you’ll also get a full appreciation of how to use your data at each step of the purchase process.
Once you have a better appreciation for your customer journey, you can use your data to craft messages that aren’t just relevant to where the recipient is on their customer journey but also suited to their preferences.
Depending on the platform you’re using, you could also use your data to develop automation workflows to reach your customers with the right message at exactly the right time, and with practically no effort at all.
I’m sure it’ll surprise no-one who has listened to me or read much of my content to know that my favourite platform to gather all of this kind of customer data is Klaviyo, because it’s purpose built for the eCommerce business model.
You can use Klaviyo as your constant source of truth.
Klaviyo allows you to collect your own data on your customers. This is called zero-party data, because these contacts are giving you permission to record information about them.
It allows you to track their browsing and shopping behaviour on your own website and this allows you to not just send them relevant messages on email and SMS, it also allows you to build high quality audiences in your FB ad account, to enable you to show your ads to the right people and increase your return on ad spend.>
Klaviyo literally acts like the glue between all the other platforms.
Sure, we can track any user behaviour our audience takes when they remain on the social media or ad platforms, but once they leave those platforms we can’t track them accurately unless we entice them to subscribe to our own database and can record their behaviour ourselves with permission.
So just on its own, there is enormous value in a Klaviyo database of customers that will give you the sort of data and information about your buyers that you can’t get anywhere else.
Which brings me to a critical component of an omnichannel approach vs a multi-channel approach, which is to target your messages for better personalization.
It can’t be stressed enough that the core of a successful omnichannel strategy is personalisation. And, part of personalisation is knowing exactly who your customer is and how best to communicate with them.
To achieve that, you need to segment your audiences into different interest groups, which makes it easier to tailor your messages to elicit your desired action.
Depending on how capable your tool is when it comes to segmentation, you should be able to target your audiences in great detail. You could even create dynamic segments that change according to where your audiences are on the customer journey.
For example, you can pinpoint those who haven’t purchased from you in the past 30 days and reach out to them with a relevant message accompanied by a great offer. Then, given the data you have on their preferred communication platforms, you’ll be able to reach out on precisely the right channel that’s most likely to prompt a purchase.
And this is also where Klaviyo can be so effective.
The data you collect about all profiles, the way you can segment your database, and the predictive analytics, will help you personalise all your marketing and ad content across channels, not only improving the effectiveness and profitability of your paid advertising on Facebook and Google, which is super enticing on its own, but literally improving your overall conversion rates, revenue and customer lifetime value.
So when you think about spending money on paid advertising and how much return on investment you need in order to make the advertising worthwhile and profitable for your business – you want to make sure you give yourself the best chance of increasing that ROI. This is where getting people to subscribe to your list helps, because it absolutely increases your conversion rate from website visitor to buyer, as well as increasing your repeat purchase rate as well.
And finally, you need to test, measure, rinse, repeat.
Omnichannel works, but it will work differently for different businesses. No matter what, you need to build a strategy that’s suited not just to your store but, more importantly, your customers. Start with what you already know about your business and your audience, and use that to guide you through each of your processes.
As you collect more data, you’ll want to keep analysing it. Doing so will help you actively improve your business and, consequently, your sales.
You’ll want to test often and test everything. Experiment with different subject lines, content, format, offers, etc. Test your segments and determine whether you can segment in even more detail for even better targeting.
Also, test your channels to learn how best to use each one. Over time, the insights that you gain from the data you collect and analyse will lead to the formula that’s just right for you to market your business.
Is implementing an omnichannel marketing strategy worth it?
In short, yes.
It is only through an omnichannel marketing approach that you can offer your customers a consistent experience across all touchpoints. If you do this successfully, you don’t just boost customer engagement but also your customers’ affinity for your brand. These days customers want to buy from brands they feel an alignment with, whether that’s because of shared values or a particular kind of brand personality, or some other reason.
Customers will love you more for always giving them great experiences that are relevant to whatever channel they choose to communicate with. In the end, all that leads to better sales.
It might sound overwhelming to maintain a good presence on multiple channels and get them all working in unison to provide a seamless experience to each of your customers. However, all it really takes is the help of the right tools, like Klaviyo, as well as the right content strategies.
Bottom line is, you’ll enjoy higher conversion rates, higher AOV, increased frequency and number of repeat purchases, leading to increased revenue and profits.
And I don’t know a single business right now that couldn’t do with more of all those things!
Hopefully you’re keen to get this going in your own business so you can enjoy more of those positive improvements yourself.
And to do that, you have 3 choices: figure it out alone via trial and error, learn from someone else who already knows how to do it, or outsource it.
Each is a valid choice, and each will take varying lengths of time.
If you’d like to speed up the process of learning or implementing and getting results faster, please reach out to me because there are a variety of ways I can help you depending on the stage of business you’re at.
This is what I do and love to do every single day and my team and I would LOVE to replicate some of these awesome results we’re getting for our clients in your business as well.
Book a free Strategy Session
If you’re an ambitious brand owner, who is ready to get some help to scale your online store faster and want the help of an eCommerce marketing expert that guarantees your results… step one is for you to book a free eCommerce Growth strategy session with us.
