Why You Should Integrate Omnichannel Marketing In Your Affiliate Strategy

28 December 2022
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In the pursuit of leads, marketers choose a variety of promotional channels. What if I told you that some professionals don’t stop on a few channels, but create an entire ecosystem of these channels? Sounds promising, right? We’re talking about omnichannel marketing — a unique technology in the aspiration of customer attention.

But putting this rhetoric aside, it’s clear that many people are using this approach without realizing it. That’s because, at its core, an omnichannel strategy is about using different traffic sources, combined into a single advertising environment. In this article, we will tell you about the omnichannel philosophy in more detail, explain how to apply it in your advertising campaign, and what its main benefits are for the affiliate.

Omnichannel? Multichannel? Two peas in a pod

Both of these marketing techniques use a joint base — multiple promotion channels for the same target audience. But what is the fundamental difference? 

In multichannel marketing, each channel works autonomously, it is not connected to the others and has its own objectives and evaluation system. The main advantage is that it is up to the user to choose from a wide variety of convenient brand communication mechanisms.

The point of omnichannel is not that there are many brand and customer interactions, but that the user can naturally navigate through all channels and their communication history with your product or promotional campaign.

The customer can click on a banner and visit the website, call and ask for details, and receive an e-mail file with information from the customer support team. In parallel, he can explore review sites, consult with friends about where they bought and whether they are satisfied, ask clarifying questions on the company’s messenger, and leave a request for a callback. This cohesive approach allows you to give customers relevant product information regardless of which channel they are using.

Why You Should Integrate Omnichannel Marketing In Your Affiliate Strategy

The benefits of omnichannel marketing

1) Increased reach. According to Omnisend research, the loyalty of the target audience to a specific product and brand as a whole is increased by more than 90% when multiple sources of traffic are used as a united system. This makes potential customers more willing to engage with a company, and the overall purchase frequency, even within a single campaign, increases by up to 250%.

2) Compatible with retargeting. Omnichannel marketing is great for driving repeat customers back to your product, and Google has already proven this in its research. This observation also underlines that the lifetime value of customers attracted by an omnichannel strategy is 30% higher than customers received by a standard promotion model. 

3) Increased loyalty. On today’s internet, the standard user is overwhelmed by the number of different channels for communicating with a brand. Sometimes companies cannot cope with maintaining high-quality communication across all of them. Therefore, by providing users with a comfortable environment for navigating your promotional instruments, you increase the satisfaction and loyalty of your target audience. This will surely give you a competitive advantage.

Why You Should Integrate Omnichannel Marketing In Your Affiliate Strategy

Management tips for omnichannel marketing

Automate your processes

Yes, using multiple integrated promotional channels can be difficult, but you don’t have to do everything manually. Many professionals have already entrusted some of the marketing tasks of generating leads to automated systems. For example, if one of your promotional tools is an e-mail newsletter, look into modern e-mail bots.

Examine consumer behavior

When launching an omnichannel marketing system, it’s important to understand the common ground between your audience and your product or promotional campaign. A consumer journey map can help you do this. In it, you capture the entire user experience at every stage of the interaction, from brand introduction to purchase. Note the emotions the consumer experiences at different stages and the potential pain points you need to work on. Think about how each channel can contribute to your promotional strategy. Don’t underestimate product reviews, Telegram channels, forums, and communities — they may be playing a role for your brand too. Before exploring new channels, research how your competitors are using them.

Support your customers

The key to successful omnichannel marketing is not just to try to sell products through different channels, but to get the right information to your customers, to help them, and to communicate with them at every stage of the interaction.

The omnichannel approach means that at any stage of the customer’s interaction with you and through any channel (messenger, in-app chat, email, phone call) you are ready to provide the customer with adequate and comprehensive information and support, because you know their needs and appreciate that they chose you.

Create an ecosystem with a unified style

Regardless of the interaction channel, the customer experience needs to be consistent: the tone of voice in ads and website texts, call center employees’ responses, creative design, and mobile app interface.

Analyze results

Omnichannel marketing cannot fully work without analytics. Collect data on online and offline conversions — it shows you where to focus and when to consider cutting back on a marketing channel in favor of another that can bring in more conversions.

Web analytics services (Yandex, Google) offer tools to track user behavior across different channels, including offline. Advertising platforms also have solutions for recording offline conversions, for example, Facebook is able to track offline conversions by phone number. Many affiliate programs also provide different data on traffic from different channels.

An important aspect of analytics is feedback. Communicate with your audience, gather testimonials, and discover why a particular channel is more popular and convenient than others. 

Why You Should Integrate Omnichannel Marketing In Your Affiliate Strategy

Final thoughts

Omnichannel marketing is no longer a trend, but a necessity. If you thought you were just grabbing every promotion channel in search of a powerful traffic and high ROI, try looking for the reason for using certain campaign channels. Work smart, not hard: explore the most profitable channel combinations in the context of your overall user experience. Also, make sure that all of your chosen channel combinations live in the same style and show your brand as caring for the audience’s comfort and always ready to help. You can definitely pull it off!

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