How to create an omnichannel strategy

What is an omnichannel retail?

Omnichannel retailing allows the customer to make a single purchase through different channels and touchpoints resulting in a unified seamless shopping experience.

According to a Harvard Business Review report from a study made from 2015 to 2016 with 46000 shoppers, only 7% of the shoppers purchased online exclusively while 20% shopped only in brick and mortar stores. In the meantime 73% of shoppers claimed they shopped through different channels.

Given these metrics it’s understandable that businesses need to invest their efforts in omnichannel strategies and forget about the old multichannel approach in order to satisfy the current shopper.

A satisfied customer, is a customer that repeats a purchase; this in turn, leads to higher customer retention rates. Additionally, according to the payment platform Ayden, omnichannel shoppers spend 15% more per purchase than single platform shoppers. Higher medium tickets in combination with loyal customers eventually result in business growth.

Steps to create an omnichannel strategy

If omnichannel business are so successful, why are 80% of retailers not taking this approach? According to shopify.com, most of them are lacking internal organization, don’t analyze customer analytics across channels, can’t identify customers across shopping trips, and don’t rely on high quality data. We’ll show you the different steps you should follow in order to create a successful omnichannel strategy.

1.  Manage your inventory successfully

Correctly managing your inventory is key for any successful retail strategy and a basic step before becoming a multi – or omnichannel business. This will ultimately satisfy customers. A multichannel inventory management tool will ensure merchandise availability while optimizing management time and cost reduction.

2.  Know where your customer is:

Businesses must be where the customer is; find out where your target market spends their time.

• Check what platform the traffic is coming from: discover these insights through Google Analytics. Go to the acquisition panel, click in “Channels” and see your traffic source. They can be reaching your website through organic search, direct, referral, paid search, social channels, affiliates or display.
• Check which devices your users are shopping with: you can also check the amount of traffic that is coming from desktop, mobile or tablet, and even know the brands of the devices.
• Check where your customer is located geographically

In a multichannel approach, marketers would look at each channel separately and see how to reach each customer, while an omnichannel approach requires finding ways to overlap all channels.

3.  Ensure seamless transitions between online and offline channels

Make sure to make smooth transitions between online and offline channels.

Zara is a leading example in excelling at omni channel retailing providing services like buying online and picking up in store, and scanning bar codes in store through Zara’s app, saving the items for a later online purchase.

Warby Parker’s is another company that does a great job when it comes to omnichannel retail. Customers don’t have to go through the hassle of ordering different glasses and returning the ones they don’t like; they can automatically choose online a variety of glasses they want to try at home and select the exact one they like.

4. Implement dynamic ads, and cross-device retargeting

 

Omnichannel retailing can also be applied when it comes to digital advertising. This means impacting the customers on the right place and at the right time.

 

Link devices in Google Ads with a remarketing tag

if someone visits your website from your mobile phone you can then impact them while they are browsing online in their laptop. Google Ads can do this by using a remarketing tag. This will allow you to reach potential customers when they are most likely to buy regardless the device or browser they are using.

 

Use Geo-location to reach your target market

Geo-fencing is a great way to impact your customers. You can for example reach a customer who is looking to grab a coffee in the ratio you set, or use location specific key-words for paid search ads.