Looking to engage your customers on multiple channels? It’s a wise move.
According to McKinsey, most B2B buyers now use more than 12 channels during their entire buying journey. This is a significant increase from 7 channels used in 2019 and 5 used channels a decade ago.
This means if you want to be in the top spot in a crowded marketplace, you must give your customer a frictionless experience across all outlets—which is what an omnichannel strategy can help you do.
In this blog, I’ve covered what omnichannel customer engagement is, why it’s important, and how to create an omnichannel strategy that can help you engage customers across channels.
What is omnichannel customer engagement?
Omnichannel customer engagement is a method brands use to connect with customers across multiple channels—which may include websites, email, social media, ads, and webinars — in order to strengthen the relationship.
Should you do omnichannel customer engagement?
Adopting an omnichannel approach has plenty of benefits, including greater reach, better customer satisfaction, and a healthier sales funnel. However, before moving forward, it’s important to evaluate whether your business truly needs an omnichannel strategy. Consider factors like:
Channels
If your customers are using multiple channels—like emails, social media, and in-app messages—to connect with your brand but are feeling frustrated because there is no consistency in experience from one channel to another, it might be worth exploring the possibility of omnichannel customer engagement.
The only time a B2B business should adopt an omnichannel strategy is when they notice their customer touchpoints are multiplying.
- Steven Khanna, Head of Growth at Endorsely
Time
An omnichannel strategy takes time to implement and run successfully. It requires you to understand your customer, figure out which channels they use, set up your tech stack, and constantly monitor your campaigns.
Team capacity
An omnichannel strategy demands a team that can actively manage and execute it. You need to figure out whether your team has the skills, resources, and availability to handle this strategy.
Budget
You might have to think about your finances before implementing an omnichannel strategy. This strategy demands a hefty investment from your end for tools like CRM and CDP, as well as training your team members and hiring potential consultancy services.
How to create an omnichannel customer engagement strategy
There’s no one-size-fits-all when it comes to building an omnichannel customer engagement strategy. How you design yours will depend upon your business goals, the nature of your product, and the audience you’ll be targeting. That being said, some common steps in creating an omnichannel strategy include:
Define your goals
Start by figuring out what you want to achieve through your omnichannel strategy.
Do you want to increase engagement across channels? Drive revenue? Maybe improve customer satisfaction and loyalty? Or something else entirely?
It’s important that you spend time understanding what your business is looking for, as it will help you deliver more focused marketing initiatives across all support channels.
For example, if your goal is to increase purchases, you might choose to post regularly on social media to keep your customers posted on the latest offers.
It’s important to keep in mind when setting your goals to make sure they are realistic and achievable. For example, you might want to double the purchase rate by next quarter. While it’s a nice goal to think of, it’s not practical. Thus, try to be SMART about your engagement goals. Make them specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.
Define your KPIs
It’s not enough to simply set goals and hope things work out in your favor. You’ll need to actively measure performance through Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to see if you are on the right track.
When it comes to choosing your omnichannel KPIs, remember they are fundamentally tied to the omnichannel goals you have set earlier.
For example, if your goal is to increase engagement, your overall KPI can be:
Customer engagement score: CES combines interactions across channels to see how active and invested your audience is.
Customer lifetime value: CLV measures the total revenue a business can expect from a single customer account throughout its entire relationship.
Customer retention rate: It is the percentage of customers that stayed loyal to your brand and made repeat purchases.
After defining your omnichannel KPIs, the next step is to choose channel-specific KPIs for a more detailed view of your performance. .
Create campaigns
After you pin down your goals and KPIs, it’s time to create your campaigns.
Based on your channel-specific goals and customer data, create campaign content. This can include personalized support messages, social media posts, blog articles, videos, infographics, email newsletters, or virtual events.
When creating content, adapt your content to suit the unique characteristics of each channel while maintaining consistency. You must also make sure your brand voice and visuals—such as logo, color palette, and typography—are the same on all platforms. This will make it easy for your customers to recognize or associate your content with your brand.
The rule I stick to for maintaining consistency? Always tie everything back to the “why” of what you’re offering—if the messaging isn’t clear about how it helps, it’s just noise.
Connect your channels to a CRM
Managing all your customer data can get overwhelming very quickly, especially when there are so many channels to cover. That’s why you should invest in customer relationship management (CRM) software.
A CRM software can integrate with all your engagement channels and collectively store customer data in one place. This way, whenever a customer reaches for support, you can share accurate data that speaks directly to their biggest concerns.
Monitor and optimize
Last but not least, monitor whether your strategy is working or not from time to time.
You can use a customer data platform (CDP) here to get a bird’s-eye view of all your KPIs.
CDPs can piece together customer journeys in real time and help you figure out what’s working or not. For example, you can see if someone started with a Facebook ad, then clicked through to your website, and ended up signing up via an email campaign.
Additionally, try to periodically review your strategy as the team’s needs and business goals evolve frequently. Create opportunities for customers to share their feedback, as this will help you create a strategy that speaks directly to their needs.
Rounding Up
With the steps mentioned in this blog, you can now create your own omnichannel strategy to delight your customers across channels and hit those revenue goals.
But remember, customer expectations are constantly changing. So, make sure to re-evaluate these strategies once in a while. This will help you deliver experiences and offers that better serve your customers’ needs.
