ManyChat and similar online softwares for conversation automation have become a number 1 asset in any marketer’s arsenal. In case you’re wondering why it is because they provided us with an incredibly multi-purposeful solution for a variety of problems we and our clients encounter on a daily basis. However, nothing is ever enough in a world as dynamic as the digital marketing world.
Why Have Chatbots Become So Popular?
Although chatbots have already found their use in a variety of industries over the last two decades, ManyChat and similar online softwares for building chatbots have made building chatbots easy, allowing everyone with a sharp mind and clear vision to build a chatbot to engage their customers, help their shopping journey, make booking easy and what not.
The chatbot application extends beyond these few examples. The best thing is that there is no limit whatsoever when it comes to its functionality. It can be as simple as “Hi, {name}, our team will reply to you asap”, or as complicated as “Hey, {name}, we remember you liked our {product_name} last {week_day} so we know you’d like this {product_name2}” with the help of Artificial Intelligence. The possibilities are really endless and are only limited by the marketer’s vision.
What Is Omnichannel Marketing and What Makes it Better Than Multichannel Marketing?
Now let’s get more into our today’s topic. Chatbots are cool and all that, but the direction in which digital marketing is evolving is omnichannel marketing. To ensure you won’t be confused, omnichannel is different from multichannel.
Multichannel marketing involves a few different channels, like social media, direct mail, a physical location, radio, TV, etc. Every channel is separate and independent from one another. Every channel has a different approach, a different goal and a different strategy. The biggest drawback of multichannel marketing is that it can often create an impersonal and somewhat confusing experience that will leave the potential customers feeling irritated.
Omnichannel marketing revolves around your customer and is focused on creating a customer experience that will be present and recognizable in all marketing channels that your brand is using. As you can assume, the omnichannel approach takes care of the biggest drawback of the multichannel approach.it makes the customer experience easier, more enjoyable and makes them feel closer to your brand.
Unlike multichannel marketing, omnichannel marketing addresses the fact that the modern customer is not confined to a single platform and is focused on delivering a smooth online shopping experience to customers regardless of whether it’s via Facebook, Instagram, Gmail, SMS or other channels. It doesn’t matter in which stage the buyer is too. Here’s an example of an omnichannel marketing campaign perfectly in place.
- You casually scroll through Instagram news feed and an ad grabs your attention.
- You click on the ad, you land on a page where you can learn more about the product (description, ratings, reviews, etc.).
- You like the product, add it into your cart, but somehow you left the shopping process and you didn’t complete the payment.
- A few hours later, you get an email with a call-to-action to complete the checkout and you’re offered a discount or free shipping.
- Eventually, you end up taking advantage of the offer, because it’s too good for a first-time buyer.
- A few weeks later, you see another ad by the same store, but this time from a similar product and on Facebook.
This is omnichannel marketing in action. If you had entered the phone number, you could’ve maybe received an SMS with a link to complete the checkout too. The idea of omnichannel marketing is to create a consistent, all-around present and pleasant shopping experience across different marketing channels and is also personalized and based on your unique taste and preferences.
How to Get Started with Omnichannel Marketing?
6 Simple Yet Crucial Tips To Get Started
While it doesn’t necessarily mean that going omnichannel is easy, it’s also not true if we say that it is difficult. So as with anything else in life, it’s all about the effort, dedication, discipline and hard work. It all starts with an idea.
One mutual goal that you and every other person responsible for the brand or company will stick to it and ensure every action is aligned with it perfectly. Truth be told, significant changes in the way you do marketing and business in general is about to change once you adopt an omnichannel marketing approach.
To start this huge endeavor properly, we’ve compiled a short list of 6 simple yet crucial steps on which the very success of omnichannel approach implementation depends. So let’s dive in.
- Make Sure Everybody Is Familiar with The Transition
Such a huge marketing change means that everybody on your team, whether on-board or operating remotely for your company, must be shared before the transition happens. This customer-centric approach depends on every little thing that anybody on your team does.
Everyone has to work together and every single one on your team plays an important role in the goal of collecting and using user data.
The biggest challenge with this is that everybody will need to go through training to learn how to read and harness that user data in order to personalize the overall customer experience with each customer interaction.
For example, if your marketing team is doing Click-to-Messenger ads and another team is responsible for the live chat communications, their voice needs to be one. It could be a terrible experience if a great ad that got the customer’s interest to be met by a frustrated, annoyed, or simply completely different brand voice from the live chat team.
Perfect scenario: your marketing team knows how to convey relevant offers, your sales team knows how to close deals and your customer success team knows how to respond to your customer’s demands – using the same brand voice time and time again. Consistency is key here.
- Understand Your Customers
In order to offer the best customer experience, first, you need to understand your customers better than they know themselves. Knowing your buyer’s journey is an important part of omnichannel marketing. If you have already defined your buyer personas, you’re off to a good start. If not, this is your next step: identify your target audience, their likes, and dislikes, their interests, their hobbies, behavior patterns, demographics, preferences, etc.
The next step is:
- Collect and Use All Customer Data Available
The buyer personas help you learn your customers, but the data you collect via all marketing channels will help you to continuously improve the customer experience. For example, Google Analytics can help you find out what channels drive most traffic to your website, learn how they navigate through your website, learn what kind of content they spend most time reading and learn the queries that bring most customers to your website.
This data will bless you with a vast amount of information you can use to craft the best customer-centered marketing. You can further help your data acquisition by launching surveys and interviews. Any other way you can get in touch with your customers and get insight is good, because it can only help you improve.
If you’re using ManyChat, for example, you can develop a completely automatic flow to reach your customers with the right message at the right time and on the right platform. You can reach them on Messenger (within 24 hours after their interaction), on email and on SMS – all without leaving the platform, which is kind of perfect to have in your arsenal.
- Personalize the Experience
Personalization is the ultimate goal with omnichannel. Knowing your customers and how to communicate with them is vital. To tailor the experience for each of your customers, you need to segment your target audience into several groups. Thus, you will know how to communicate with each of your customers and can include personalization in your marketing by demographic, geographic, and behavioral characteristics.
One common segmentation technique that is most commonly found in successful e-commerce companies is running a retargeting campaign to all those who abandoned their carts without purchasing. It is usually done via email or SMS, and it takes them back to the website where they can complete their order usually with one or two clicks.
- Be Consistent Across All Channels
Another important thing when going omni is to make sure you’re being consistent with your brand voice, your offers and everything else that characterizes you. Whatever the platform, users should be able to match your Facebook ad they’ve seen on their way to work on their mobile with the Google ad they see when browsing after work.
Your customers use multiple devices and spend time on the Internet in many different ways. Unlike years ago, today you need to make sure you will be everywhere, not wait for them to reach you. Engage your users with different types of content on every channel possible, keeping your brand values, voice and graphics (images, videos, colors, etc.) consistent. Be active and consistent across all channels and only then will the omnichannel approach work for you at its best.
- Track the Right Metrics
Of course, everything comes down to your ability to analyze properly and track the metrics. You need to know how to track the right data in order to keep improving the consumer experience. Sometimes using too many tools for analysis can confuse you more than it can help you. However, the most important thing is to know exactly what you want to analyze, not the tools and means.
Tracking the right metrics can also help you find out why things work or don’t. For example, if you’re running ads on Facebook and Instagram, you can view the campaign complete analysis in the Ads Manager. When you cross-check that data with Google Analytics, you may notice a difference in the results. The FB Ads Manager may be showing 100 link clicks, while Google Analytics only 76. This is very common due to the fact that the Ads Manager measures the link clicks regardless of whether the user loaded the landing page or not, while Google Analytics counts only the legitimate clicks.
Key Omni Points
Omnichannel strategy works, but it is different for different businesses. No matter what your business is, it’s worth a try, as its benefits are long-term and plenty. Providing a consistent and personalized experience across all channels to your customers shows your devotion to ensure smooth consumer experience. If you do omnichannel marketing properly, you will not only improve customer engagement on social media, but you will also improve users’ affinity for your brand. All that contributes to more and better sales.
Although it may feel overwhelming to maintain that consistency across all channels, once you and all your team are on the same page, working towards precisely set goals with unified brand voice and values, needless to say that your consumers will enjoy a great consumer experience.
Takeaway
If you would like to let professionals take care of bringing your brand to the major ad platforms and find your target audience on Facebook, Instagram, Google or YouTube, do not hesitate to book a meeting with us today for a FREE ads strategy session.