Digital marketing is undergoing significant and rapid changes in a bid to adapt to changes in the market. Singapore marketers are moving away from the mass push-based marketing techniques to the more personalised tactics that focus on communicating with customers across multiple devices that they use.
Research shows that the return on ad spend (ROAS) of television ads, blast email campaigns, and print media are declining steadily. What do you do to continue winning customers in Singapore? Try Omni-Channel Marketing.
What is Omni-Channel Marketing?
Omni-Channel marketing is a multi-channel marketing technique that aims at engaging the target customers across the devices that they use. It is a different way of marketing, selling, and engaging with clients by creating a cohesive and integrated customer experience regardless of where and how a customer reaches out to your brand.
That means a customer can be shopping on your online store from a mobile device or desktop or in your physical store and enjoy the same experience. You could have an excellent mobile marketing strategy, engaging social media campaigns, and a user-friendly and optimised website, but if these platforms do not work in unison, your approach can be considered as omnichannel.
Most businesses in Singapore are investing heavily in multi-channel experience. They have a website, blog, and business accounts on Facebook and Twitter. All the platforms are used to connect and engage with potential customers. However, more often than not, the clients do not enjoy a seamless experience and consistent messaging on each of the channels.
What is the Difference between Multi-Channel and Omni-Channel
As described by Senior VP of Customer Care at Time Warner Cable, multi-channel is an operational view, and it entails how you allow customers to purchase products or request a service in each channel. On the other hand, Omni-channel is looking at the experience through the eyes of your clients. By doing so, you will be able to replicate the same customer experience across all channels to that it is consistent, integrated, and seamless.
Omni-channel is based on the fact that potential clients can start engaging with your brand in one channel then move to another one as they continue to determine if the product is worth the money. Concisely, omni-channel is an advanced level of multi-channel marketing that is tailored to ensure that customers get a seamless experience.
How to Create an Omni-Channel Marketing Strategy for Singapore Business
Walk in the Customer’s Shoes
You cannot succeed in meeting all the needs and expectations of your customers if you do not know the kind of shopping experience they get from your brand. Once in a while, review the experience that your clients go through when researching, purchasing, and connecting with your products. Test the experience by trying to place an order and engaging with the available marketing channels, contact customer care, and more.
The tests should be done by internal and external testers to give you a clear perspective of the whole experience. The results will help you identify areas that need to be improved on or removed entirely.
Analyze Everything
Thanks to advancement in technology and development of analytical tools such as software, you can measure virtually any aspect of your business. Successful digital marketers in Singapore are alive to the fact that all decisions that they make should be based on accurate data. They use it to come up with effective marketing strategies for their brands.
By using modern tools, it is now possible to gauge the success of a campaign based on the responses of real people over a span of time. You can collect plenty of data at the customer level to understand how the target audience interacts with your brand both offline and online.
With this information at hand, you can tailor messaging, and laser targeted offers to specific segments of your audience. Use consumer insights to make sure that your content relevancy is coupled with a sense of inspiration and discovery.
Group your Target Audience
The first step is identifying the data points that are essential then use them to segment/group your audience accordingly. The data points should help you get a clearer picture of your customer base. There are some marketing automation tools that you can use to capture this information and create accurate profiles about your clients and the customer journey. The data can also be used to develop precise buyer personas for future reference when creating new marketing campaigns.
Create Messaging/Content that Resonates with the Users Behaviours and Cases
Content and messaging are the building blocks of your omni-channel marketing strategy. Take into consideration if a particular client has purchased a product or engaged with your brand in one way or another in the past. For instance, if a client has added a product into the cart but is yet to purchase it, use your content to reference that intent to convert.
If you already have an email listing, send out emails to customers who have in the past purchased products from your online store and recommend complementary products. On the other hand, you can send an email to customers who abandoned the cart to reconnect and motivate them to revisit the store and complete the purchase.
This content and messaging will make the clients feel that you care about them. This is one of the main reasons why it is instrumental in engaging with prospects, generating loyalty, and new purchases.
Do Not Limit Use Cases to Sales and Marketing
Take into consideration how listening and responding to clients can help your customer care team, product development, and merchandising team before more proficient.
The General Motors Head of Global Social Media Strategy recently stated that the primary goal of the company is to provide the best possible experience to customers. He also said they could create a full customer portfolio if they plug social into all the existing Customer Relationship Management data they have accrued over the years. This information enables the company to treat a customer exactly how they want to be treated when they visit.
Listen and Respond on Clients Preferred Devices and Channels
A recent report by We Are Social revealed that most 95% and 91% of the total population in Singapore prefer smartphones and mobile devices respectively to access information online. 42% use tablets, 71% use desktops or laptops, 4% use e-reader devices, 15% use devices for streaming internet content to their smart TVs, and only seven %uses wearable tech devices.
Based on these statistics, it is clear that one is likely to use multiple devices in one transactional process. It is of paramount importance that your team can listen and respond to these interactions to maintain a high conversion rate. For example, a client who uses a smartphone to access your online store and adds several items into the mobile shopping cart, the products should still be in the cart when they log in on the computer. Such a simple and convenient shopping experience will give you an upper hand in the competitive Singapore digital marketing realm.
Consistent Brand Imagery
Similar brand imagery across all your marketing channels will ensure that potential clients are not confused or lost along the way. For example, using the same logo on your Facebook page, email marketing campaign, and the website will create a certain degree of consistent that will result in more sales. Any confusion no matter how slight it is can discourage a potential client from taking action.
Each Channel Messaging Should Be Personalised
Apart from using the same brand imagery across all your marketing channels, you need to work on personalising your approach on the same channels. Earlier on, we looked at the importance of segmenting your audience. Each channel audience is different, and therefore the content and your marketing strategy should be tuned accordingly.
Allow For Flexible Purchases
Online clients are usually finicky with the way they want to purchase products from an online store. One client will say they cannot buy a particular jacket until they try it on first, while another does not have a problem ordering the same product on, trying it on, and sending it back it back for a replacement if it does not fit them well.
The point we are trying to put across is that – your customers have different tastes and preferences. Use the data that you have to provide multiple purchasing options. Some will purchase it online and come to your physical store to pick it up while others will have it shipped to their location.
Therefore, apart from making it possible for customers to purchase from any channel, provide multiple purchasing options. This strategy will improve the shopping experience and prevent you from losing customers to a competitor who has a purchasing option that the client prefers.
Why Omni-Channel Marketing Works is so successful in Singapore
Enable You to Get More New Customers
It is every Singapore digital marketer’s goal to get new prospects continuously. As the number of channels that the customers interact with increases, the potential of getting new prospects increases. Nowadays, businesses have a broad range of channels that they can use to communicate with clients from email to chatbot and social media. Omnichannel marketing links this chain of activities thereby increases their overall performance.
You Will Learn More about Your Customers
First, your digital marketing strategies should be based on real data. Omnichannel marketing will provide data that you can use to get a clearer perspective of your customers. Since this data is unified across multiple channel experiences, it will help you to know your target audience preferences and behaviors. With this information at hand, you will be able to come up with ads for each target audience segment.
It Supports Customer Retention
The sustainability of your brand is dependent on its ability to retain customers. Omnichannel marketing has been proven to be effective in retargeting and re-attracting lost customers across multiple channels. That is, you can grasp the attention of a previous customer through a different channel and rekindle your engagement.
Lowers the Operating Costs
Operating costs have a direct impact on your company’s profitability. Robust omnichannel marketing strategies will help lower operating costs. New marketing technologies such as chatbots will lower customer experience costs and at the same time ensure that you remain in constant communication with the target customers.
Resonate with Tactical Growth Actions
Advancement in digital marketing technology has provided brands with many tactical moves that they can use to accelerate growth. A resourceful Singapore online marketing agency can integrate inbound marketing, SEO, and social media in omnichannel marketing strategy to achieve a certain objective such as increase leads. Concisely, growth strategies and omnichannel strategy can be combined to ensure each digital campaign is a success.
Capture Data from Every Transaction
Managing every channel for every customer means that no transaction will be lost. Singapore businesses can predict when customers are likely to purchase a product and track demographics of loyal customers. The transaction data can later be used to streamline the business operations as well as come up with offers for different segments of customers.
Meet and Engage with Customers Where They Are
Omni channel marketing is customer centred and gives Singapore retail businesses a chance to manage their relationships and interactions with clients across multiple channels. Companies that are yet to embrace this new strategy are not able to handle customers as single entities across all platforms. As a result, they lose a lot of importance that can be used to harness the power of digital marketing.
Concisely, meeting the customers where they prevent loss of information, boosts the quality of customer service, and offers valuable rewards to customers regardless of where or when they make a purchase.
Enables Targeting of Specific Audiences
Data collected from the various channels help create a customer and transaction analytics database. The information can be used to develop campaigns for specific audiences at different times of the year. Some Singapore SMEs use inbound links to tailor marketing campaigns in mobile applications and on the web for different groups of customers.
Channel Communication Management
Channel communication management is defined by the specific type of information that the target customers are looking for about your business in each channel. The information varies depending on the past interactions they have had with your brand.
Omni channel marketing helps capture the interaction and unique data about the audience. The customer care team can use this data to know how to treat the client and this, in turn, results in a high-quality customer service.
Integrated Communication and Analytics
As mentioned earlier, this form of marketing entails interacting and selling products to customers through different channels. The multiple channels of communication with the clients provide different streams of information/data that companies use to get a better understanding of their customers’ needs and expectations.
The data can be analysed later on and use to make informed decisions. That is, the cross-channel capability enables Singapore businesses to interact with customer data regardless of where it was generated. The data is also cross-referenced with other forms of data generated from similar segments of customers across the platforms.
Conclusion
Omni channel marketing will help your Singapore business succeed, stay ahead of the curve, and adapt quickly to market trend changes. Make sure that you monitor the results achieved from every marketing campaign and every decision should be based on the data collected from the various channels.
