With the rise of online stores, traditional brands with street-level physical shops had to adapt (and still are adapting) to a new online buying and selling system that reaches as many people as the Internet has users. Used to recognizing faces, the new online stores started selling without really knowing how or why. Many found themselves stumbling in the dark when launching a digital marketing strategy and trying to combine it with their in-store sales strategy, risking throwing away all the work and reputation that go into building a brand image. That’s why Trilogi’s eMarketing Department shares a series of key points and some actions to integrate both channels and make them work well together.
Social media is full of brands running marketing campaigns to gain awareness and visibility online. But we also see these campaigns make no sense or are simply left running without properly measuring results. There’s a vague idea that online “what matters is being there,” ignoring form and content when, precisely, these two factors are increasingly important.
But without a clear strategy, without reflection and without measuring results, many brands feel they are wasting time (and money) on their online marketing strategy. Worst of all, the online and offline channels of their stores often never quite come together into a global strategy, either because they sit in different departments or because of a lack of know-how to apply to eCommerce.
Breaking the omnichannel barrier
To build a strategy that links both channels, there are several things to keep in mind:
- Continuous communication between Retail, Online and Customer Service. It is vital that the teams or people working in these areas are kept constantly informed and can build a joint strategy. And if we consider that social media are customer service channels too, everyone needs to pull in the same direction so that tone and content are the same regardless of the medium.
- Integrate all information under the same technology. All channels must be well connected so that information is accessible. If a promotion is created for the offline channel, the online team must be aware of it, since it can affect online sales positively or negatively, and vice versa.
- Integrate brand image into a strategy that links physical stores with the online channel. Just as stores have physical shop windows, the homepage and the different categories of the eCommerce site must be the window that reflects both the product and the brand’s identity. A good example is the men’s designer clothing store Maurice Boutique.
- Bear in mind that sales rhythms can differ from one channel to another, with online being the most dynamic channel, where new products must be presented constantly.
Actions to bring both channels together
Since consistency is paramount, here are a series of actions you can include in your global strategy to unify both channels into a single strategy, with sales as the ultimate goal.
Social Wi-Fi: Offering free Wi-Fi to customers who visit the store has become a tool to measure and better understand who walks into your business. Many people come to the physical store drawn by a product they saw on their computer (via social media, ads or organically while searching for something else…). Customers go online and, besides checking and comparing, they can also share their in-store experience by posting a photo of the product on their social media with dedicated #hashtags or by checking in to show their followers where they are at that moment, giving the brand visibility.
Coupons: To measure the impact of an offline action such as a sponsorship, you can generate purchase codes for all attendees of an event, valid both online and offline, and thus learn the real impact of that campaign. If you hand out or give away codes (discounts, free shipping and other sales incentives) redeemable both in physical stores and online, you can measure who is genuinely interested and actually used them.
In short, it is essential that both channels share a global strategy built on smooth communication and tailored software so that information and action plans flow throughout the company.
