Do You Know, and Understand Onmichannel Marketing?

he marketing world is at war.

Tech giants like Oracle, Adobe, and Salesforce are battling it out to create THE premiere marketing cloud that provides complete measurement, attribution, and automation. Essentially, one marketing cloud to do it all in an omnichannel world.

Marketers are investing billions in technology in the pursuit of true omnichannel marketing, which we all know is important – I’m just not sure we all know what omnichannel means or what it looks like in practice.

Let’s take a step back and explore the real definition of omnichannel marketing, and how you can take advantage of it in 2016.
What is omnichannel marketing, really?

I’ll be the first to admit that omnichannel sounds like another marketing buzzword that we’d rather see stricken from our vocabulary. But the truth is, we need a term that can aptly describe the increasingly complex, multi-device, multi-channel customer journey.

Today’s consumers move between TV, display, search, email, and social media, whether it’s on their laptop, smartphone, or tablet. In fact, 90% of consumers move between multiple devices to accomplish their goals, and they expect a consistent and relevant experience throughout their purchase journey.

According to John Bowden, SVP of Customer Care at Time Warner Cable, “Omnichannel is viewing the experience through the eyes of your customer, orchestrating the experience across all channels so that it is seamless, integrated, and consistent.” That’s likely the most fitting definition you’ll find, and what we should all be moving toward.
Mobile is the new omnichannel hub

Mobile is at the heart of the omnichannel journey. It’s what’s made it possible for consumers to move so easily between channels and engage in so many new ways. It isn’t simply another channel like display or email. Instead, we need to recognize mobile as the hub for many of the interactions a customer has with a brand – whether it’s through social media, search, display, email, or video.

Understanding how customers interact with brands on their mobile phones will be key for marketers building a seamless and personalized customer experience.
The challenge of omnichannel

Omnichannel marketing isn’t simple. One of the biggest challenges is getting all the tools you need – and the really hard part is getting them working together. In fact, 85% of marketers struggle to implement an omnichannel strategy because of a lack of access to the tools they need to make a personalized one-to-one experience possible.

Between marketing automation, retargeting platforms, predictive analytics, real-time personalization platforms, CRMs (and the list goes on), marketers are struggling to keep up. With so many tools and so much disparate data, it’s definitely a matter of ‘more software, more problems’.

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