Digital Marketing - Study Notes:
The omnichannel approach
Consumers and customers engage with marketing material, content, and brands across a host of different platforms throughout their day. As a digital marketing manager or strategist, it's essential to have a strategy in place that maximizes the opportunity to connect with your target audience at key points and on high-impact online and offline channels.
To optimize the outcome of a marketing strategy, where consumers expect a positive and seamless customer experience that responds to their needs, irrespective of the time of the day or day of the week, businesses are increasingly turning towards an omnichannel approach. According to research published by BigCommerce and Retail Dive, 46% of retail executives said they are increasing their investment in omnichannel strategy. Marketing across three or more channels has been estimated to earn 250% more engagement, so it’s easy to understand why executives are increasing their spend in this area. In essence, omnichannel is an integrated, cross-channel strategy which encompasses offline, or traditional channels, as well as online, or digital channels, physical in-store experiences, and online digital experiences. It aims to unify channels and the consumer experience as well helping businesses solve more complex customer journeys, which are not linear, but instead are better envisaged as fluid, dynamic, and continuous. In their groundbreaking study of how people decide what to purchase given an abundance of choices, Think with Google described this fluid and dynamic process as the “messy middle” where people weave back and forth across websites, mobile apps and social platforms, exploring and evaluating their options until they are ready to take action. It’s more a back and forth process than moving from one stage to another in a linear fashion and this model shows the fluidity of the overall purchase process.
When doing offline or ‘traditional’ marketing, it's important to consider how and when your target audience is exposed to your marketing material and how this experience also integrates with your digital channels. Essentially, people can go further now and transact or convert directly through digital channels while in the past, traditional media simply exposed them to a message and they converted elsewhere and at another time. A customer journey that begins with exposure to a traditional media message like a radio ad or billboard poster can drive people to go online and engage with your organization on their preferred digital channels, this cross channel integration is what omnichannel and channel unification is all about.
It's not essential that you include traditional media for an omnichannel campaign to be successful. If you're using digital channels only, it's important to understand how optimizing the touchpoints in the digital customer journey can also lead to omnichannel success.
Key digital channels
In terms of digital channels, an omnichannel marketing strategy may include the following:
- Website
- Social media
- Display Banners
- Video
- Remarketing
- Search marketing (PPC and SEO)
- Affiliate marketing
- Mobile marketing (SMS and apps)
Think about how customers use these digital channels to interact with your brand at various touchpoints in their customer journey. For each digital touchpoint, ask yourself:
- Where exactly is the customer in their customer journey?
- What do customers expect from brands or businesses on this channel?
- How does this channel influence the overall customer experience?
Then you can optimize each digital channel to maximize the overall effectiveness of your omnichannel strategy.
Clark Boyd
Clark Boyd is CEO and founder of marketing simulations company Novela. He is also a digital strategy consultant, author, and trainer. Over the last 12 years, he has devised and implemented international marketing strategies for brands including American Express, Adidas, and General Motors.
Today, Clark works with business schools at the University of Cambridge, Imperial College London, and Columbia University to design and deliver their executive-education courses on data analytics and digital marketing.
Clark is a certified Google trainer and runs Google workshops across Europe and the Middle East. This year, he has delivered keynote speeches at leadership events in Latin America, Europe, and the US. You can find him on X (formerly Twitter), LinkedIn, and Slideshare. He writes regularly on Medium and you can subscribe to his email newsletter, hi, tech.
Bill Phillips
Bill is an international facilitator, trainer, and team coach. He has successfully coached CEOs, board members, directors, executive teams, and team leaders in public and private companies, NGOs, and UN organizations in 15 countries across four continents. He is also the creator of Future-basing®, a highly potent process for building strategy, vision, and cooperation.
Will Francis
Will Francis is a recognized authority in digital and social media, who has worked with some of the world’s most loved brands. He is the host and technical producer of the DMI podcast, Ahead of the Game and a lecturer and subject matter expert with the DMI. He appears in the media and at conferences whilst offering his own expert-led digital marketing courses where he shares his experience gained working within a social network, a global ad agency, and more recently his own digital agency.
Cathal Melinn
Cathal Melinn is a well-known Digital Marketing Director, commercial analyst, and eommerce specialist with over 15 years’ experience.
Cathal is a respected international conference speaker, course lecturer, and digital trainer. He specializes in driving complete understanding from students across a number of digital marketing disciplines including: paid and organic search (PPC and SEO), analytics, strategy and planning, social media, reporting, and optimization. Cathal works with digital professionals in over 80 countries and teaches at all levels of experience from beginner to advanced.
Alongside his training and course work, Cathal runs his own digital marketing agency and is considered an analytics and revenue-generating guru - at enterprise level. He has extensive local and international experience working with top B2B and B2C brands across multiple industries.
Over his career, Cathal has worked client-side too, with digital marketing agencies and media owners, for brands including HSBC, Amazon, Apple, Red Bull, Dell, Vodafone, Compare the Market, Aer Lingus, and Expedia.
He can be reached on LinkedIn here.
By the end of this topic, you should be able to:
- Discuss the impact of customer journey stages in a marketing strategy
- Identify the key touchpoints, channels, and tactics in an omnichannel strategy
- Assess the impact of customer experience (CX) on business performance
