Omni-channel - Buzzword in 2020, Essential in 2021

Omni-channel IS

When potential customers can access your brand/product/service in multiple ways. They can reach you on different devices or via different platforms. Your brand values are clearly communicated on each of your touch-points, whilst each touchpoint is slightly adapted based on the audience. Your marketing team looks at analytics and makes changes depending on what they see relating to users on each platform. In brief, your brand should use omni-channel marketing to connect with as many potential customers as possible in a variety of proactive and beneficial ways.

Omni-channel IS NOT

“We post on a load of stuff on different social media sites, normally it’s the same thing regardless of the audience or the platform.”

Or “We hired a student to run our socials for us last year, so now we know it all.”

Or “I think we have an e-mail database to send people stuff, but I’m not sure who runs it, the schedule or whether what we sent out is useful to our customers.”

Omni-channel marketing focusses on producing a cohesive and seamless user experience for customers at every touchpoint. It varies from traditional marketing, where branding was focused solely on print media, direct mail and newsletters. Previously, channels were adjusted without taking into account the whole user experience. But, the increasing prevalence of online platforms including social media, PPC, apps and websites means companies can now measure and optimise how their audience is interacting with each channel.

Consistency is key

Brand consistency across all marketing touch-points is undeniably challenging. How do you maintain a consistent tone of voice on your social channels and in print marketing? How do you work out how to speak to multiple audiences, and who in what way? And most importantly how can you make sure customers recognise your brand, even if it’s their first time seeing you?

To increase your customer lifetime value (LTV), you must focus on delivering a consistent experience. From training your employees, to adapting your content at every stage of the customer journey- your messaging and experience must be harmonious.

Your branding isn’t just your logo or colour scheme- it’s so much more than the visuals. It’s how you make customers feel and maintaining a consistent approach to every interaction will help establish this.

Get the basics right

Ensure your logo, colour scheme, bio and tagline are consistent with brand guidelines and replicated across all platforms and devices. Responsive logos are great if you want to slightly adapt your logo depending on the platform, its fixed space and each audience’s preferences. Whatever you decide, you must ensure your accounts have a common feature which people can identify as your brand.

Extend your visual branding

Maintaining colours, fonts and graphics across your platforms, both online and offline, creates consistency in your posts and allows customers to identify your brand and content without seeing your logo or social media handle. This type of brand recognition is the top goal.

Leo Burnett London made a series of striking logo-free ads to promote McDonald's delivery, including campaigns such as the 'Iconic Stack' and 'Lights on' as pictured below. These brilliant examples prove their visual branding is so strong they don't even need to say their name. They feature only McDonalds typeface and colour palette, yet their ads remain instantly recognisable.

Develop your marketing personas

Your customers are not identical, you must create multiple personas and strategies to target different segments and then match them to the appropriate platforms for your marketing efforts. Audiences on Instagram are younger than those on Facebook, so churning out the same content across both won’t resonate with your different audiences in the same way, or produce optimum outcomes.

Understand your customers in depth- what platforms and devices do they use? How do they interact with brands? This will help you recognise the best touch-points and from here you can identify any common issues and create improvements for an overall seamless and tailored customer experience.