Omnichannel marketing is a growing need for companies and brands. There are a lot of different devices and digital touchpoints where customers and clients might encounter your name, and having inconsistent messaging or graphics may cost you. Using a consistent graphic design improves the chances that a potential client will associate a particular product or service with your brand. A consistent message means that viewers won't be confused about what it is you offer, or why it is valuable.
So how do you create a seamless and unified brand experience? Below, 11 communications executives from Forbes Communications Council offer their suggestions, from analyzing data — independent of which silo it came from — to streamlining and improving customer service interactions.
These communications executives share insights on adapting to omnichannel marketing.
All photos courtesy of Forbes Councils members.1. Stay true to a consistent corporate story.
Very few companies have the discipline to maintain a consistent corporate story. Omnichannel marketing is making this discipline more important than ever. If the individuals responsible for various channels are not working from the same sheet of music, the company will be delivering a fragmented and confusing story throughout the customer journey. In an omnichannel world, you must stay on message. - James O'Gara, OnMessage
2. Don’t silo your analytics by channel.
One overlooked aspect is analytics: If you aren’t measuring the customer’s journey as one conversation through multiple channels, you won’t have feedback controls in place to address kinks in the journey. Where does the conversation get stuck? Where does the tone change? What problems weren’t anticipated? Track a conversation through multiple channels and don’t silo your analytics by channel. - Eileen Canady, SYKES
3. Use the same hashtags and brand tags across all social media platforms.
In order to stay relevant and encourage engagement via several different channels, companies need to consistently reiterate their mission statement in ways that allow fans to engage with their brand. It helps to have the same hashtags and brand tags throughout all social media platforms. - Ani Stepanian, Mercer Vine
4. Have a unified system of record.
There is a plethora of marketing technology to track almost every metric now, but finding the right mix of marketing automation and other tools to track all communications and touchpoints is key to avoiding duplicate and disjointed marketing. Having a unified system of record will help understand what is communicated when, and reduce customer service and sales timelines. - Charlie Riley, Lawley
5. Actively manage content on all services.
Your brand no longer lives just on your website or app; it lives in all the places that consumers go to find information about your business, like Google, Siri, Facebook, Apple Maps and Yelp. Ensure your customers have a great experience by actively managing the digital knowledge and rich content in all the services they use in order to present the best possible version of your brand everywhere. - Elizabeth Walton, Yext
6. Make sure to be transparent.
One of the first steps is to establish a deep and consistent data set for your products or services. Consumers are seeking out — and have access to — more information than ever before. This shift toward transparency means brands must gain a new level of clarity and completeness in their product data and share this data consistently among their various physical and digital touchpoints. - Kira Karapetian, Label Insight
7. Make sure your back end is built to support the front-end experience.
The most critical component to a seamless omnichannel experience is to get rid of silos, and treat all channels as one. The best way to build customer trust is to ensure information is transparent, precise and represented in real time across every single channel. This means the back-end technology must be built to support the front-end experience so channels can be consistent and unified. - Jennifer Kyriakakis, MATRIXX Software
8. Remember that mobile is at the center of a person’s unified experience.
Mobile is at the center of a person’s unified experience. As such, it must also be at the center of the way you design your seamless experience. It's about finding your next best customers and delivering magical experiences wherever they are, in any form, regardless of channel or device. To do this flawlessly, you need a unified view of the fragmented customer journey from your martech stack. - Jennifer Wong, TUNE
9. Streamline the move from self service to assisted service.
Bots and AI are great. However, there often comes a time when automation isn't enough, like during a complex financial- or healthcare-related situation. At that point, you need to make the transition, from self-service to assistance from a human being, a streamlined experience. Phone numbers should be easy to find (or provided by bots) and knowledgeable employees should be at the ready to help out. - Holly Chessman, Glance Networks Inc.
10. Prioritize improving customer experience and retention.
Be sure to account for the customer's full experience with the people behind your brand, from first introduction to lifelong faithfulness. Arm your front-line service teams with holistic customer data, tools that enhance the human-to-human experience, and the authority to make customers happy. Focus on empowering them, improving their work experience and keeping them long term. - Murph Krajewski, Sharpen Technologies
11. Respect the human journey.
Omni- or all-channel touchpoints must map the user journey across all verticals. The human touch cannot be ignored. Bots and AI can enhance and speed up the process across the journey, allowing for more conversions, but making sure that you as the brand owner have mapped out each of the personas, each one's reason for being connected to your brand and their journey is paramount to your success. - Judy Herbst, Worthy Inc
