Today’s customer, empowered by a plethora of digital devices, can choose when, where and how they want to interact with brands and they expect a seamless omnichannel shopping experience. In order to drive lasting engagement brands need to deploy the right information, in the right place, at the right time on the right channel to begin and sustain a dialogue in the modern marketing landscape.
The omnichannel strategy is more than a campaign. It’s a continuous consumer, brand relationship that uses both data and content in a contextual manner to elevate the customer experience.
Omnichannel engagement is a significant paradigm shift and may seem like a monumental task, but even small initial efforts are likely to make a substantial difference. One critical first step is to aggregate customer data and keep your strategy focused on what you know about the behaviours and preferences of your customers. Personalisation can increase conversion rates by 70% and reduce advertising campaign costs by as much as 50%. Personalisation can also create more opportunities for the consumer to give back to you, especially if you offer something of value upfront in the first place. But creating relevant, targeted and engaging experiences across multiple channels by combining enterprise big data insights can be a massive challenge.
Personal customer data is a prerequisite for meaningful content personalisation. But many Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) companies struggle to get direct access to clients and few are successful at generating significant sets of contact data, let alone direct customer behaviour data.
A new strategy
By moving to a contextual delivery model backed by an omnichannel content strategy, CPG companies can square this circle. The term ‘omnichannel’ extends the more common term ‘multichannel’. Rather than just referring to delivering content on various channels, it requires increased focus on understanding and optimising communications for the entire consumer journey, across all channels, in a cohesive way. In omnichannel you:
- Develop content that adds value across the entire consumer journey, taking into account all channels, deliverables and touch-points.
- Help the brand speak with one voice, no matter how, when or with whom the conversation is happening.
- Use channels in concert to mutually reinforce each other, making the whole greater than the sum of its parts.
How to get ahead
Omnichannel strategies are a necessity for CPG companies because consumers live cross-channel lives already, even “multiscreening”. To succeed, there are some key lessons to heed:
- Sell by not selling: Case studies by PepsiCo’s FritoLay, Unilever Ragú, and Kraft Food’s Oreos, share the technique of a light touch, inviting consumers to engage over the longer term, rather than a push for fast sales lift. Barry Alexander, brand and product marketer who has achieved double-digit increases in category retail with brands like Heinz and Coors Light says, “What makes these programs so effective is that they are designed as a gradually building conversation over time, beyond the retail environment. For this reason, some organisations have internal teams dedicated to manage these programmes with specific KPIs and insights that directly relate to organisational deliverables.”
- Make channels work in harmony: Omnichannel requires alignment. Maximize ROI by designing a virtuous cycle that plugs into existing consumer journeys. Make sure your calls-to-action line up across all channels to create a story consumers wanted to be a part of. Look for opportunities to add value throughout the whole journey.
- Adapt around your fundamentals: Consumers expect brands to travel with them by responding to and anticipating their needs. To successfully scale your communications for omnichannel a strong brand identity, clear messages and a well-constructed value proposition are the foundation. CPG is a mass market industry. Delivering one version of content out to market is challenging enough for most brands. To scale, you need to create adaptive content wherever possible that can feed various channels from the same source with minimal (or zero) human intervention, while keeping your story and voice consistent across channels.
- Update your platforms: To power all omnichannel contextual delivery, a CPG needs real-time, centralised 360 insight across digital and traditional channels. Until recently, such insight was technically unfeasible. Now organisations can and must gather data from around the world and without deep data analyst skills, generate meaningful business guidance from them for global and local needs.
The last word
Your customers have changed their expectations for engagement and in order to remain competitive you need to make rapid changes to adapt. The consumer is already living across multiple channels and expects a consistent experience from brands whether they interact online, in store or via phone. The tools to execute omnichannel already exist. Embrace the challenge and turn it into an opportunity.
Finally, make sure you are constantly re-evaluating your tactics to provide the best omnichannel experience, as the new channels and methods of engagement customers are using today are only the beginning. To find out how omnichannel marketing can engage consumers directly with your brand, download “Consumer Packaged Goods and the Omnichannel Challenge”
