Today’s shopper isn’t confined to one channel when it comes time to make a purchase. According to one report, people who shop both online and offline are far more valuable customers than those who limit their shopping methods to e-commerce only. For this reason, brands should take advantage of multichannel marketing—the practice of interacting with customers via multiple channels, both direct and indirect, in order to sell them goods and services. With a multichannel marketing strategy, brands can increase awareness and build affinity while reaching customers along the path to purchase.
The Benefits of Multichannel Marketing in Retail
By implementing a multichannel marketing strategy, your brand will have the ability to:
1. Follow the Consumer Along Their Shopping Journey
Based on the Rule of 7 marketing principle, the average consumer needs to come across your message approximately seven times before they are inclined to make a purchase. Through multichannel marketing, they’ll likely see an ad on TV or in a magazine, do some price-hunting online, talk about it with a friend, read reviews, and check out a brand’s social media channels before heading into the store to buy a product.
2. Provide a Seamless Customer Experience
Brands can work to provide customers with a seamless experience, making it more likely for them to make a purchase. Crate & Barrel noticed that shoppers often go back and forth between the retailer’s website and app while researching products before making a purchase. To make the process easier, if a customer begins their shopping journey on Crate & Barrel’s website, and then decides to sign into the brand’s mobile app, their shopping cart is saved across both platforms. Another added feature is that customers with wedding or gift registries can manage their items online, in-store, and from a mobile device.
3. Earn a Greater Following Through Third-Party Affiliation
A multichannel marketing strategy that leverages a third-party platform can allow a brand to reach an audience of consumers that they might not have been able to reach before. Engaging new audiences is one of the best ways to increase brand awareness.
Shopkick boasts an audience of unique and highly engaged individuals. One campaign which measured the incrementality of Shopkick’s program found that 57% of all sales driven by Shopkick are incremental. That incremental spend is driven by new customer acquisition as well as increased loyalty amongst existing customers. By introducing these new customers to its brand and retail partners, Shopkick helped to build awareness, drive trial, and increase sales.
4. Gather More Data to Inform Your Decision-Making
Consumers are generally more comfortable entering personal information such as a phone number or email address on their own via a website or kiosk, rather than when asked by a salesperson. It stands to reason, the more opportunities that you have to gain information about a shopper, the more data you’ll have to make insightful, informed marketing decisions. If you can track what a customer is purchasing and where, you’ll understand what it takes to clinch the sale.
Offering incentives in exchange for consumer data is a great way to gain the information needed to tailor your marketing strategy.
5. Increase Consumer Engagement and ROI
Taking a campaign across multiple platforms and devices increases consumer engagement. The key is to encourage the consumer to interact with your brand or product in a way that piques their interest. This strategy can urge consumers to interact with products physically or boost brand recognition with branded content. In either case, the more engaged a consumer is, the more likely they’ll be to purchase a product.
Taking a campaign across multiple platforms and devices increases consumer engagement.
Partner With Shopkick to Create a Multichannel Marketing Strategy
Now that we’ve covered the benefits of multichannel marketing, you may be wondering how to go about bridging the physical and digital landscapes. Mobile shopping apps like Shopkick offer brands and retailers the ability to incentivize purchases through both online and in-store interactions. By incentivizing the multichannel shopping experience with rewards points for watching branded videos, visiting a store, locating and scanning barcodes, referring a friend, or making a purchase, Shopkick encourages brand awareness which leads to increased sales.
Shopkick helps our partners develop a successful multichannel marketing campaign that increases brand awareness and guides the consumer along the path to purchase. To learn how we have helped other companies like yours increase sales, contact us and check out our success stories.
Image courtesy of Antonio Guillem
