It’s an Omnichannel World

Thriv­ing omnichan­nel busi­ness­es don’t just sell through mul­ti­ple sales chan­nels — they cre­ate a con­tin­u­ous expe­ri­ence for con­sumers. From brick-and-mor­tar stores to online-only store­fronts, print media and social media, omnichan­nel busi­ness­es make it easy for cus­tomers to find and inter­act with them and their products.

Your best moves will depend on your prod­uct, cus­tomer base and oth­er fac­tors, but appeal­ing to human emo­tions con­tin­ues to rep­re­sent a win­ning strat­e­gy for any busi­ness, includ­ing those in the home and build­ing cat­e­gories. Fur­ther­more, every place you inter­act with your poten­tial cus­tomers rep­re­sents a unique piece of their impres­sion of your over­all brand, mak­ing omnichan­nel mar­ket­ing strate­gies crit­i­cal in today’s online-dri­ven world.

Con­sumers rank con­ve­nience as a major fac­tor in their shop­ping expe­ri­ence, almost as impor­tant as price. In fact, more than half of pur­chasers turn to online sources when shop­ping, and near­ly 20 per­cent of those who pur­chase online do so sole­ly for con­ve­nience. Addi­tion­al­ly, a whop­ping 75 per­cent of home­own­ers vis­it social media sites dai­ly — and more than half of social media users will pur­chase a prod­uct when they see favor­able men­tions in this space.

As con­sumers receive infor­ma­tion from every direc­tion, smart busi­ness­es find a way to dif­fer­en­ti­ate them­selves from the crowd — and pro­vid­ing sim­pler ways to make choic­es may be the answer. For exam­ple, three-quar­ters of home­own­ers say they wish it was eas­i­er to com­pare prod­ucts in-store. In an attempt to sim­pli­fy, con­sumers are also reduc­ing the num­ber of retail­ers they shop reg­u­lar­ly, cre­at­ing fierce com­pe­ti­tion for a cov­et­ed place on that list.

Above all, busi­ness­es that mas­ter the omnichan­nel mar­ket­ing world are also omnipresent. They build and main­tain a pres­ence every­where to reach their cus­tomers where they are, and they ensure the expe­ri­ences they pro­vide are opti­mized for the many devices their cus­tomers use.

How does your busi­ness use omnichan­nel strate­gies to sup­port sales? Check out this info­graph­ic for an indus­try snap­shot fea­tur­ing orig­i­nal Home Improve­ment Research Insti­tute (HIRI) research.

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