The Holiday Season Is Upon Us. Is Your Omnichannel Marketing Strategy Ready?
The Holiday Season Is Upon Us. Is Your Omnichannel Marketing Strategy Ready?
The 2022 holiday shopping season will be here before you know it! We anticipate that more shoppers will visit brick-and-mortar stores this year compared to the last two, but consumers will still be planning their shopping trips around product/sale information they find online. With that in mind, your business needs a strong omnichannel marketing strategy to keep up. Reaching shoppers when they need an item, in the way they prefer to interact with a brand, is the key to ensuring that your business is successful.
As a refresher, Omnichannel marketing involves establishing your business across multiple online and offline channels while creating a seamless experience throughout the consumer journey. Your online channels include your website, social media profiles, emails, SMS, WhatsApp, etc. Examples of offline channels are your brick-and-mortar store and in-person events.
In terms of shopping trends, despite the growth of e-commerce as a result of the pandemic, physical stores are not going anywhere. As COVID-19-related restrictions started easing up, brick-and-mortar shopping boomed for the first time in a long time. According to the U.S. Bureau of Commerce, physical stores grew at a rate of 18.5% as opposed to e-commerce at 14.2%. What does that mean for brands and marketers? Over the last few years, we have shifted our campaigns to prioritize online shopping and data collection. Now, however, we must shift our strategies to match the trend of consumers wanting to be involved in both the physical and social media experience that goes along with shopping.
For a successful campaign, brands must look at the integration of on and offline data to figure out the preferences of their potential consumers. As a business, you will need to follow these individuals in both the real world and across digital platforms as well.
Where do your target shoppers live? The closer to your store, the more likely they are to purchase your business. Online sales increase within a 10-mile radius of a retailer’s location. Shoppers feel comfortable knowing they can easily make returns and exchanges if they know there is a physical store nearby. This is just an example of the online behaviors consumers engage in before leaving the house. Using geolocation tools can help you measure the effectiveness of campaigns and tie your digital efforts to real-world outcomes, bridging the gap between the two.
The various ways to do omnichannel shopping highlight why consumers shop, both on and offline, in their hometowns. Viewership data, cross-device targeting, location, and demographics are crucial for your business to track. People are making purchases on their smartphones and devices, in-store, from their phones while in-store, etc. Providing consumers with a seamless experience across all these channels gives you a leg up against your competition at any time, and especially during the holiday season.
Starting with Black Friday, more people than ever will be omnichannel shopping. Consumers will be visiting stores in large numbers and using online store websites and apps to anticipate the best deals and figure out what to buy and where to go to get it. Cross-device targeting, geolocation tools, and tying together online and offline data will ensure your business has the information you need to reach shoppers with the right campaigns on the right platforms.
Not sure how to get started with an omnichannel marketing strategy? Contact us here to work with our team of experts. We would love to help your business create a winning strategy to help sales boom this holiday season and beyond.
