With businesses operating in so many different channels – both on and offline – the challenge is how to give your customers the consistent and unified experience they expect.
Today, there are more platforms, tools and methods to engage with customers than ever before. Technology allows for more interaction in-store and in the real world, and there seems to be a new digital content platform every other week. It can be hard to keep up with all of the changes and trends.
But it can be even harder to make sure your brand is consistent across a storefront, website, blog, social media, webcasts or podcasts and every other customer contact point you have to wrangle.
The new buzzword covering it is ‘omnichannel’, a way not just to offer multiple entry points for customers to engage on their terms, but make sure your message is consistent across all channels.
Do it right and it’s a win-win. Nowadays, customers decide how to do business with you that goes much further than the old ways of opening hours and salespeople, but as Richard Turnbull, Telstra Business national SME for digital media explains, it helps you too. “Providing your customer with a seamless ability to research online and buy in-store—or vice versa—and being able to track the pathway to purchase is very powerful,” he says.
For example, you might offer wi-fi in-store, which customers love. Use it to your advantage too – many Telstra retail stores use proximity apps that customers can use to interact with products and offers. They let customers interact with in-store signage and research product information using a unique identifier they can then use later online to access the same information and make a purchasing decision.
It’s a very simple but powerful way to track and measure your customer’s purchasing pathway. “If [customers] visit you or even your competitors’, website while in your store and you don’t know how to leverage that, that’s a lost opportunity.”
Push the brand, not just the product
How do you avoid losing those sales? Consistent brand presence with an omnichannel approach is your best mode of attack. Many marketing experts still contend brand trumps product every time, and Turnbull agrees. “Customers are more aware of brand value. Products come and go but they need to trust the brand to provide the best products and overall value.”
A good example is when your retail store projects the same image as your website, social media or other portals in everything from special offers to the aesthetic look and feel of the premises. It sounds obvious, but it means customers recognise and respond to you as a brand.
“The edge is the fact that the customer has chosen to engage and you have a marketing strategy to keep that customer engaged,” he says.
Examples of how you might use the data your customers generate from that engagement are endless. If you know they have particular preferences from past purchases with your music service, maybe playing that kind of music in your store will increase dwell time.
Even tracking where users are clicking and scrolling through your website can help you strategise where to place products or ads effectively. “Understanding what customers like can assist you with rewards to help you drive repeat business and build brand loyalty,” Turnbull says.
Now, digital is enabling that consistent brand experience like never before. Turnbull points to the explosion of digital signage across Australia, one Telstra is maximising.
“Imagine having a hundred locations and you’re about to launch a new product or campaign,” he says. “You need to replace all your old marketing material like brochures and posters. Now we simply schedule the new content and all signage changes [across in-store screens and your website].”
He says that, while the cost benefits are significant in themselves, it could make all the difference to your brand. “The omnichannel experience of how your customer recognises and consumes your brand is a reality that can’t be ignored,” he says. “If your business doesn’t yet have a digital marketing strategy, you’re already behind.”