Omnichannel or multichannel in digital marketing, what is the difference?

Omnichannel or multichannel in digital marketing, what is the difference?

 

Detailed knowledge of the customer journey and the set of customer contacts opens up the opportunity to improve the effectiveness of both the marketing function within a company and the business as a whole.

If the consumer seeks comfort and ease of interaction with the brand, the company, by meeting their expectations, solves its own challenges in the process, which increases the predictability of sales.

For example, a grocery store chain, by launching an app that barcodes the composition, price, and other useful data of a product, can simultaneously obtain information about the products people are interested in, whether they are part of your regular shopping cart as if not for some reason.

Based on that data, the store can make assumptions about promotions that may be of interest to a specific customer and, through the same app, notify them, offer them an individual discount, and identify the use of a promotional code at checkout.

And from the statistics of repeat purchases, form a list of the customer's favorite products, which can appear on the list of priority products of the chain's online store, in case the person decides to use the delivery service to home.

Similarly, a fast food chain can increase sales by offering customers the convenience of placing and paying for their orders when they visit the establishment through a mobile application. By recognizing the preferences of each user in this way, the company obtains a tool to make additional sales.

Thanks to geolocation, the network can suggest that they stop by the nearest store when they go to pick up their favorite dish or drink to take away. By improving and simplifying the interaction with consumers, the company encourages them to make spontaneous or more frequent purchases.

Multichannel and omnichannel, what is the difference?

The belief that it is enough for a consumer to see an ad for a product to immediately run for the opportunity to buy it, most likely has not lost its effectiveness yet, but it will. Even if the marketing company well researches the needs of the target audience, competently design and deliver its content with the proposal, it does not solve the problem of the buyers or the companies.

Surely only a small percentage of potential buyers respond to an advertising appeal simply because they have already developed a need beforehand. They have already searched the available sources of information, compared different offers and brand advertising has come to them right in the final phase of making decisions about the purchase.

Most buyers need time and thought to make their choice, i.e. a variety of content including descriptions, reviews, recommendations, use cases, etc.

The buyer's decision-making process

Schematically, making a purchase decision in a person's mind consists of five stages. These are:

Awareness of the need

A person has to mature an internal feeling of lack of something or discomfort that can be eliminated with the help of some product or service.

Search

When a person is aware of the need, they begin to look for the different solutions available. There are different tools: Internet searches, questions to users of social networks, reading thematic media, forums, as well as among friends, partners, in stores, etc.

Evaluate the options and compare them

In this phase, a person considers the differences of the different offers, comparing them to focus his attention on the most complete and advantageous of them.

purchase decision

Based on the different criteria and parameters, a person chooses a particular brand from the set of priority options being considered.

reaction to purchase

After the purchase, the person looks for confirmation of the correctness of his choice of her, evaluates his satisfaction with the decision made and the emotional impressions of the purchase process and the first experience of use.

  A person does not necessarily move sequentially from one stage to the next. It is possible to return to the previous stages. For example, as a result of the evaluation of possible solutions, it may turn out that the selected options do not fully satisfy the need and a new search is required to take into account the omitted detail.

Using more channels is not being omnichannel

Companies, even understanding the complexity of the customer's journey to purchase, try to make their advertising message present at all possible stages. But using as many channels as possible does not make communication omnichannel.