Omni-channel marketing is not a complex concept. When a business delivers a consistent and uninterrupted brand experience across all the channels and devices its customers use to interact with them, they have an omni-channel marketing strategy.
Contrast this to outdated multi-channel marketing, in which companies focus on maximizing the performance of each channel separately (retail, web, mobile, etc.) to generate sales. Rather than working as one, with the consumer at the center of the strategy, multi-channel marketing actually creates competition for revenue among its various platforms.
Omni-channel marketing developed as companies began to understand their customers’ behavior in the mobile marketplace. Marketing had to become more personalized in order to engage consumers more effectively.
For example, take Mr. Robinson, a fictional illustration of how America shops. When Mr. Robinson decides it’s time to buy a new laptop, he searches on his office PC for a similar model on Amazon.com. Unable to find one, he stops at Best Buy on his way home and browses through the laptop department. When he finally sees another model he likes, he uses his mobile phone to compare prices with other stores and discovers that Amazon.com has it for less, so he quickly adds it to his cart.
Later that evening, he realizes that he put the laptop into his online cart but never completed the purchase. As his mobile phone is charging in another room, he borrows his wife’s iPad, opens the Amazon app, finds the laptop is still in his cart and completes the purchase. After buying the laptop, he receives an email from Amazon thanking him and suggesting a new wireless mouse to go along with his new laptop. This is what omni-channel marketing is about: a multi-device path to a purchase.
How Does MAXIM Media Group Use Omni-Channel Marketing to Engage Consumers?
MAXIM Media Group maintains databases of 290 million consumer interests, hobbies and passions, with up to 150 different behavioral and psychographic attributes. Using this data, the company helps retailers in many industries such as automotive, travel and other consumer categories launch strategic, omni-channel campaigns.
MAXIM’s Top-Shopper Marketing focuses on the consumer at the point of purchase, making last minute appeals at the moment when they are prepared to buy something. Using our fictional Mr. Robinson as an example, that email he received before finishing his order with Amazon could come from MAXIM and suggest relevant add-on purchases to go with his new laptop, based upon Mr. Robinson’s consumer profile data. That information would also be used to suggest future purchases to him and his family.
MAXIM’s mission is to increase awareness of the client’s product or service and help boost sales. It accomplishes its mission by reaching the right consumers and maximizing the open rate for each campaign. The company continues to align itself with the channels its clients and consumers prefer. That is what effective omni-channel marketing is about.