In the times of the Internet, there are so many channels of reaching out products and services to the customers available beyond the traditional ones. Social media sharing and communication channels like Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram are being successfully used by marketers for customer engagement and sales.
Communication has been changing focus from being product or service-centric to customer-centric. It’s being done in an immersive way. Catching hold of customers wherever they are, whenever it is convenient to them, and aligning with customers’ lifestyles is the new way of making customer outreach.
What is interesting is while there are different channels of communication like website, emails, and mobile, etc., there are no boundaries between these channels and the communication is unified and provides a single view of customer experience.
All along companies have focused on selling different channels, many channels and communication would sometimes be customised as per the channel, however nowadays the strategy being used for selling is using all available channels simultaneously with similar communications. That’s how the birth of omnichannel marketing communication is leading the growth of several companies.
Creating a way of an integrated, cohesive, and seamless experience for the customer irrespective of which channel he is being reached from or which channel he is choosing to come from is the key to marketing communication today. The omnichannel approach provides multiple channels of sales and marketing communication, and the interesting part of it is that they are connected, making it easy for the customer to hop across and jump to another channel without compromising on the experience.
While most companies have their Websites, Facebook pages, Twitter handles, Instagram, and Pinterest accounts as a multi-channel marketing communications approach, they are still gearing up on ensuring that these channels are cross-linked, seamlessly connected, and offer messaging across each other for a customer to get an integrated experience.
Focusing on customers’ views, choices, perspectives, interests, and preferences the Omnichannel marketing communication delivers a consistent communication message to the customers. It doesn’t matter if they are browsing the Facebook page of a brand and when they are directed or willfully switch to Instagram, they still find the same brand experience. That’s the strength of Omnichannel.
Idea is to build an experience for the customers, that is coherent and platform-agnostic, aligned across platforms, giving them a personal touch across all platforms that is similarly engaging and exciting. The most interesting part of omnichannel marketing communications is that it focuses on the entire customer experience in a holistic manner and not on the individual experiences of different channels.
Customers visit and connect with multiple channels to know, understand, learn, and gather as much information as possible before making a buying decision. A holistic experience offered by the omnichannel approach facilitates a better engagement on multiple channels that customers might be using in making their purchase decision.
Through the omnichannel approach, the customers feel empowered to interact with the company in a natural way establishing a stronger human connection, something which goes a long way in building great brand loyalty. Moreover, this allows to collect better quality of data and helps brands develop insights of creating the kind of content which will keep their customers engaged in an enhanced manner.
Connecting all channels also ensures a greater probability of reaching out to the customers and addressing all of their touchpoints. Evolution has been from IVR machines to advanced AI tools already and in the days to come, we will see a lot of automated communication building a great personalised customer experience.
The views and opinions published here belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the publisher.
Praveen has been closely associated with many national and international events related to cinema for children, art and culture. He has a well-rounded experience that cuts across all key sectors of PR & Corporate Communications.
He started his career with URJA Communications, an advertising agency specialising in technology brands, where he was instrumental in developing the PR division. Post this, he had a stint with Horizons Porter Novelli, a global public relations consultancy. Thereafter, he was heading the IT & Telecom division at Clea PR, a leading Indian public relations and communications company followed by a fairly long stint with Omnicom Group agencies viz. TBWA\India and Brodeur India.
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