Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Back in the day, omni-channel marketing was really easy. It was a simpler time when people didn’t have “nomophobia” (google it), and the number of channels marketers had to interact with consumers on was limited. But today’s screen-addicted, always scrolling, peer review-obeying consumers have pushed advertising and marketing into a digital explosion of touch-points. The fall-out of that digital explosion is what’s now known as “omni-channel marketing” or, in other words, being quite literally everywhere your consumers is.

Do a Google image search for “omni-channel” and you’re guaranteed to find pages of graphics all depicting a buyer in the center encircled by every channel that a marketer can possibly reach that buyer in. Obviously showing up on every channel is going to create awareness, but it’s not likely going to be the reason a consumer makes a purchase. According to MyBuys’ Personalization Consumer Survey, coordinating messages across channels increases the performance of those channels and the experience of the customer. But sadly, Experian reports that only a small fraction of brands are executing omni-channel communications informed by a single view of the customer....

The vision of being consistently relevant in real-time is what customers want and expect, but to execute on that vision can feel overwhelming, just looking at the ever-growing web of possible touch-points for a customer and how to connect them. Here are three ways to avoid feeling overwhelmed, and instead, just get started!