Editor’s note: Maria Coleman is marketing content manager at Adtaxi, Denver.
Marketers are facing the ongoing challenge of meeting users across devices with a consistent experience. While no two users take the same path, the modern customer is using a variety of channels and platforms, from research to purchase, making the importance of a personalized and targeted message across touchpoints critical for reaching and retaining customers.
Connecting the customer journey for a seamless experience is an ever evolving process. Not only are consumers changing behavior, but the industry is also continuously adding new digital platforms, reinventing strategies or improving optimization methods.
With the use of omnichannel marketing, you can use data to create consistency, extend reach and improve engagement. Omnichannel marketing is defined as optimizing across channels and budgets to increase efficiency and return on ad spend. But what does this really mean for marketers?
Building a positive brand experience, with a personalized message, across platforms sounds like an impossible feat. And without the right tools, it can seem overwhelming. Not only are you trying to stay up-to-date with the latest and greatest marketing technology, but you are working to make your messaging relevant for a variety of customers. This makes it a necessity to adapt and adjust to not only what the market views as success, but also what advertisers consider to be their brand focus to drive engagement and increase sales.
With the aid of sophisticated ad technology such as predictive modeling, look-a-like campaigns and dynamic retargeting, you can meet the user where they are in the journey with tailored messaging. These ad formats allow you to learn more about consumers and use data to uncover the map for next steps in your campaign strategy.
Omnichannel marketing is about the long game. Many marketers use a variety of serving platforms for social, video, programmatic, etc., and it’s best to understand how they work together over time before pulling levers. This shows a bigger picture of what’s actually happening and how it’s impacting your business. There are a few key areas that can help you get started with your process.
Create consistent key performance indicators (KPIs) and align by priority.
By identifying focal areas that can be compared across platforms, you can see where users are engaging and which messaging resonates. Create consistent KPIs, monitor the metrics and highlight what’s performing and where to optimize, allowing for maximum efficiency.
Monitor the metrics.
Once you have identified what metrics or conversion data is important to your business, you can look at your brand’s initiatives and examine how you measure success. Metrics such as form fills, phone calls and completed purchases are a strong indicator of how a campaign is performing and where improvement can be made.
To get a clear view of what’s working, campaigns should have time to run before making any sort of adjustments. Omnichannel is not for everyone. For advertisers who prefer frequent changes to their digital marketing strategy and tightly controlling how budgets are being allocated by platform, it may not be a good option. However, for marketers who see value in being led by the data to make key decisions, omnichannel can elevate results and lower costs, creating new opportunities.
Let the data guide optimizations.
By combining data with human analysis, calculated decisions can be applied and adjustments made to optimize performance, shifting the trajectory of a campaign.
By examining the data to shift budgets to top performing campaigns or platforms, the numbers and results give definitive direction as to what is working, areas of improvement and where customers are converting. All of these can lead to more informed strategic decisions. While many platforms offer this within their systems, by leveraging refined processes and human analysis, calculated decisions can be applied that also account for creative adjustments, seasonality and campaign testing. From there, adjustments made to optimize performance, shifting the trajectory of a campaign.
Examining data down to a granular level lets marketers compare a variety of metrics from clicks, conversions, ad types and engagement and understanding how they work together to achieve goals. Leveraging the experience of specialists who are knowledgeable across verticals and platforms, with a focus on a common goal, opens opportunity.
The primary focus of omnichannel marketing is to monitor total performance and make shifts according to performance as it aligns with your goals. Instead of siloing your budget, you should look at it as the total amount that can be adjusted across platforms based on performance.
Nurturing customers
Omnichannel marketing is here to stay. It’s essential customers get the same message with the same direction no matter where or when they are interacting with your brand. With a properly executed omnichannel strategy, every interaction contributes to nurturing customers along the consumer journey. Investing in both time and technology, learning how platforms and strategies integrate and being prepared for fluid budget optimizations can raise your brand above the rest.