Omnichannel Retail Strategy 101: A Beginner’s Guide (2024)

Omnichannel retail receives 494% more orders than single-channel campaigns. But, only a few successfully used them because many struggle to coordinate their marketing campaigns across multiple channels. If you are too, our guide will help you develop a comprehensive omnichannel retail strategy that streamlines your marketing functions.

Our guide discusses the practical steps in developing a winning omnichannel retail strategy. It covers examples, best practices, and ethical strategies. After exploring this guide, you can create consistent marketing campaigns that attract the right audience.

What Does Omnichannel Retail Mean?

Omnichannel retailing is a business model that allows you to connect multiple channels and devices to create a seamless shopping experience. All channels and devices sync and work together to collect and analyze data from various touchpoints. It’s intended to fully understand customers’ shopping patterns, behavior, and preferences.

Here’s an overview of how an omnichannel customer experience works:

• Discovering the product through the brand’s physical or online store, social media, or search engines
• Reading reviews to know if the product is worth buying and comparing it with other brands
• Reaching out to customer support to get more information about the product
• Buying the product either online or in a physical store
• Tracking the order status online or through SMS notifications
• Leaving positive or negative reviews about the product

The last stage will depend on the customer’s review. If it’s positive, you can send personalized offers through their preferred communication channels. If it’s negative, you can apologize and offer a resolution offer like a refund, replacement, or discount on future purchases.

Omnichannel Retailing vs. Multi-Channel Retailing: What’s The Difference?

Omnichannel retailing focuses on personalizing a convenient shopping experience to meet customers’ needs and expectations across all channels.

In contrast, multi-channel retailing treats each channel separately. It uses each channel’s strengths and capabilities to maximize the retailer’s sales opportunities and market reach.

The graphic below shows the difference between the two:

Since each channel works independently, customers can complete their transactions on their preferred channels, which are:

• Online store
• Paid ad campaigns
• Brick-and-mortar store
• Social media platforms
• Marketplaces (ex: Amazon, Alibaba)
• Customer service channels (live chat or toll-free phone numbers)

Omnichannel retailing can also use this multi-channel approach. Use each channel’s marketing strategies to determine if it’s the right channel for the brand. For example, any brand can leverage Instagram marketing, but these business types benefit more from it:

• Arts and creativity
• Fitness and health
• Food and beverage
• Retail and eCommerce

Instagram is also an excellent place to be if you’re running ad campaigns. Mainly because Instagram ad costs are way more affordable than Facebook ads. It’s more budget-friendly for new and small businesses. This comprehensive guide will help you understand the actual cost of Instagram ads.

Here’s a comparison of omnichannel and multi-channel retailing to see how they differ.

Difference	Omnichannel Retailing	Multi-Channel Retailing
Marketing strategy focal point	Customers	Brands & products
Investment focus	Cross-promotion content & complex technology integration (e.g., CRM system, inventory management software, & marketing automation tools)	Targeted marketing & advertising campaigns & channel-specific technologies (e.g., eCommerce platform = Shopify or Magento)
Organizational Impact	Requires extensive cross-functional alignment & coordination	Require a dedicated team for each channel; none-to-little coordination is needed

4 Steps To Build A Winning Omnichannel Retail Strategy

Here are 4 simple steps to build an effective omnichannel strategy. As you go through each step, list the strategies and best practices that suit your marketing efforts. Also, take note of the examples that ensure all parts of your strategy work together smoothly.

Step 1: Collect Data To Identify Marketing Channels

Every brand and marketing channel has a distinct customer base. Find which channels your target audience spends most of their time engaging with your brand and competitors.

Look into your customer interactions on various channels and observe their behavior and preferences patterns. Here are the types of data to focus on:

Data Type	Data Points To Collect
Location	Geofencing data, in-store visit frequency, online-to-offline conversion rates
Behavioral	Abandoned cart items, click-through rates, navigation paths, pages viewed, time spent on site, website visits
Transaction	Click-through rates, email open rates, loyalty program participation, social media interactions (likes, shares, comments)
Engagement	Age, education, gender, income level, location, occupation
Demographic	Discount and promotion usage, payment methods, refund rates, transaction times
Purchase history	Average order value, frequency of purchases, purchase channels (online, in-store, mobile), purchased items
Customer interactions	Social media mentions, trending topics (related to your brand or products)

You can also put yourself in your customers’ shoes to understand what they are going through. Ask yourself the common questions they consider when choosing a shopping channel:

• Am I looking for the best price or convenience?
• Is reliable customer support available (live chat, phone, or email)?
• Are there sections where I can discuss my experiences (positive and negative) with my peers?

How To Collect This Data

When collecting customer data, choose a couple of methods to make sure it is accurate. Here are 2 data collection methods that go well together.

I. Get Direct Insights Using Customer Surveys

Surveys deliver results fast and provide direct, honest feedback from customers. When you run the survey properly, the response rate can reach up to 85%. You can make this happen when you follow these best practices:

• Provide easy-to-follow instructions on how to complete the survey
• Optimize your survey on all devices for easy and quick completion
• Keep the survey short and focused (7-10 questions or 10-15 minutes)
• Implement the survey on the best time when customers are most active
• Place essential questions at the beginning, where customers are still attentive 
• Mix different types of questions (multiple choices, rating scales, and open-ended questions)
• Share the survey on the communication method your target audience is using (email, social media, and website)

Make the survey as short and focused as possible. If it is too long, you will overwhelm your target participants and cause them to lose interest. There’s no rule for the exact length format, but HubSpot research shows that 31% of consumers are willing to spend 10-14 minutes on a survey.

II. Use Data Collection Software

As your business grows, so does the amount of data you must collect and analyze. Use data collection software to handle a massive volume of data and even help you speed up the collection process without sacrificing accuracy. Use it to visualize data so you can analyze and interpret it easily.

For this, you can use:

• CRM systems: Analyze and manage your customer data and interactions using Hubspot or other alternatives
• Sales records: Get insights into your customer purchasing behavior using FreshBooks, Microsoft Dynamics 365, or QuickBooks
• Website analytics: Adobe Analytics, Google Analytics, and Matomo give a clear picture of how consumers behave and interact with your website
• Social media analytics: Track and analyze audience demographics, engagement, and sentiment patterns using Brandwatch, Hootsuite, or Sprout Social

Customer data isn’t just about understanding customers’ needs and channel preferences. It also contributes to the success of your SEO marketing efforts. If this is your goal, you can use Ahrefs.

Ahrefs to find keyword data that optimizes your content marketing efforts, product descriptions, and PPC campaigns. It also provides other SEO data to drive traffic into your marketing and sales channels and provide a seamless customer experience—from online to offline interactions.

• Search volume trends
• Content performance (e.g., blog posts, videos)
• User engagement metrics (e.g., bounce rate, session duration)
• Local SEO performance (e.g., local search rankings, business listings)
• Print and traditional media effectiveness (e.g., QR code scans, response rates)

If you’re running link-building campaigns to strengthen your brand authority and trustworthiness, Linkody is your go-to SEO tool.

It collects and analyzes backlink data to boost your domain authority and visibility across multiple platforms. Once it identifies harmful backlinks, you can use their disavow feature to remove them.

Step 2: Create Customer Personas To Understand Your Target Audience

A customer persona is a semi-fictional profile representing different traits of your target audience. Through these personas, you will understand your prospects:

• Goals
• Behaviors
• Expectations
• Challenges and pain points

How To Create Customer Personas

From the data you collected, use the segmentation technique to organize and group the data based on their shared characteristics. These characteristics could cover the customers’ demographics, behaviors, preferences, and buying habits.

Also, highlight your customer pain points and challenges to identify gaps or issues in your customer experience.

Here’s an excellent sample of a customer persona for a fashion mannequin eCommerce to see its impact on marketing strategy.

Going with the fashion mannequin example, the display forms industry has a strong growth path but is highly competitive. The sample customer persona above represents the industry’s most common challenges and characteristics of online retailers.

Using effectively segmented customer personas, mannequin vendors can discover retailers that are constantly looking for high-quality display mannequins.

According to the customer persona above, sharing visual content of your display forms is an effective way to reach potential customers.

Step 3: Design A Seamless Customer Experience Using A Customer Journey Map

An omnichannel customer journey map visualizes how your target audience interacts with your brand at each stage of their buying journey. This covers from the customer’s initial discovery to post-purchase support. Here are the components you should prepare when creating a customer journey map:

3.1: Outline The Customer Journey Stages

The customer journey represents the sequence of steps your customers must go through to fully integrate with your brand. Outlining it will reveal how customers behave, think, and make decisions at each stage.

The number of stages varies on your buying process’s complexity, but the common stages include:

• Awareness: Pique the interest of your target audience and introduce them to what your brand offers.
• Consideration: Push your products or services as one of the best solutions for their needs.
• Purchase/Decision: This involves the actual transaction when the prospect chooses your product/service. Make the buying process as seamless and convenient as possible, whether you do it through an email payment link or your website.
• Post-purchase: Customers assess whether you exceed their expectations and satisfy their needs. Provide helpful customer support and send follow-up messages to ensure customer satisfaction.
• Loyalty: Build long-term relationships with your new customers so you can turn them into loyal advocates.

Creating a customer journey map gives your brand a solid foundation to consistently deliver a great shopping experience. It also helps retailers measure how effective their marketing efforts are.

3.2: Map Your Customer Touchpoints

This step will give you a clear picture of how customers interact with your brand. Customer touchpoints are the moments your customers engage with your brand or product. Whether they’re online or offline, you should identify them all.

The simplest method to identify all touchpoints is using a customer journey map. Since you already outline everything at each stage, it will be easier to uncover the touchpoints (online and offline). Consider incorporating tools like a QR code generator to create seamless connections between offline and online touchpoints.

If the data isn’t enough, you can always get more through customer feedback, analytics, and CRM systems, and then create a visual map.

3.3: Visualize Your Customer Journey Map

Visualizing your customer journey map determines whether it’s clear and easy to follow. You can use a variety of visuals to display your journey map, but a flowchart is the most popular. 

It naturally illustrates the sequential order of the buying process. It’s also highly flexible, so you can adjust the map when customer behaviors change.

A general rule of thumb is to make the customer journey map as simple as possible. This allows you and your team to only focus on the most significant touchpoints.

It’s a plus that it promotes better communication among team members. The simpler, the better.

To clarify our point, we examined the standard buying process of a red light therapy store. Here’s what their customer journey map looks like:

The ovals represent the process boundaries, showing where the process should start and stop. Meanwhile, the rectangles refer to the process steps, and the arrows show the direction of the process flow. The simple design will ensure it will serve the map’s purpose, enhancing the omnichannel customer experience.

It also focuses on the customers’ perspective, so your team will understand their goals, needs, and pain points. You can refine it over time as you collect more customer feedback.

Step 4: Provide Effective Cross-Channel Customer Support

When consumers feel they can easily reach out to you, they trust your brand more. About 68% of consumers even say they are willing to pay more for their products/services if the retailer provides excellent customer service across all channels.

List all the communication methods

Enumerate all possible communication methods you want to use and understand their unique requirements. Here is the information you should consider.

Communication Method	Live Chat Support	Email Support	Phone Support	In-Store Customer Service Support
Purpose	Provide 1:1 real-time support that resolves a common issue or problem after the session	Handle inquiries/requests that require documented responses	Personalized & direct assistance for urgent or complex issues	Answer customer inquiries about their products, return requests, payment methods, & more.
Requirements	Place the chat box in the bottom right corner or any non-intrusive sections	Run a reliable ticketing system to track & manage all inquiries	Add an efficient call routing system to direct customers to the right department	Use a POS system to process customer transactions & check inventories
Best Practice	Use chatbots to send initial greetings & answer simple inquiries	Create standard templates for general questions & personalize responses	Offer phone answering service if you don’t offer 24/7 support	Provide excellent onboarding for new hires to learn the business’ service expectations & standards.
Train Support Agents For	Chat etiquette & how to handle multiple chats simultaneously	How to use email management tools & conflict resolution techniques	Effective communication skills & analyze emotions and sentiments	Deeper knowledge about the product & hands-on training for POS systems

You should also invest in AI-powered analytics and automation tools. Analytics can help you monitor and measure your cross-channel support performance, while automation tools can make your agents more productive and prioritize customer interactions with complex problems.

Invest In The Right Team Member

Your customer support agents directly represent your brand and reputation, so only hire good, professional people. When hiring a team member, focus on their attitude.

Do they show genuine care about customer satisfaction? Are they willing to go the extra mile to resolve issues quickly and efficiently?

They should also demonstrate how they handle potential high-pressure situations, stay calm, and respectful, and can bounce back from setbacks.

Here’s the thing: Finding these talents is challenging.

You can either conduct the interview and perform the vetting process manually or hire from a reputable recruitment platform. These platforms have a proven vetting process, assessing every candidate through multiple stages.

From resume screening to background checks, they assure you that you’ll only hire the most qualified talents. Once you hire them, use mentorship programs to train them to refine their skills, reinforce brand values, and learn the business’ best practices.

Dos & Don’ts Every Retailer Should Know

Do: Add The Right Type of Visuals

Creating content is your way of offering help to your audience. So, make it educational and relevant to your audience’s needs and challenges. Also, present your product in a natural and engaging way. Adding visuals is an excellent solution to deliver all these.

When selecting a visual, focus on quality and relevance to make a good impression. Select the appropriate format based on your audience’s preference or goal.

High-quality images are the most popular option because they receive 94% more views. When adding images, keep the image quality with high resolution and the file size low. This helps the images load faster across all devices and web browsers.

A presentation is your go-to option if you’re introducing a new product or making a sales pitch. Here is Uber’s 25-slide pitch deck, which provides an example of how to create a presentation.

Do: Grab Localization Opportunities

If your business operates in different regions or countries, use their cultural norms in your content. It will build a much deeper connection with your audience.

One effective method is tailoring promotional offers, messages, and visuals based on a specific region’s trends or seasonal variations. This will make your audience feel that you care about their local needs and preferences.

Let’s say your target location is the US, and they are currently enjoying the summer heat. You can launch summer campaigns in which you recommend all the best-selling summer products.

To make your products more appealing, align them with popular summer activities in the US, such as the 4th of July celebrations, camping, or fishing. Choose all relevant activities that you think your audience couldn’t resist.

Don’t: Assume Customer Service Agents Can Do It All

Some customer service agents have excellent communication skills over the phone. But it doesn’t necessarily mean they also excel in written interactions like chat or email. Make sure to train them so that they can be as helpful as they can to your clients. Here are the areas you should train your CSR agents:

• Soft skills development
• Compliance and Policies
• Product or service knowledge
• Effective communication skills
• Problem-solving and decision-making

Conclusion

A successful omnichannel retail strategy can make every interaction with your brand shoppable. Leverage cross-channel features like BOPIS or endless aisles so customers can easily browse or purchase from one channel to another. You can also integrate customer engagement (email campaigns or loyalty programs) at every customer touchpoint to drive more meaningful interactions.

Integrate your SEO strategies to improve your brand’s visibility and engagement across all channels. Linkody, a backlink tracker and monitoring tool, can help you get started. Browse its platform and see how its SEO tools can maximize your omnichannel presence.

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