“Omnichannel” has become a buzzword in the marketing world over the past decade. We talk about the power of connecting with consumers on the many channels they engage, but plenty of us throw around the term without realizing that almost no brands are doing it today.

Simply put, “omni” means all; if there is any limit to the number of channels that are available to the brand, it’s actually multichannel marketing. No MarTech platform today offers true omnichannel marketing, and very few brands can execute it.

An exception to this is Amazon: think about all the customer experience pathways available to them to market to. Customers may buy products off their desktop, get notifications to their phone via an SMS or push notification, find tracking numbers through the app, ask Alexa to buy more products, see a billboard for Prime Day, and then watch an ad on TV. If your marketing operation doesn’t look like this, it’s not true omnichannel marketing (and you’re not alone!).

However, even though omnichannel marketing is limited today, know that it’s the trend going forward. The advertising industry experienced a similar shift a few years ago when brands started seeing traffic increase from multiple sources outside of traditional ones like website visits or video views. You can see an example of this with The Verge: the number of channels where users viewed their content expanded from six to 12, doubling in just one year. With each channel requiring a different ad unit, The Verge, like many advertisers, had to figure out how to build an ad system that could support each one. This is what the marketing industry is experiencing today with the proliferation of marketing channels available to us.

To truly create an effective omnichannel marketing strategy, the key is to be prepared for one. While MarTech vendors don’t currently offer a true omnichannel marketing solution, that’s where the best providers are heading and you won’t want to be caught off-guard when the capabilities arrive.

Start small, then expand

The phrase “don’t boil the ocean” is one to live by when it comes to omnichannel marketing. Essentially, it means you shouldn’t take on an impossible task or do too much at one time. This is true for marketing as well — don’t try to do omnichannel before you’re ready. You’ll want to create an established, mature, and successful program with your main marketing channels before you expand to every channel. It’s better to do a few channels well than every channel poorly.

Email should be one of the primary channels that you focus on first. Foundational to any marketing strategy, email is open and flexible so brands can implement and test their program. Then, take what works with email — your messaging, your segmentation, or your format — and apply that to other channels. You’ll want to succeed on email first, then the other channels.

Set up the foundation of omnichannel marketing success

To be prepared for omnichannel marketing success, you’ll want to set the stage now for what’s coming later. Deploying a headless content management system (CMS) is crucial to this. With a headless CMS, content is built and syndicated to any channel instead of being tied to a specific channel (hence, the term “headless”). This is a building block to creating content at scale. By leveraging a headless CMS, you can deploy content that you develop to any channel, from a blog to an SMS text or even to an ATM or Tesla. It makes it easier to store and version content based on the channel you’re sending it to. Omnichannel takes this idea one step further: instead of making it easier to develop many versions of the same content, one specific to each channel, a true omnichannel platform enables you to create the content once and send it everywhere.

Headless CMS will provide value in the short term and prepare you for omnichannel marketing in the long term. You can speed up time to market and deliver value faster by starting with headless CMS before graduating to true omnichannel marketing.

Measuring omnichannel success

Once you begin on the omnichannel marketing journey, you’ll want to ensure that how you measure these campaigns is suited to this type of marketing. You won’t be able to track ROI with the same level of detail as you likely do with email or SMS. Digital marketing campaigns on a single channel can track clickthrough rates, open rates, bounce rates — you name it. But with omnichannel, you’ll be using offline channels that are harder to track, such as TV or OOH.

Because it’s more difficult to measure the success of marketing campaigns on certain channels, you’ll need to rethink your approach. Instead of being able to track certain metrics directly, you’ll need to estimate how much success each campaign will drive and set KPIs accordingly. Actual calculations from digital channels coupled with ranges from offline channels can provide you the estimated success of each campaign. Then, as your omnichannel marketing program matures, you’ll be able to compare your campaigns to determine their success.

Nail omnichannel, once and for all

The idea of omnichannel sounds great but like almost everything, the most important part is the foundation. Start with marketing to one or two channels really well, then expand. Make sure the tools in your arsenal set you up for success. Be flexible in how you measure success, and open to adjusting as needed.

And finally, it’s important to implement omnichannel campaigns for the right reasons. Just because it’s a common buzzword, doesn’t mean it’s right for you. Commit to an omnichannel strategy if you think it will benefit the customer and their experience with your brand. Everything you do should be at their benefit.

To learn more about how Acoustic helps brands activate a multichannel marketing strategy and what our path towards an omnichannel future looks like, connect with us today.

Keys to creating an effective omnichannel marketing strategy

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