It’s now been just over a year since the pandemic began, and if one thing is clear, it’s that consumer behavior has changed a lot during this period. Closures and the various restrictions on physical retail have been reflected in an exponential increase in online sales, especially among first-time online shoppers. This has forced businesses to adapt to the new digital era, as digital transformation becomes ever more necessary. But will the upward trend in eCommerce continue as the pandemic winds down? The clear answer is no. So how should businesses adapt to this new reality? With an omnichannel strategy.
Today, most consumers check reviews of the stores they visit in person. It’s very easy to search Google for the best restaurants in the area before deciding where to eat, or which store to buy from, choosing one option or another based on user reviews. This is about each business’s popularity, which is why, even if your business is purely physical, working on your online reputation is increasingly important. Could we call this an omnichannel strategy? In this case, no, because we aren’t personalizing the message and users may not feel addressed: this is what’s known as a multichannel strategy.
As we pointed out in our previous post, eCommerce: from multichannel to omnichannel, marketing and business strategy experts have long been implementing a strategy in which a business’s different channels are interconnected and put the user at the center, so we convey a single message personalized according to their customer journey.
The importance of omnichannel
In a time full of physical restrictions, with stores closed, area lockdowns and ever-changing health measures, businesses have been forced to retain their in-store customers through eCommerce, accelerating the consolidation of the online channel as a core channel for any business’s success.
Why is omnichannel so important for physical stores? Consumers have picked up new shopping habits, and one of them is no longer needing to go out to buy things, at least as long as the pandemic remains part of daily life. As a result, physical stores are seeing an exponential drop in sales, and companies have to rethink their sales strategy.
With omnichannel, users can continue their customer experience across all of a store’s channels, whether they find the store through a social media ad, browse the eCommerce site looking at the products they like best, ask about products via WhatsApp Business, or reserve a product online and pick it up in store to get a discount on their next online purchase, among many other options.
This strategy has retained online users who switched to buying online when physical stores closed, and it has also eased the return of the physical channel as restrictions lift, giving users the feeling they’ll be looked after anytime, anywhere. Companies must adapt to whichever channel suits the consumer best to close the sale and build long-term loyalty.
How do we build an omnichannel marketing strategy?
We know how important this strategy is for the post-pandemic future, but how do we start implementing it? Below are some of the keys to keep in mind to succeed.
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Know your consumer
Before creating any strategy, you need to know your consumer, their behavior and how their buying habits have evolved because of the pandemic. What interests them most about your brand? And your product? What kind of new users have been coming to your eCommerce in recent months? How do they behave throughout the purchase process? Do you see any drop-off points? The more information you can gather about your users, the more personalized your strategy can be.
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A strategy with the potential customer at the center
As we mentioned earlier in this post, omnichannel is about offering a seamless sales experience across all of a business’s channels. Build your strategy starting from your potential customer and expand it to adapt to their changing habits.
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Immediate customer service
Users are used to immediacy, so if you build an omnichannel strategy you need to be able to serve potential customers at all times: offering phone, chatbot or WhatsApp channels during set hours and complementing them with automated replies and emails when you’re offline. The key is to unify that service so that if users switch channels, they can pick up the conversation where they left off.
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Unify the message
A customer-centric strategy must deliver the same message across all channels, coordinating your online business communication and communicating consistently.
Want to adapt to the new post-pandemic reality and grow your business? Contact us and our digital marketing experts will help you carry out your omnichannel strategy!
