Since the pandemic, companies have rushed digital transition, which went poorly for some and well for others. Those who succeeded in making the digital transformation used a successful omnichannel marketing strategy that kept them grounded in their brick and mortar store yet expanded their brand message and presence across the digital space. The strategy worked well for both new retail operations and large Business-to-Business (B2B) conglomerates.
With a B2B omnichannel marketing strategy, successful companies were able to create a seamless customer experience across multiple channels, retaining the familiarity for returning customers while meeting the needs of new digital customers. For those companies that failed, it wasn’t just the lack of a proper omnichannel strategy but rather a failed adaptation of one. You can learn all the steps and tools, but any digital marketing strategy will fail without accurate data and implementation.
The best thing about omnichannel digital marketing is that any business can achieve a successful digital transition when done correctly.
What is Omnichannel Digital Marketing?
Omnichannel digital marketing creates a comprehensive customer experience and brand presence across multiple channels using data analysis and personalization. It has elements of permission-based marketing, inbound marketing and multi-channel marketing. B2B omnichannel marketing allows businesses to create a complete customer experience for their business clients.
The omnichannel approach to digital marketing works through lead nurturing, personalized user engagement, and customer service for prospects and customers across various channels, platforms, and devices. B2B companies can use the omnichannel approach to improve access to information, support, and product demos. Omnichannel marketing doesn’t just work for retail and e-commerce. It works well in your offline store as well. And that is because of the various tools and channels you can use, even offline, to convey your brand message.
Using a variety of channels can your team do a lot with omnichannel marketing. It has been known to get as much as an 80% increase in subsequent store visits. That’s because 59% of shoppers prefer to do online research before visiting the store.
This is why the multi-channel factor is so vital to your omnichannel strategy. Customers may prefer to research your company or get insights into your brands’ products before buying. Having a multi-channel presence is one part of omnichannel digital marketing. Knowing which tools to use on what channel, when and why is the next crucial step to successfully adapting an effective B2B omnichannel marketing strategy.
What Tools Are Involved in B2B Omnichannel Marketing?
In omnichannel marketing, you can use various digital marketing methods to create your desired B2B omnichannel marketing strategy. Standard tools such as a website, sales page, social media, mobile apps, automation, and your offline store can be incorporated in using these methods. For your home base, a website owned by your company or your offline operations can be the fixture where all your leads go. In the case of having both a website and online store, either one or both can be your designated Homebase. This plan is decided based on your buyer persona and campaign goals.
The inclusion of other tools is also affected by your ideal client, what they want at a specific time, campaign and business goals. Some B2B omnichannel marketing campaigns only require a few tools and digital marketing methods; others can give the appearance of a mass media approach using several digital marketing methods, platforms, and tools. Though there are only ten listed here, there can be more once your marketing team is creative enough.
- Public Relations – It’s not just press releases and media appearances. Aspects of public relations like crisis communication and public image development can be transferred into many facets of your omnichannel strategy.
- Email Marketing – The versatility and success of email marketing make it a must-have in a successful omnichannel marketing strategy. According to 66% of marketers, an email re-engagement strategy works best for lead re-engagement. Permission-based email marketing requires consent to engage, and with regulations like GDPR and CAN-Spam, it is the best way forward for email marketing.
- Content Marketing – Your omnichannel marketing strategy needs SEO-optimized content that brings value to all your platforms and channels, such as your website, social media, landing pages, gated content, emails and more.
- Personalized Marketing – From creating your buyer persona to the targeted email list, personalized marketing is the backbone of any omnichannel marketing campaign.
- Direct Marketing – Whether through emails, mobile-optimized emails, or regular mail, direct marketing can be a great asset to any B2B omnichannel marketing strategy.
- Search Engine Marketing (SEM) – Apart from using Pay-Per-Click (PPC) ads which can be programmatic display ads, SEM can be an excellent font for measurable returns. Using Revenue Per Thousand impression (RPM) or Cost Per Thousand impressions (CPM) metrics can help manage ad spend and targeting.
- Mobile Marketing – This can be a mobile-optimized email campaign as 49% of emails are opened on a mobile device. You can use geofencing mobile marketing to include programmatic display ads through mobile apps. Or have an SMS messaging campaign.
- Programmatic Display Marketing – Programmatic display ads can be used in native advertising, geofencing mobile marketing, and connected TV.
- Social Media Marketing – Having an updated social media account is great for brand presence. As 55% of consumers tend to research a brand’s account through their social media profiles and 87% of B2B buyers prefer social media interactions, avoiding social can be bad for networking and sales.
- Data-Driven Marketing – Data is another core element of a successful omnichannel marketing strategy. Data drives all digital marketing decisions and is the lifeblood of your omnichannel marketing solutions.
You may think ten is excessive, but B2B customers are known for using ten or more channels to interact with a business. Besides listed here, there are many more digital marketing methods that can be included in your omnichannel strategy. The various tools used by these marketing methods are just some of the ways you can leverage lead generation, advertising and customer experience using omnichannel marketing.
5 Traps to Avoid in Your B2B Omnichannel Marketing Strategy
Implementation is always a worry to marketers when creating a digital marketing strategy. And with a marketing strategy like omnichannel digital marketing, there are many ways it can go wrong. A lot can happen when everyone and everything in the channels are not in sync.
Bad Data
Bad data is hard to come back from. Bad data affects targeting, and the worst thing you can do is end up sending emails or ads to engaged prospects. Not only will you end up spending money for people to dump your emails in spam, but you’ll also be labeled as that annoying ad that no one wants to see. Bad data can result from outdated, incomplete, irrelevant, or corrupt data due to mishandling or frequent cleaning and updates.
Solution: Use a data validation company to help you with data management and provide data enhancement services.
Not Measuring Cross-Channel Performance
Visitors are coming to your website, that’s nice, but where are they from? Data analysis is just as critical as the data. Without understanding what it is and its relevance to your campaign and business goals, it is impossible to measure cross-channel performance or return on investment (ROI). Aside from understanding customer intent, measuring cross-channel performance helps you streamline your customer experience across channels and make adjustments to your next campaign or email re-engagement strategy.
Solution: Start with data validation and enhancement to ensure the data is clean. Along with data analysis, these are just a few of the services available at our data-driven marketing agency.
Low-Quality Content
The content you create via any channel must have value to that channel’s audience and your entire brand following. Saying, ‘Hi’ on a chat does not make an impression, and neither is asking open-ended questions about their lives. Creating content across different channels requires effort and variation. Copy and paste will not work here. Yes, you want consistency, but personalization and creativity must also be.
Solution: Improve the quality by using the data insights and target accordingly.
Inconsistent Message
Low-quality content is one sin, but confusing the heck out of your customers is another. If you have a sale for a specific audience, please make it plain to those on other channels so that they too can participate. And pay attention to what stage they are in the buyer journey. A reminder; consistency does NOT equally copy-paste content. A universal theme must represent the current campaign goals, customer intent, and the brand’s values or mission.
Solution: Consistency is a habit, but it may be hard for each individual to consistently bring the same level of value across every channel in a team. The fastest solution is to use a data-driven marketing agency with years of experience in building creative omnichannel experiences.
Crickets on the Channels
An omnichannel strategy without social media or emails? What is going on? Maybe there’s an app, chat, or paid ads? None of that either? Then can you even call it omnichannel? In omnichannel digital marketing, it’s not just having the available channels and tools but using them! Your customers must be able to feel your presence, purchase, and reach you through those multiple channels.
Solution: Partner with us if you need help strategizing your next B2B omnichannel marketing campaign.
To have a successful omnichannel marketing campaign, you need to have the latest relevant data for pinpoint targeting and personalization. Pay attention to what’s happening on all your channels and provide consistent messaging and value across all those channels at every stage of the buyer’s journey.
Consumers today are more informed than those in the past and live life at internet speed. When they want access to services and information, they need it now! It must be informative, relevant to their needs, and consider data protection and transparency in business with expert knowledge and service.
Why Omnichannel Marketing Works Best for B2B Marketing?
Though omnichannel digital marketing can appear to be more of an outbound marketing method due to its multiple channels, it has many inbound aspects. After all, at its’ core, all marketing efforts must lead to a home base. And in using an automated inbound strategy, you can save 62% per lead instead of outbound. This is just a one-way omnichannel marketing works for businesses.
Other benefits of omnichannel marketing include:-
Measurable Insights
The data only works if it’s appropriately analyzed. Automation using AI technology should be one of your omnichannel tools to analyze the information quickly to provide quick results. With measurable insights, you’ll be able to empower your team better and provide relevant value.
Creativity
With as many as ten channels, marketers must be agile and inventive with their messages and outreach methods. This creativity can extend to the content they create and the customers’ experience.
Efficient tools
Emails are the best for B2B omnichannel marketing. Its versatility that allowed for mobile-optimized emails, personalization, video content, and increased returns for retargeting makes it worthwhile to create a targeted email list. Websites and apps showcase the brands, creativity, ingenuity and expertise in their industry.
Budget-Friendly
You can adjust the number of channels depending on the size of your business and budget. You can also adjust according to your omnichannel marketing campaign needs. It’s great for short and long-term budgets and as a money-saving tool.
Positive Scalability
Omnichannel marketing grows as you do, providing reach into new markets via new channels. Or you can adjust your channels to direct the rate of growth and expansion. For controlled scalability and growth, there are various ways you can adapt your omnichannel strategy to grow as you desire.
To reap the benefits of a successful omnichannel strategy, you only need 3 or 4 channels with a very customer-centric focus. However, it takes a great team to make the dream work. Therefore, ensure you train your team and partner with the right data-driven marketing agency.
Closing
Companies that create a positive, personalized customer experience through all their channels have a better chance at success in omnichannel marketing. Channel conflict should not be a deterrent to success. Instead, it can indicate redirecting resources, staff training, product/service issues, or you need assistance with perfecting your omnichannel strategy.
Many top companies have learned that focusing on high-quality products, sales, marketing, customer support, and building an expert team is part of B2B omnichannel marketing success. Successful companies continue to thrive using omnichannel customer-centric principles, consistent, relevant, agile and convenient. Your marketing team will have a better chance of success by including these principles and avoiding the many traps that can befall you in using omnichannel marketing.
If you need to know how omnichannel digital marketing can work specifically for your B2B, contact FrescoData today!
