What is Omnichannel Marketing? (+ Examples & Expert Tips)

Omnichannel marketing weaves together a consistent customer experience with clear goals, cohesive branding, customer journey mapping, and the right performance monitoring metrics. Nail it, and you’ll create a consistent cross-platform experience.

Here, you’ll find: 

• What omnichannel marketing is
• How it differs from multichannel marketing
• Examples from SaaS and ecommerce brands
• Expert tips to maximize conversions

Is your marketing calendar bursting at the seams?

You’ve got a Google Ads campaign for your product’s latest feature, a series of Instagram educational slides to prep, and a dozen pending posts for your website blog. 

Yet despite a brimming content calendar, conversions are M.I.A. What gives? 

Sounds like your omnichannel marketing strategy could benefit from cohesive brand messaging, personalization, and performance monitoring. 

We caught up with omnichannel wiz Rachel Corak, Associate Director at HawkSEM, to discuss what it takes to generate leads and conversions through omnichannel marketing. 

We’ll also share phenomenal omnichannel marketing examples from HawkSEM’s case studies that showcase flawless user experience across various channels by following our playbook. 

Ready to finally see the ROI you’ve been striving for? We’ll take you there, one channel at a time. 

First up: a clear omnichannel marketing definition.

 What is omnichannel marketing?

Omnichannel marketing integrates a consistent customer experience across every marketing channel — from online platforms like social media and Google Ads to offline channels like brick-and-mortar stores, short message service (SMS) marketing, and billboards. 

This type of marketing crashes through the silos of different platforms, creating a consistent omnichannel experience for your customer base. 

For starters, it builds brand presence across various channels, presenting multiple touchpoints and opportunities for customer engagement and conversions. Then, you can dive deeper to decipher how each platform factors into your customer journey, integrating them seamlessly to convert at every stage. 

Remarketing tactics and personalized ad copy also fall into omnichannel marketing, engaging customer needs later in the buyer’s journey. The main benefits? You remain relevant in your customers’ minds, outpace the competition, and create even more opportunities for conversions. 

Omnichannel marketing in action: Moroccanoil

Let’s say you sell hair products and your customer sees an ad for your hydrating Moroccanoil conditioner:

(Image: Google)

Next, that same customer pops over to your Instagram page:

(Image: instagram.com/moroccanoil)

After a few scrolls, they spot your product at their local Sephora:

(Image: Sephora)

Your ad copy, product photo, social media content, and packaging should all deliver a seamless experience while leveraging the different stages of the customer funnel. 

For example, social media content might lean more fun and educational for top-of-funnel customers. Yet, it’s crucial to maintain consistent branding, recognizable visuals, and your brand voice throughout. 

That brand voice and messaging should carry to your ad copy and physical packaging while upping the ante to reflect the later stage of the customer journey. 

So many channels. We get it; we can hear your finance department buzzing from here. Marketing strategies cost money. However, your audience spends time on multiple channels, so it only makes sense to prioritize omnichannel marketing. It’s absolutely worth the investment. Here’s why.

Why your brand needs omnichannel marketing

There are four important reasons to harness omnichannel marketing. You’ll see: 

1. Higher search engine rankings
2. Better brand awareness
3. More conversions
4. Higher purchase amounts

Starting with SEO rankings, Google thrives on crawling through quality material when deciding who climbs the SERPs. When done correctly, omnichannel marketing gives Google plenty of rich, customer-centric content and ad assets to SEO-boost your online presence aka brand awareness.

Just look at the 228% increase in top-3 keyword rankings our omnichannel strategy accomplished for B2B software company Prismatic. 

Omnichannel marketing also gives your brand more opportunities for customer interactions. Amplify that with a stellar, personalized experience that suits every customer journey stage? You’re paving the way for a surge in conversions and customer retention. 

Got in-store products? Omnichannel marketing can increase the chance of customer visits to a physical store by 80%. You just need to make sure your in-store experience is just as persuasive as the ad that attracted them there in the first place. 

But what if you’re an ecommerce shop or SaaS business operating online? Don’t worry — omnichannel marketing still boosts web traffic and snags you higher average order values (AOV) by at least 13%. 

But wait — isn’t omnichannel the same thing as multichannel? Not quite. 

 Omnichannel marketing vs. multichannel marketing

Both omnichannel and multichannel marketing efforts benefit from multiple customer touchpoints across different channels. However, omnichannel marketing offers a little extra cohesion for a more streamlined, unified experience. 

A multichannel strategy uses more than one potential marketing channel to connect a brand with its audience. This could include a brick-and-mortar store that also has an email newsletter. Even though the brand uses both the physical store and emails to connect with customers, the two channels are still pretty siloed. 

With omnichannel marketing, that’s definitely not the case. Here, businesses unify the brand experience across digital marketing channels and physical ones. An omnichannel approach ensures every single channel works in harmony, nurturing the customer relationship at different stages of the journey (instead of separating each channel with its own customer journey). 

Ready to see the magic of omnichannel marketing in action? 

 3 successful examples of omnichannel marketing

You’ve seen the theory and the stats to back up omnichannel marketing, now let’s put all that intel into practice. 

Below, we’ll showcase some of HawkSEM’s omnichannel marketing success stories, including how we captivated our clients’ audiences and unleashed epic results. 

1. Facebook remarketing seals the deal for 686’s Google browsers

Say you wanna buy some winter gear for your next trip to Vail, Colorado—where do you look? 

A quick Google search gives you thousands of options. That’s precisely the competitive challenges our winter apparel ecommerce client, 686, faced. They’ve been in the game since 1992, yet the quality name they established was getting diluted by tons of ecommerce competitors. 

They already had a solid following and product, we just needed to reinforce their unique selling points to their customer persona. How’d we do it? With omnichannel marketing, of course, specifically through: 

• Google Search: Dynamic search marketing campaigns to send the right message and landing pages for each product to attract new customers.
• Facebook Ads: Remarketing tactics to remind qualified leads of the products they viewed on other platforms with a more personalized experience.
• Google Shopping: Re-optimized product feed on Google’s online shopping platform to showcase professional, striking product photos and capture bottom-funnel customers with pricing information. 

(Image: Google)

(Image: 686)

Check out how Google Shopping products and web copy changed slightly with the platform. Yet, 686’s authority and branding are still consistent throughout. 

Our omnichannel strategy with consistent brand messaging garnered powerful results for 686 like a 303% increase in return on ad spend (ROAS), a 562% increase in year-over-year SEM Revenue, and a 76% reduced cost per conversion. 

2. Search remarketing and YouTube Ads drive qualified traffic for Honda Motor Co.

Honda is a global car brand. But every marketer knows the important role location plays in marketing, and that’s because people are different across the globe. 

That’s why they came to us for support with amplifying their online presence in South America while promoting awareness for two new Accord and Civic Hatchback models. 

First, we tweaked ad schedules on their PPC ads and subsequent remarketing campaigns to ensure South American audiences were online to see them. Then, we localized their landing pages to align better with the target demographic’s interests.

The omnichannel marketing holy grail? YouTube influencer pre-roll ads that artfully targeted Honda’s South American audience.

Paired with refined keyword targets and consistent audience monitoring, the results rolled in.

Honda reaped a whopping 200% increase in web traffic, 40% increase in inquiries, and 30% reduction in cost per conversion. 

3. Branded and non-branded targeting for Timbuk2’s revenue reign  case study

Need a new messenger bag? A quick browse on Google Shopping shows tons of options from Timbuk2: 

(Image: Google)

While the copy is limited to a brief product listing title, the full product description and images appear once you click onto Timbuk2’s website: 

These are results from non-branded keyword searches, where audiences are more bottom-funnel and closer to making a purchase based on utility and product alone. The reason they come up first? Our meticulous keyword research and PPC bidding strategies, of course. 

But Timbuk2 needed branded organic content as well if they wanted to retain and engage existing customers. Take their Facebook content for example:

(Image: Facebook)

You’ll note the copy on Facebook is longer and tells more of a story than the Google PPC Shopping ad. Corak says that’s just a product of the platform:

“The biggest differences in copy [between PPC ads and organic social content] would probably be character limits, as you’re more restricted with that in ads. Organic posts allow for a lot more content.”

The difference also accounts for audience intent. If you browse a brand’s social channels, you’re curious about what makes that brand unique, like Timbuk2’s highlight of its recycled materials and environmental impact. 

A strong combination of strategy for Google PPC and organic social media content helped us achieve a whopping 56% increase in year-over-year (YoY) revenue for Timbuk2. 

Want to see the same results? The secret is consistent optimization. 

 3 expert tips for optimizing omnichannel marketing

1. Don’t invest without a clear strategy and customer journey map 

So you know your audience spends most of their time on Twitter and Google. But if you create different campaigns for those platforms without a clear strategy? You’ll blow through your marketing budget for nada. Corak sees this all the time: 

“The most common error is when businesses operate in marketing silos. Omnichannel strategies build holistic approaches that support the business through shared goals.”

What does that look like? A clear strategy that includes: 

• Overarching business goals: Link these with your omnichannel campaign goals and measure progress with clear metrics and benchmarks.
• Customer journey map: Identify the stage of the buyer’s journey that each platform’s audience is in (awareness, consideration, decision). 
• Creative assets for each stage: Photos, interactive quizzes, infographics, Reels, vans video content. 
• Customer-specific marketing: Remarketing tactics for customers later in the buyer’s journey, like limited-time or personalized offers.
• Brand book: Document that identifies brand voice and tone, to be shared with all marketing stakeholders for consistent messaging across each platform. 

Another vital part of your strategy: audience research, which goes beyond just demographics. You need to understand exactly how your customer feels at every stage of the journey, and guessing won’t cut it. 

Harness after-purchase surveys, competitive analysis, and keyword research to learn about your audience’s needs at each stage of the purchase. 

Pro tip: Peep your audience’s reception to your website’s customer support chatbot, a great marketing tool for customer relationship management (CRM). Those conversations are rich with customer data and insights that tell you exactly how your customers feel when they’re on your website.

2. Monitor channel-specific metrics

Facebook Analytics, Google Analytics, in-store purchases, website visits—we get it, the metric potential for omnichannel marketing is enormous. 

Here are some standard metrics to keep tabs on. 

Website metrics: 

• Clickthrough rate: How often people click your CTAs or other website buttons
• Retention rate: How many of your customers stay loyal after a certain period
• Traffic growth: How many web visitors navigate to your website over time
• Traffic source: Where your web visitors come from (i,.e., Google Search, social media, etc.)
• Page session time: How long people stay on your website or specific web page
• Most popular product pages: The ones who receive the highest traffic
• Heatmaps: Show which areas of your website garner the most clicks and attention from visitors.

Social media metrics: 

• Impressions and engagement: Views, likes, comments, saves, and shares
• Clickthrough rate
• Conversion rate: The number of people taking action (newsletter signup, download, purchase) compared to your total number of web visitors. 
• Trending posts: A topic that garners more buzz on social media than usual, resulting in more views and traffic.

Google Ads metrics: 

• Conversion rate
• Clickthrough rate
• Quality score: Ad quality compared to your competitors

Email marketing metrics: 

• Bounce rate: How often recipients leave your email 
• Share rate: How often your recipients forward your email

But the most important metric for omnichannel marketing? 

Marketing Efficiency Ratio (MER)

Let’s say you know your ad spend across all channels. The thing is, higher ad spend doesn’t always mean you’re spending too much money. The goal is to make sure you make the most of each dollar. Corak says MER gives you those insights:

“MER looks at ad spend not on a channel-by-channel basis, but by measuring return on ad spend (ROAS) based upon total revenue. This is important because it gives the truest look of how ad spend is impacting the business overall.”

Your marketing manager might prefer to narrow in on last-click attribution models, which tell you a customer’s last click before a purchase. But Corak sees limitations there, too: 

“Last-click attribution models only account for a fragment of the user journey, and platforms like Meta continue to struggle with attribution due to privacy laws and changes in the landscape.” 

Bottom line? MER tells you how outreach impacts the business overall, rather than focusing solely on in-platform analytics to understand business impact.

Now, there’s just one problem: how do you actually keep tabs on all these metrics? 

Your marketing team already has a packed schedule, so performance monitoring across different platforms could easily fall by the wayside. Our advice? Make it easy-breezy by monitoring everything in one place, like we do with ConversionIQ. 

Our proprietary tech is primed with marketing automation tools to tell us exactly which web elements, posts, platforms, and timelines generate the most of every metric that matters. We connect all the dots from search to sale in real-time, helping you attribute results to each stage of the customer journey. 

Work with us and you’ll get access to data insights from every platform on a user-friendly, comprehensive dashboard.

3. Keep your niche in mind

Different channels work better for different brands. For example, if you’re a B2B SaaS brand, LinkedIn is probably one of your priority paid marketing channels. But if you’re a retail ecommerce brand? Not so much. 

Does that mean you should completely neglect one for the other? Not quite, but you should definitely invest more of your omnichannel marketing strategy into platforms that display the most engagement and conversions from your target audience. 

Corak chimes in, highlighting the SaaS niche’s notoriously long user journey: 

“Brands often experience scenarios in which their conversions occur far outside the trackable windows within the ad platforms. For SaaS brands, it is important to track multiple conversion actions across a website so that catered strategies can be built to warm leads into converters.”

Ecommerce businesses usually have shorter user journeys, unless you’re a luxury ecommerce brand with higher average order values (AOV). In these cases, the consideration stage for customers can be quite long, requiring more retargeting tactics via PPC ads after initial engagement on search and social. 

Heed Corak’s tips when it comes to ecommerce retargeting:

“Measure different conversion actions and build catered audience segments so you know what sort of retargeting strategy you wish to apply.

Use remarketing lists for search ads (RLSAs) so that if you have a warm lead returning to your site, they stand a lesser chance of being pulled to a competitor site if they’re bidding on your brand terms.”

The takeaway

Today’s brands can’t afford to rely on just one or two marketing tools or channels to convert audiences and build customer loyalty.

If you want your target audience to recognize your brand value, trust your authority, and buy your products, you need an omnichannel marketing strategy that appeals to every stage of the customer journey. 

But juggling ad copy, CTAs, visuals, and bidding strategies across multiple platforms? 

Well, let’s just say it can devour weeks of your marketing calendar. That’s why industry titans like Microsoft, 686, and Verizon trust HawkSEM with their marketing endeavors. 

Securing top spots in the SERPs? That’s everyday business for our skilled PPC and SEO experts. If you’re ready to streamline a revenue-generating omnichannel marketing experience, you’re in good hands. 

Let’s create a customer-centric omnichannel marketing strategy that drives results.