How to Implement Omnichannel Marketing - US

How to Implement Omnichannel Marketing & Inspire Collaborative Change

US

US

Words by Johnathan Lewis @ Rakuten Attribution Graphics by www.freepik.com

Introduction

Modern shopping habits are changing rapidly.

We’ve now reached the point where there is little or no separation between the ‘online’ or ‘offline’ shopper and as a result an increasing number of companies are taking an omnichannel approach to marketing. What we want to look at is how this shift can impact the internal structure of a business, in terms of thought processes, marketing team structure, and integrated marketing strategies.

Businesses have traditionally separated their digital marketing and traditional marketing teams with assigned budgets and even separate objectives. In this scenario, developing a strategy that treats online and offline marketing activity and sales as one - can be quite a shift. Let’s take a closer look at the structural impact of an omnichannel strategy.

1 Successful Attribution Can Impact Marketing Budgets

Moving from a single click model to one that accurately attributes sale value across multiple marketing channels can significantly impact how budgets are allocated internally.

Imagine how good it would feel to be able to say‌

Our PPC campaign helped drive 10% of offline sales last month!

Our email campaign helped increase instore visits by 12%

Sending a customer a catalog increases online spend by 8%

Online to offline measurement is no longer a ‘nice to have’ Marketers know that their online marketing efforts impact offline sales, which is why it is no longer a ‘nice to have’ but a necessity to see and understand the full customer journey.

TOP TIP:

Add an action to your regular marketing meetings to discuss ways to capture offline data, and how to link it to online users.

There are many ways to combine online and offline interactions, which enables analysis of true channel influence and performance – meaning that marketers now have the ability to prove their digital and offline marketing assumptions and secure budgets based on real results.

2 Breaking Silo Marketing Habits & Working Together

Breaking those old silo marketing habits‌ One of the challenges we recognized when first implementing an attribution model with a business is the need for marketers to break the habit of project-by-project collaboration between online and offline marketing teams.

Many of us have been there – you are given a project where you work with the web development team, collaborate with colleagues in brand marketing, PR and talk to local marketing teams and customer service.

TOP TIP:

If you are keen to break silo marketing habits in your business, we recommend that you strive towards having one omnichannel team working together on a regular basis, not just multi-disciplinary teams working on a project by project basis.

It’s a great experience, and you learn a lot about the business and its different functions, but then it stops. You go back to your department and rarely collaborate again.

3 With Change Comes Opportunity

It isn't just about applying a multichannel approach.

To fully benefit from an omnichannel marketing strategy measuring online to offline - the internal structure of your marketing teams will need to change so the two or more teams become one.

This change can be viewed as a chance to facilitate positive change in your business – it could:

TOP TIP:

A good first step would be to change the physical location of the digital marketing, web development and offline marketing teams, so that they are working closely together to encourage collaboration, discussion and sharing of ideas.

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Help you to modernize and improve marketing effectiveness

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Provide the marketing team with development opportunities

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Encourage collaboration between online & offline teams

Digitally savvy marketers can learn from traditional marketers and vice versa

4 Joining Online & Offline Inside & Out!

Think Omni Inside & Out‌ A successful omnichannel marketing strategy should not only link your online marketing with offline sales (and vice versa) to build a more complete view of the customer journey.

It also needs to be driven by an integrated online and offline team that works collaboratively to continually improve performance across all marketing channels.

Questions?

You can get in touch via email at

rm-salesus@mail.rakuten.com.

Have you successfully implemented significant change in your business?

We would love to hear about it, so please feel free to send us a tweet @RakutenMKTG_US or email rm-salesus@mail.rakuten.com

Are you Ready for a Collaborative Omnichannel Marketing Approach?

Rakuten Attribution (formerly DC Storm) arms digital businesses with performance measurement tools, analysis and reporting, powering great decisions and driving success.

www.rakutenmarketing.com/attribution rm-salesus@mail.rakuten.com

Words by Johnathan Lewis @ Rakuten Attribution Graphics by www.freepik.com